Haley, I really love your deep dive into the various meanings if dilettante - and I think you’re on to something with dilettante/flaneur as a kind of empty screen that’s filled by the leisure to observe the world as well as conjure your own inner world, as Newland does. Even if dilettante didn’t have the “lazy” connotation in Wharton’s time, I suspect she used it deliberately and understood its “baggage.” She was very tuned in to the constraints of both Puritanism and the Protestant work ethic.
Much more to say about this, but mostly I’ll just note that the Boston section of the book has always been most memorable to me - including the streamy summer heat (in the movie the detail of them escaping on a ferry into the harbor is dropped, but that’s part of what anchors their conversation in lived reality).
In the passage you highlight toward the end, I’m struck by Newland’s observation that “the danger had passed” - so interesting! Defining them succumbing to their physical passion as a “danger” tells me a lot about how much he’s exalted his own fantasy. And I wonder how much he’s aware of the way he’s boxed himself in.
In Veblen terms, someone in the upper class must be a dilettante to show he has no need for an earned income. Interesting comment about Boston heat being worse than. European urban heat. I don't think that's still true.
I think Newland's faithfulness to May is central to Ellen's appreciation of his "finer" qualities. So no way out even if they were willing to go against convention.
Wharton is fond of the word shabby. I remember her using it a lot in "Mirth."
Thanks Martha! I love your close reading of "danger" here. Newland's feelings are so complicated and I think you're onto something, as well, when you note that his observation of "danger" has much to do with his own fantasies and what he has imagined as possible for the two of them (and what he has decided is impossible, as well).
Newland is clearly obsessed: : “…he had wanted, irrationally and indescribably, to see the place she was living in, and to follow the movements of her imagined figure…”. The longing was with him day and night, an incessant undefinable craving…” But it is not until these chapters that I see Ellen express her true feelings for him: "You too -oh, all this time, you too?:" But I still don't know or understand May and why Ellen cares so much for her. "Is it a bad business - for May?...if it's not worth while to have given up , to have missed things, so that others may be saved from disillusionment and misery,...if all these things are a sham or a dream..." Clearly Ellen has been through major trauma. I'm not certain her "wistful tenderness" is truly for her cousin or for her own lost innocence that she believes May still possesses. Wharton manages to capture in a few scenes of limited dialog the swirling complications of these two human's emotions. Is her point that innocence is not knowing/feeling these intense feelings and the consequent pain of choosing not to act on them because of the impact on others? May, Mrs. Welland, Mrs. Archer, even Janey to some extent can move blithely through life seemingly untouched by any dissonance because they choose not to see or accept any messy feelings.
I absolutely loooooove how you're reading Ellen's protective and respectful stance toward May as a desire to preserve whatever "innocence" May has been able to preserve (especially since we know that both Ellen and Newland can see the cracks in their society; is May's "blindness" to them the innocence Ellen wishes to preserve? The same innocence that makes Newland recoil from May in disdain?)
You're right, too, in aligning May with Mrs. Archer and Mrs. Welland — these strong archetypes of motherhood in this society — and Janey is a great and interesting addition in your list, as well. We never see into these women's minds (other than via Archer's assumptions) and so all we have (as in real life) are their actions to tell us what may be going on inside their heads.
"As in real life"!!! In most novels to a more or less extent, characters tell us what they are thinking and feeling, and for the most part we take it on face value. In real life we construct what people think and feel more by how they act than what they say. Major insight to ponder. I'm for sure now a confirmed close reader.
I thought these chapters did a couple of things for us:
1. Documented the dreariness of "society summer schedules". I thought it was hilarious how everyone dreaded going to Sillerton's home/party...but went/represented anyway in some form or fashion. It seems that everyone feels the way that Newland and Ellen do - that society life is boring and unfulfilling. This sentence I thought summed it up: "...it was the same world after all, though he had a queer sense of having slipped through the meshes of time and space." I also love when Ellen says: "But you know, [Dr. Carver's schemes] interest me more than the blind conformity to tradition - somebody else's tradition - that I see amongst our own friends. It seems stupid to have discovered America only to make it into a copy of another country." WOW!
2. Illustrated the agony of love. I agree with you Haley, I could FEEL the emotions coming off the page as Newland and Ellen talked in the restaurant in Boston. When Ellen agrees not to return to her old life, and remain a part if Newland's, even he acknowledges the "misery" in that:
"What a life for you! - " he groaned.
"Oh - as long as it's a part of yours."
"And mine a part of yours?"
She nodded.
I am anxious to see what happens next! My favorite thing so far about this book is Wharton's use of language. I know I've said this, but I feel, at times, like I'm reading a painting. Edith (as I call her) does an incredible job at creating a scene and not just through describing objects and scenery, but feelings and emotions. It's really incredible.
I love this summary, Patrick!! I feel like you could write a whole essay on the "dreariness" of this novel and how much it shines a bright light on the boredom and discomfort everyone experiences, but no one feels they're able to talk about out loud. Ellen talks about it all out loud — and I think that's probably why Archer loves her and everyone else is starting to feel judged by her (i.e., when May wonders if she'd be better off back with her husband, or when Beaufort tries and fails to get her to stay in New York nearer to himself). Ellen, despite feeling it was heaven for a time, sees that there's nothing "new" about New York; it's full of many of the same judgements and traditions and rigidity she knew in the world of her estranged husband (which she left).
I am still viewing Newland as the unreliable narrator at 70% completion of the book. His lips touching the pink parasol..oh my. He's so creepy. And now I'm questioning Ellen. What exactly does she see in him? There has been very little dialogue from her - it's hard as a reader to believe she has 'fallen' for him. Or maybe it's me just wishing differently.
Whenever I feel myself tugging against why someone would make a choice that I'm wishing was differently in a book, I take a step back and commit myself to letting the text have what it has — to letting the text take the strange path it takes, despite my own desires for it to go another way. (There's a LOT of richness and closely reading of the self to be had in the questions: "What way do I wish it was going? Why do I wish that?")
But to get back to the text: we can push to ask why the text is moving in a way that seems to conflict with our own desires:
What, in the text, shows or tells us that Ellen *is* drawn to Newland? Where does she do things that would signal an interest? (I'm thinking things like: crossing a room to talk to him, inviting him to her home, wanting to explain or clarify Beaufort's presence in Newport, discussing personal and intimate details -- like past abuse and a bad marriage and a desire to divorce -- openly with him.) And what in the text shows or tells us that Ellen might *not* be drawn to Newland? (Maybe things like: hiding from him on the boat dock, running away from him rather than to him, always bringing up May when he makes a romantic move.)
And then, we can layer our questions and assumptions and wishes. How does the text give us all of those things? Through the lens of Newland. We do not know what Ellen sees or wants or wonders about; we only see how Newland experiences her actions toward him and how he interprets those actions through his own blighted lens.)
In what ways are we, as readers, forced to operate like Newland — to move only on our wishes and assumptions — rather than a true understanding of Ellen?
I am elated to have this close read along with your helpful insights. I'm committed to taking your advice and let the text 'take the strange path it takes, despite my own desires.'
Newland's life of dilettantism touches more than just his personal side quests, such as practicing law for fun, and reading books or observing art without thinking too critically about them. His inability to engage with something fully after experiencing the desire for it is evident in his relationships to both May and Ellen. Newland has gone through the motions of marriage as expected, but clearly isn't committed to it, and still desires Ellen. But, when I look back at the patterns of his actions, it makes me wonder how real his feelings for Ellen even are.
Towards the end of Chapter 24, when he confesses, "You gave me my first glimpse of a real life, and at the same moment you asked me to go on with a sham one. It's beyond human enduring – that's all," we see that Newland cannot outrun his desire for Ellen over the safe marriage he's chosen with May. However, I wonder if obtaining what he believes is his true desire (Ellen) would actually reveal that the wanting of it is more appealing to him than actually having it. After all, before Ellen, he expressed some level of desire for May that quickly faded when he found something more "enticing." Like the impulse to pick up a book, only to read it and reflect on the act of reading rather than what was read, I can't help but feel like Newland is more in love with the idea of Ellen and what she represents than he is with her as a person.
Fantastic observation and great questions. This is a central question that scholars who write on the novel dance with: Does Newland love Ellen or the *idea* of Ellen?
You're picking up on the most energetic frequency in the novel: desire.
Or a treatise on lack of desire? These languid and languishing characters seem to have no ambition or interest in anything but themselves and each other. That's what makes characters like Beaufort and Emerson Sillerton (and Rosedale) stand out. They want! And they actively pursue instead of dabbling at life.
Before reading your deep dive about the word dilettante I never realized it had a negative connotation in English. In Italian (my native language) it simply means someone who isn't a professional, and it isn't necessary a bad thing. You may call someone a dilettante and imply they're not that good, but it's also implied that they're doing something for fun, they have a hobby, there's a wholesome connotation to it. And indeed the word comes from the latin "delectare", to enjoy, to have fun.
Newland's idle state reminds me of Austen characters, spending their time between art, travel and sport. It's like old New York is trying to preserve a link to European upper classes that is becoming more and more anachronistic. Like Ellen puts it, "it seems stupid to have discovered America only to make it into a copy of another country."
Ooooooh this is fascinating context — thank you for sharing it! I love the way you've woven the "American" cultural stance into this idea of dilettantism's European roots. You're so right that Newland is a kind of frozen archetype of masculinity; he's not doing anything that a wealthy aristocrat wouldn't have done. And he longs so much for a new and interesting way of life (via Ellen) but he's stuck in this "idle state," as you put it. Excellent close reading there, Ellie!!
On vacation and finally getting caught up on the last two weeks! I love the discussion of the dilettante and especially the connection you drew from Hibbett’s term “empty figure” and Newland’s own anxieties about emptiness.
It makes me curious what’s at stake for Newland in those fears. In ch 21, as he watches May in the archery competition, he fears her niceness is a “curtain dropped before an emptiness,” a curtain he hasn’t “yet lifted.” This is a theme from previous chapters, but in ch 21 we learn he also thinks of his mind as empty - the cost of compartmentalizing away his feelings for Ellen is that his mind becomes “a rather empty and echoing” place. Is emptiness also connected to desire? Without his burning desire for Ellen, and the way that desire drives him to act and stirs his imagination, he is empty. And then in ch 22 we get emptiness again. Before meeting Ellen he longs to “carry away the vision of the spot of earth she walked on” so “the rest of the world might seem less empty.” And emptiness is again connected to aloneness, as his “one thought” in his conversation with Ellen is that “he should never again feel quite alone.” He strikes me as someone who craves the richness and depth that comes from commitment - to a profession,
to a person, to a belief system. But the “waste and ruin” that such commitment would entail—because deep commitment can also create deep disruption—condemns him to the aloof remoteness of the skeptic and the dilettante.
Powerfully put, Catherine! Thank you for drawing out what's at stake for Newland in his fears of emptiness in its various forms. "He strikes me as someone who craves the richness and depth that comes from commitment"--yes! All his life, he thought he had that richness and that depth in his commitment to Taste and the values of his society. He thought he had everything he could possibly need in that world, and that his path toward true, meaningful happiness was clear as he ended his youthful affair and made his choice of May as his bride (accent on the possessive).
His commitment to the values and standards that he believed were noble and true was what drew him to May, and that commitment is what kept him vacillating between what the two women represented to him in Book I. As empty as he finds his married life, and as passive as he appears to be within it, those values and standards still shine for him in those moments when he considers the life he has more "real" than anything he had imagined with Ellen.
Just as importantly, it's a commitment to those values that also appears to be motivating Ellen. She saw something worth admiring and committing to in the world of her childhood in New York. Although she realized too late that her position was already too compromised before she even got to New York (and that her own unwitting public behavior scotched the deal), she is holding very firm to a commitment for her cousin May to be able to keep living in that world, within those values.
I think we also have more to closely read about Newland's desire for Ellen. When he's feeling that desire, it all but consumes him, and it's the only thing he wants. But when he stops feeding his fantasies, it banks down. For 18 months, after hallucinating her presence at his wedding, he rigidly Did Not Think of Her. When Medora suddenly says her name to him in Newport, telling him how close by she actually is, he ignites again, despite having remained unmoved (so he believes) by every other mention of Ellen and her history in the time he and May have been married. When he plays the game with himself of watching Ellen on the pier, requiring that she turn and look at him or he won't go talk to her, (Newland, Newland, Newland), it's that fantasy image that he uses like a sex toy as he lies next to May that night at the close of ch. 21 (Newland, Newland, Newland).
And yet, just a few pages later, when he makes the plan to surreptitiously go out to the Blenkers' he's not even sure he wants to see her, but does desperately want to see where she is living, where the ghost of her presence has been. Once there, he ignites again at the sight of the pink parasol (to his intense embarrassment moments later). In Boston, he reflects briefly on this principle himself, seeming to congratulate himself on how much he longs for Ellen when she's not present, but does not need to touch her when she is. As we were told when we first met him, he would rather imagine a pleasure than have it. But once he starts imagining, it burns him.
Oohh yes thank you for this! That’s such a great nuance, that he begins the novel so sure in his commitments! No wonder he is unmoored by Ellen, and why being around May feels like real life - it’s an environment where everyone else has committed to those same values. He wants commitment but not to be alone in them, which makes life quite difficult as we head into the back part of the novel! Love your close reading of Newland’s desires - so insightful.
You're both pointing at a pretty salient theory of desire: that desire begets more desire. That in fact *not* having the object of one's desire is the whole point. Newland is a desiring being — he wants and wants and wants. When he acquires, he loses interest. This is kind of how desire works, isn't it? Wharton essentially puts forth a theory of sexual desire via Newland, showing us the torturous pleasures of not having what one wants and the ripple effects of that endless longing on not just Newland but his inner circle (especially May).
Haley: I reallllly want to hear about your side project on dilettantism, when you can get to it. <3
My understanding, in part from the narrator's tone in describing Newland in the early chapters, is that his dilettantism is faulted not for laziness, but for shallowness. He loves his book orders and his paintings and his conversations with Ned Winsett, but appears to be motivated more by his pleasure in feeling himself elevated above his peers than by the desire to really learn and explore.
In relation to his love of literature and ideas, as with everything else in his life before he met Ellen, Newland has stayed within conventional expectations and Taste (which we are told in chapter 2 is even more important to him personally than Form). There is an acceptable niche in his Society for this kind of "hobby", as a dilettante. So long as he does not wish to become a professional scholar (like Emerson Sillerton, whose violation of the gentleman's tenet is tolerated only because he and his wife are both so high born and otherwise blameless in their behavior) or try to throw in with the Bohemians (or force their society on others in his circle), he can enjoy his books and have his library. May can even serenely defend the practice to her mother, noting that Newland is never without something to occupy his time "because when there's nothing particular to do he reads a book.ª I love that in that moment in ch. 22, Mrs. Welland responds, ªAh, yes--like his father!" with the narrator commenting, "as if allowing for an inherited oddity." This may be the very first detail we've ever learned about Newland's father. Importantly, Newland learned his love of books at home.
We've already talked about how shocked Newland was to discover the limits of his bookishness when he visited Ellen's "funny little house" in New York, viewing paintings he's never seen and seeing books he's never heard of--and realizing that these things are matter-of-fact in her European life. This is part of what he means by how she has opened up a world for him--which she did quite without intending to, simply by being the person she was with the background and tastes she has. He learned that night that while his library might be extraordinary and even eccentric in his own set, he has only dabbled in the world of ideas. And he saw for the first time that his dilettantism was, in fact, an "only".
Haley, you replied to one of my comments about Newland's jealousy of Ellen that it was not just about the attentions she receives from other men (especially Beaufort), but about her broader experience of the world and the opportunities she has had to enjoy literature and the arts. Thank you for that facet! That side of his jealousy shows how conflicted he becomes about his own dilettantism, now that he has met someone from his own class who has had a European education and associated with creative people. The thing about himself that he may be most proud of, that distinguishes him from other men, is shown to be shallow and tawdry. He doesn't like that!
I am very intrigued by the introduction of Emerson and Amy Sillerton. We have been spending some serious time inside Newland's sense of being trapped and narcoticized by an empty life of manners and convention--and suddenly we have an example of an alternative within his own circle. Newland thinks he can't have a life of real engagement with knowledge, ideas, and beauty and still be a part of the world that raised him. Yet here is Professor Emerson Sillerton, who actually works for a living (gasp!) as an archaeologist, and his wife Amy née Dagonet who seems perfectly happy with him in a life of global travel (tombs in the Yucatan rather than France or Italy), long-haired male friends and short-haired women friends and giving parties for black men (oh my! the first mention of Black people who are not mulatto servants!).
Now, granted, these two are barely tolerated for their eccentricities, and no one understands why Amy Sillerton seems so happy in a life they think is rather beneath her. But the narrator describes them as exactly that: happy. It doesn't seem to trouble the Sillertons at all that their families don't approve of or understand their choices, "apparently unaware that they were different from other people". They have not been shunned or disinherited; and though their garden parties may be described as "dreary", the families are still obliged to send representatives. Mrs. Welland may remark that Emerson Sillerton broke with tradition (the tradition of not actually working), flouted society in the face, and married "poor" Amy Dagonet into his lifestyle when they could have been at the pinnacle of wealth and status--but she still has to go to their dinners on occasion and risk social exposure to the aforementioned (shudder) people.
Prof. and Amy Sillerton have the kind of life that Newland fantasized that he wanted in ch. 18, but made sure with his own actions that he wouldn't have to risk. Newland has never seen a way to combine the worlds of ideas and Old New York (witness his unresolvable arguments with Ned Winsett about why the "people who write" don't want to socialize with Newland's set). But Emerson and Amy Sillerton have done it. They have rejected the kind of elegant life they were expected to lead, and perhaps that is what Newland can't imagine, just as he could not imagine May's decorating choices in their new home together.
The Sillertons' example made me think of a passing reference in ch. 20, when May and Newland are in London and the narrator explains the delicate dance of their obligation to the Carfrys vs. the polite convention of never connecting with anyone while abroad. Newland reflects that "in conformity with the family tradition he had always travelled as a sight-seer and looker-on, affecting a haughty unconsciousness of the presence of his fellow-beings. Once only, just after Harvard, he had spent a few gay weeks at Florence with a band of queer Europeanised Americans...; but it had all seemed to him, though the greatest fun in the world, as unreal as a carnival. ... [These people] were too different from the people Archer had grown up among, too much like expensive and rather malodorous hot-house exotics, to detain his imagination long. To introduce his wife into such a society was out of the question; and in the course of his travels no other had shown any marked eagerness for his company." I want to hang onto that description of these "queer Europeanised Americans" as "unreal", now that we see Newland vascillating between which life is "real" to him: his conventional life with May, or what he imagines a life of passion and art and literature (embodied by Ellen) would be.
Every time Newland has dabbled in a life of more abandon, or of deeper engagement, he has not seen a way to reconcile it with the world that made him or the life he is working toward. He can't find a solution to his arguments with Ned Winsett; and he can't see a life for himself outside of the permitted dilettantism.
I'm not sure I have anything deeply intellectual or insightful to add, but I just want to say I was driving as I was listening to Chp 24, their frank conversation, and I missed two exits because I was so invested!
Haley, I really love your deep dive into the various meanings if dilettante - and I think you’re on to something with dilettante/flaneur as a kind of empty screen that’s filled by the leisure to observe the world as well as conjure your own inner world, as Newland does. Even if dilettante didn’t have the “lazy” connotation in Wharton’s time, I suspect she used it deliberately and understood its “baggage.” She was very tuned in to the constraints of both Puritanism and the Protestant work ethic.
Much more to say about this, but mostly I’ll just note that the Boston section of the book has always been most memorable to me - including the streamy summer heat (in the movie the detail of them escaping on a ferry into the harbor is dropped, but that’s part of what anchors their conversation in lived reality).
In the passage you highlight toward the end, I’m struck by Newland’s observation that “the danger had passed” - so interesting! Defining them succumbing to their physical passion as a “danger” tells me a lot about how much he’s exalted his own fantasy. And I wonder how much he’s aware of the way he’s boxed himself in.
In Veblen terms, someone in the upper class must be a dilettante to show he has no need for an earned income. Interesting comment about Boston heat being worse than. European urban heat. I don't think that's still true.
I think Newland's faithfulness to May is central to Ellen's appreciation of his "finer" qualities. So no way out even if they were willing to go against convention.
Wharton is fond of the word shabby. I remember her using it a lot in "Mirth."
Thanks Martha! I love your close reading of "danger" here. Newland's feelings are so complicated and I think you're onto something, as well, when you note that his observation of "danger" has much to do with his own fantasies and what he has imagined as possible for the two of them (and what he has decided is impossible, as well).
Newland is clearly obsessed: : “…he had wanted, irrationally and indescribably, to see the place she was living in, and to follow the movements of her imagined figure…”. The longing was with him day and night, an incessant undefinable craving…” But it is not until these chapters that I see Ellen express her true feelings for him: "You too -oh, all this time, you too?:" But I still don't know or understand May and why Ellen cares so much for her. "Is it a bad business - for May?...if it's not worth while to have given up , to have missed things, so that others may be saved from disillusionment and misery,...if all these things are a sham or a dream..." Clearly Ellen has been through major trauma. I'm not certain her "wistful tenderness" is truly for her cousin or for her own lost innocence that she believes May still possesses. Wharton manages to capture in a few scenes of limited dialog the swirling complications of these two human's emotions. Is her point that innocence is not knowing/feeling these intense feelings and the consequent pain of choosing not to act on them because of the impact on others? May, Mrs. Welland, Mrs. Archer, even Janey to some extent can move blithely through life seemingly untouched by any dissonance because they choose not to see or accept any messy feelings.
I absolutely loooooove how you're reading Ellen's protective and respectful stance toward May as a desire to preserve whatever "innocence" May has been able to preserve (especially since we know that both Ellen and Newland can see the cracks in their society; is May's "blindness" to them the innocence Ellen wishes to preserve? The same innocence that makes Newland recoil from May in disdain?)
You're right, too, in aligning May with Mrs. Archer and Mrs. Welland — these strong archetypes of motherhood in this society — and Janey is a great and interesting addition in your list, as well. We never see into these women's minds (other than via Archer's assumptions) and so all we have (as in real life) are their actions to tell us what may be going on inside their heads.
"As in real life"!!! In most novels to a more or less extent, characters tell us what they are thinking and feeling, and for the most part we take it on face value. In real life we construct what people think and feel more by how they act than what they say. Major insight to ponder. I'm for sure now a confirmed close reader.
I thought these chapters did a couple of things for us:
1. Documented the dreariness of "society summer schedules". I thought it was hilarious how everyone dreaded going to Sillerton's home/party...but went/represented anyway in some form or fashion. It seems that everyone feels the way that Newland and Ellen do - that society life is boring and unfulfilling. This sentence I thought summed it up: "...it was the same world after all, though he had a queer sense of having slipped through the meshes of time and space." I also love when Ellen says: "But you know, [Dr. Carver's schemes] interest me more than the blind conformity to tradition - somebody else's tradition - that I see amongst our own friends. It seems stupid to have discovered America only to make it into a copy of another country." WOW!
2. Illustrated the agony of love. I agree with you Haley, I could FEEL the emotions coming off the page as Newland and Ellen talked in the restaurant in Boston. When Ellen agrees not to return to her old life, and remain a part if Newland's, even he acknowledges the "misery" in that:
"What a life for you! - " he groaned.
"Oh - as long as it's a part of yours."
"And mine a part of yours?"
She nodded.
I am anxious to see what happens next! My favorite thing so far about this book is Wharton's use of language. I know I've said this, but I feel, at times, like I'm reading a painting. Edith (as I call her) does an incredible job at creating a scene and not just through describing objects and scenery, but feelings and emotions. It's really incredible.
I love this summary, Patrick!! I feel like you could write a whole essay on the "dreariness" of this novel and how much it shines a bright light on the boredom and discomfort everyone experiences, but no one feels they're able to talk about out loud. Ellen talks about it all out loud — and I think that's probably why Archer loves her and everyone else is starting to feel judged by her (i.e., when May wonders if she'd be better off back with her husband, or when Beaufort tries and fails to get her to stay in New York nearer to himself). Ellen, despite feeling it was heaven for a time, sees that there's nothing "new" about New York; it's full of many of the same judgements and traditions and rigidity she knew in the world of her estranged husband (which she left).
I am still viewing Newland as the unreliable narrator at 70% completion of the book. His lips touching the pink parasol..oh my. He's so creepy. And now I'm questioning Ellen. What exactly does she see in him? There has been very little dialogue from her - it's hard as a reader to believe she has 'fallen' for him. Or maybe it's me just wishing differently.
Whenever I feel myself tugging against why someone would make a choice that I'm wishing was differently in a book, I take a step back and commit myself to letting the text have what it has — to letting the text take the strange path it takes, despite my own desires for it to go another way. (There's a LOT of richness and closely reading of the self to be had in the questions: "What way do I wish it was going? Why do I wish that?")
But to get back to the text: we can push to ask why the text is moving in a way that seems to conflict with our own desires:
What, in the text, shows or tells us that Ellen *is* drawn to Newland? Where does she do things that would signal an interest? (I'm thinking things like: crossing a room to talk to him, inviting him to her home, wanting to explain or clarify Beaufort's presence in Newport, discussing personal and intimate details -- like past abuse and a bad marriage and a desire to divorce -- openly with him.) And what in the text shows or tells us that Ellen might *not* be drawn to Newland? (Maybe things like: hiding from him on the boat dock, running away from him rather than to him, always bringing up May when he makes a romantic move.)
And then, we can layer our questions and assumptions and wishes. How does the text give us all of those things? Through the lens of Newland. We do not know what Ellen sees or wants or wonders about; we only see how Newland experiences her actions toward him and how he interprets those actions through his own blighted lens.)
In what ways are we, as readers, forced to operate like Newland — to move only on our wishes and assumptions — rather than a true understanding of Ellen?
We readers are "forced to operate like Newland". That gives me a completely new perspective.
I am elated to have this close read along with your helpful insights. I'm committed to taking your advice and let the text 'take the strange path it takes, despite my own desires.'
Newland's life of dilettantism touches more than just his personal side quests, such as practicing law for fun, and reading books or observing art without thinking too critically about them. His inability to engage with something fully after experiencing the desire for it is evident in his relationships to both May and Ellen. Newland has gone through the motions of marriage as expected, but clearly isn't committed to it, and still desires Ellen. But, when I look back at the patterns of his actions, it makes me wonder how real his feelings for Ellen even are.
Towards the end of Chapter 24, when he confesses, "You gave me my first glimpse of a real life, and at the same moment you asked me to go on with a sham one. It's beyond human enduring – that's all," we see that Newland cannot outrun his desire for Ellen over the safe marriage he's chosen with May. However, I wonder if obtaining what he believes is his true desire (Ellen) would actually reveal that the wanting of it is more appealing to him than actually having it. After all, before Ellen, he expressed some level of desire for May that quickly faded when he found something more "enticing." Like the impulse to pick up a book, only to read it and reflect on the act of reading rather than what was read, I can't help but feel like Newland is more in love with the idea of Ellen and what she represents than he is with her as a person.
Fantastic observation and great questions. This is a central question that scholars who write on the novel dance with: Does Newland love Ellen or the *idea* of Ellen?
You're picking up on the most energetic frequency in the novel: desire.
How is this novel a kind of treatise on desire?
Or a treatise on lack of desire? These languid and languishing characters seem to have no ambition or interest in anything but themselves and each other. That's what makes characters like Beaufort and Emerson Sillerton (and Rosedale) stand out. They want! And they actively pursue instead of dabbling at life.
Before reading your deep dive about the word dilettante I never realized it had a negative connotation in English. In Italian (my native language) it simply means someone who isn't a professional, and it isn't necessary a bad thing. You may call someone a dilettante and imply they're not that good, but it's also implied that they're doing something for fun, they have a hobby, there's a wholesome connotation to it. And indeed the word comes from the latin "delectare", to enjoy, to have fun.
Newland's idle state reminds me of Austen characters, spending their time between art, travel and sport. It's like old New York is trying to preserve a link to European upper classes that is becoming more and more anachronistic. Like Ellen puts it, "it seems stupid to have discovered America only to make it into a copy of another country."
Ooooooh this is fascinating context — thank you for sharing it! I love the way you've woven the "American" cultural stance into this idea of dilettantism's European roots. You're so right that Newland is a kind of frozen archetype of masculinity; he's not doing anything that a wealthy aristocrat wouldn't have done. And he longs so much for a new and interesting way of life (via Ellen) but he's stuck in this "idle state," as you put it. Excellent close reading there, Ellie!!
On vacation and finally getting caught up on the last two weeks! I love the discussion of the dilettante and especially the connection you drew from Hibbett’s term “empty figure” and Newland’s own anxieties about emptiness.
It makes me curious what’s at stake for Newland in those fears. In ch 21, as he watches May in the archery competition, he fears her niceness is a “curtain dropped before an emptiness,” a curtain he hasn’t “yet lifted.” This is a theme from previous chapters, but in ch 21 we learn he also thinks of his mind as empty - the cost of compartmentalizing away his feelings for Ellen is that his mind becomes “a rather empty and echoing” place. Is emptiness also connected to desire? Without his burning desire for Ellen, and the way that desire drives him to act and stirs his imagination, he is empty. And then in ch 22 we get emptiness again. Before meeting Ellen he longs to “carry away the vision of the spot of earth she walked on” so “the rest of the world might seem less empty.” And emptiness is again connected to aloneness, as his “one thought” in his conversation with Ellen is that “he should never again feel quite alone.” He strikes me as someone who craves the richness and depth that comes from commitment - to a profession,
to a person, to a belief system. But the “waste and ruin” that such commitment would entail—because deep commitment can also create deep disruption—condemns him to the aloof remoteness of the skeptic and the dilettante.
Definitely want to read Hibbert’s book too!!
Powerfully put, Catherine! Thank you for drawing out what's at stake for Newland in his fears of emptiness in its various forms. "He strikes me as someone who craves the richness and depth that comes from commitment"--yes! All his life, he thought he had that richness and that depth in his commitment to Taste and the values of his society. He thought he had everything he could possibly need in that world, and that his path toward true, meaningful happiness was clear as he ended his youthful affair and made his choice of May as his bride (accent on the possessive).
His commitment to the values and standards that he believed were noble and true was what drew him to May, and that commitment is what kept him vacillating between what the two women represented to him in Book I. As empty as he finds his married life, and as passive as he appears to be within it, those values and standards still shine for him in those moments when he considers the life he has more "real" than anything he had imagined with Ellen.
Just as importantly, it's a commitment to those values that also appears to be motivating Ellen. She saw something worth admiring and committing to in the world of her childhood in New York. Although she realized too late that her position was already too compromised before she even got to New York (and that her own unwitting public behavior scotched the deal), she is holding very firm to a commitment for her cousin May to be able to keep living in that world, within those values.
I think we also have more to closely read about Newland's desire for Ellen. When he's feeling that desire, it all but consumes him, and it's the only thing he wants. But when he stops feeding his fantasies, it banks down. For 18 months, after hallucinating her presence at his wedding, he rigidly Did Not Think of Her. When Medora suddenly says her name to him in Newport, telling him how close by she actually is, he ignites again, despite having remained unmoved (so he believes) by every other mention of Ellen and her history in the time he and May have been married. When he plays the game with himself of watching Ellen on the pier, requiring that she turn and look at him or he won't go talk to her, (Newland, Newland, Newland), it's that fantasy image that he uses like a sex toy as he lies next to May that night at the close of ch. 21 (Newland, Newland, Newland).
And yet, just a few pages later, when he makes the plan to surreptitiously go out to the Blenkers' he's not even sure he wants to see her, but does desperately want to see where she is living, where the ghost of her presence has been. Once there, he ignites again at the sight of the pink parasol (to his intense embarrassment moments later). In Boston, he reflects briefly on this principle himself, seeming to congratulate himself on how much he longs for Ellen when she's not present, but does not need to touch her when she is. As we were told when we first met him, he would rather imagine a pleasure than have it. But once he starts imagining, it burns him.
Oohh yes thank you for this! That’s such a great nuance, that he begins the novel so sure in his commitments! No wonder he is unmoored by Ellen, and why being around May feels like real life - it’s an environment where everyone else has committed to those same values. He wants commitment but not to be alone in them, which makes life quite difficult as we head into the back part of the novel! Love your close reading of Newland’s desires - so insightful.
You're both pointing at a pretty salient theory of desire: that desire begets more desire. That in fact *not* having the object of one's desire is the whole point. Newland is a desiring being — he wants and wants and wants. When he acquires, he loses interest. This is kind of how desire works, isn't it? Wharton essentially puts forth a theory of sexual desire via Newland, showing us the torturous pleasures of not having what one wants and the ripple effects of that endless longing on not just Newland but his inner circle (especially May).
Haley: I reallllly want to hear about your side project on dilettantism, when you can get to it. <3
My understanding, in part from the narrator's tone in describing Newland in the early chapters, is that his dilettantism is faulted not for laziness, but for shallowness. He loves his book orders and his paintings and his conversations with Ned Winsett, but appears to be motivated more by his pleasure in feeling himself elevated above his peers than by the desire to really learn and explore.
In relation to his love of literature and ideas, as with everything else in his life before he met Ellen, Newland has stayed within conventional expectations and Taste (which we are told in chapter 2 is even more important to him personally than Form). There is an acceptable niche in his Society for this kind of "hobby", as a dilettante. So long as he does not wish to become a professional scholar (like Emerson Sillerton, whose violation of the gentleman's tenet is tolerated only because he and his wife are both so high born and otherwise blameless in their behavior) or try to throw in with the Bohemians (or force their society on others in his circle), he can enjoy his books and have his library. May can even serenely defend the practice to her mother, noting that Newland is never without something to occupy his time "because when there's nothing particular to do he reads a book.ª I love that in that moment in ch. 22, Mrs. Welland responds, ªAh, yes--like his father!" with the narrator commenting, "as if allowing for an inherited oddity." This may be the very first detail we've ever learned about Newland's father. Importantly, Newland learned his love of books at home.
We've already talked about how shocked Newland was to discover the limits of his bookishness when he visited Ellen's "funny little house" in New York, viewing paintings he's never seen and seeing books he's never heard of--and realizing that these things are matter-of-fact in her European life. This is part of what he means by how she has opened up a world for him--which she did quite without intending to, simply by being the person she was with the background and tastes she has. He learned that night that while his library might be extraordinary and even eccentric in his own set, he has only dabbled in the world of ideas. And he saw for the first time that his dilettantism was, in fact, an "only".
Haley, you replied to one of my comments about Newland's jealousy of Ellen that it was not just about the attentions she receives from other men (especially Beaufort), but about her broader experience of the world and the opportunities she has had to enjoy literature and the arts. Thank you for that facet! That side of his jealousy shows how conflicted he becomes about his own dilettantism, now that he has met someone from his own class who has had a European education and associated with creative people. The thing about himself that he may be most proud of, that distinguishes him from other men, is shown to be shallow and tawdry. He doesn't like that!
I am very intrigued by the introduction of Emerson and Amy Sillerton. We have been spending some serious time inside Newland's sense of being trapped and narcoticized by an empty life of manners and convention--and suddenly we have an example of an alternative within his own circle. Newland thinks he can't have a life of real engagement with knowledge, ideas, and beauty and still be a part of the world that raised him. Yet here is Professor Emerson Sillerton, who actually works for a living (gasp!) as an archaeologist, and his wife Amy née Dagonet who seems perfectly happy with him in a life of global travel (tombs in the Yucatan rather than France or Italy), long-haired male friends and short-haired women friends and giving parties for black men (oh my! the first mention of Black people who are not mulatto servants!).
Now, granted, these two are barely tolerated for their eccentricities, and no one understands why Amy Sillerton seems so happy in a life they think is rather beneath her. But the narrator describes them as exactly that: happy. It doesn't seem to trouble the Sillertons at all that their families don't approve of or understand their choices, "apparently unaware that they were different from other people". They have not been shunned or disinherited; and though their garden parties may be described as "dreary", the families are still obliged to send representatives. Mrs. Welland may remark that Emerson Sillerton broke with tradition (the tradition of not actually working), flouted society in the face, and married "poor" Amy Dagonet into his lifestyle when they could have been at the pinnacle of wealth and status--but she still has to go to their dinners on occasion and risk social exposure to the aforementioned (shudder) people.
Prof. and Amy Sillerton have the kind of life that Newland fantasized that he wanted in ch. 18, but made sure with his own actions that he wouldn't have to risk. Newland has never seen a way to combine the worlds of ideas and Old New York (witness his unresolvable arguments with Ned Winsett about why the "people who write" don't want to socialize with Newland's set). But Emerson and Amy Sillerton have done it. They have rejected the kind of elegant life they were expected to lead, and perhaps that is what Newland can't imagine, just as he could not imagine May's decorating choices in their new home together.
The Sillertons' example made me think of a passing reference in ch. 20, when May and Newland are in London and the narrator explains the delicate dance of their obligation to the Carfrys vs. the polite convention of never connecting with anyone while abroad. Newland reflects that "in conformity with the family tradition he had always travelled as a sight-seer and looker-on, affecting a haughty unconsciousness of the presence of his fellow-beings. Once only, just after Harvard, he had spent a few gay weeks at Florence with a band of queer Europeanised Americans...; but it had all seemed to him, though the greatest fun in the world, as unreal as a carnival. ... [These people] were too different from the people Archer had grown up among, too much like expensive and rather malodorous hot-house exotics, to detain his imagination long. To introduce his wife into such a society was out of the question; and in the course of his travels no other had shown any marked eagerness for his company." I want to hang onto that description of these "queer Europeanised Americans" as "unreal", now that we see Newland vascillating between which life is "real" to him: his conventional life with May, or what he imagines a life of passion and art and literature (embodied by Ellen) would be.
Every time Newland has dabbled in a life of more abandon, or of deeper engagement, he has not seen a way to reconcile it with the world that made him or the life he is working toward. He can't find a solution to his arguments with Ned Winsett; and he can't see a life for himself outside of the permitted dilettantism.
I'm not sure I have anything deeply intellectual or insightful to add, but I just want to say I was driving as I was listening to Chp 24, their frank conversation, and I missed two exits because I was so invested!
I love this. Being so engrossed in a story that you miss your exit...twice...!! That is an amazing testament to Wharton's writing prowess!