TWILIGHT SLEEP.

A Novel.

by Edith Wharton.

SUMMARY.

I.

Preliminary.

Pauline Manford (Mrs. Dexter Manford) has long since
"lived down" her first, her only painful experience -- her early
marriage with Arthur Wyant, an "old New Yorker", half artist, half
dreamer, ironic, critical and ineffectual. She herself is from the
Middle West, and has inherited the activity, the undiscrimining
enthusiasms and the business capacity of her motor-manufacturing
father.

After a few years of marriage she is sent to the south
for a rest cure, and discovers, on her return, that in her absence
Wyant has slipped into a trivial intrigue with a cousin who lives
with his mother, old Mrs. Wyant.

The affair is instantly hushed up, and a "New York
divorce" promptly and discreetly obtained. Wyant goes back to live

TWILIGHT SLEEP.

A Novel.

by Edith WHARTON.

SUMMARY.

I.

Preliminary.

Pauline Manford (Mrs. Dexter Manford) has long since "lived down" her first, her only painful experience — her early marriage with Arthur Wyant, an "old New Yorker", half artist, half dreamer, ironic, critical and ineffectual. She herself is from the Middle West, and has inherited the activity, the undiscriminating enthusiasm for the business capacity of her motor-manufacturing father.

The affair is instantly hushed up, and a "New York divorce" promptly and discreetly obtained. Wyant goes back to live with his mother, and Mrs. Wyant, free, handsome, energetic and determined to use her freedom for self-improvement and general "broadening", puts her little boy at school, and devotes two years to travel and the

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2.

study of art in the European capitals. She is a resolute optimist, and persuaded that all is for the best in this new arrangement. Her little boy is with her during his holidays, and on her return from Europe he is sent regularly to see his father, with whom Pauline also remains on friendly terms.

Arthur Wyant — who had always drunk too much at times, and had proved to be an altogether unsatisfactory and undependable husband — is very poor, and after his mother's death he remains on Mrs. Wyant's list of duties as a sort of pensioned retainer, even after she has married (two years later) the brilliant young lawyer Dexter Manford, who has helped her to get her divorce, and been dazzled by her good looks and her social talents.

At the time of this second marriage Pauline is about twenty-eight and Manford thirty.

## II.

The novel begins when the Dexter Manfords have been married twenty years. They have one child, a daughter (Nona) who is nineteen — about seven years younger than her step-brother, Jim Wyant, the only child of Pauline's first marriage. Pauline Manford, now about forty eight years old, is still very young-looking, slim and beautifully massaged. Manford has made a large fortune as a corporation lawyer. He is tired of it, of his profession, and of most things, and doesn't know what is wrong, but vaguely thinks he would have liked life on a farm, and lots of children — the only

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3.

two dreams he is never likely to realize. Barring that, he would
like to be lazy, and can't, because he's been trained to activity
from the cradle, and to be bad-tempered, and can't, because his
life is so perfectly organized for him that there's nothing to be
had-tempered about.

Then Jim Wyant, the son of Mrs. Manford's first marriage,
marries Lita Cliffe.

Jim is just a "dear boy"; a combination of Pauline's
best qualities, her real conscientious desire to "act for the
best" ~~accomplished with Arthur Wyant's~~ whimsical spirit and quick sense
of humour.

Lita is — jazz.

After they have been married about two years, Nona Man-
ford suddenly discovers that her step-brother, Jim, whom she has
always adored, is unhappy. She tries to find out why, and gathers
that Lita thinks he is interfering with the development of her
individuality, though she doesn't quite know what she means by
the phrase, or how her individuality ought to be developed. Finally
the matter is put to Pauline, who judicially decides that Jim must
do nothing to interfere with the development of his wife's indivi-
duality, but that, on the other hand, Lita must very "kindly" be
drawn back to her obvious duties to husband and child (they have a
boy), but all smoothly, painlessly, like the "twilight sleep"
to which she was subjected at her baby's birth.

Nothing has ever been allowed to hurt all these perfectly
healthy, perfectly dentisted, perfectly efficient people with
empty souls, and they are all secretly terrified at the idea of
any kind of pain, physical or moral. Nona Manford alone wonders —
she has more capacity for wonder than her parents and those of

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4.

their generation...

(Quotation from novel). "There were moments when Nona felt oppressed by responsibilities and anxieties not of her age, apprehensions that she could not shake off and yet had not enough experience of life to know how to meet. One or two of her girl friends — in the brief intervals between whirls and thrills — had betrayed the same vague disquietude. It was as if, in the beaming determination of the middle-aged, one and all of them, to ignore sorrow and evil, 'think them away' as superannuated bogies, survivals of some obsolete European superstition unworthy of enlightened Americans, to whom plumbing and dentistry had given higher standards, and bi-focal glasses a clearer view of the universe— as if the demons the elder generation ignored, baulked of their natural prey, had been driven to cast their hungry shadow over the young. After all, somebody in every family had to remember now and then that such things as wickedness, suffering and death had not yet been banished from the earth; and with all those bright-complexioned white-haired mothers mailed in massage and optimism, and behaving as if they had never heard of anything but the Good and the Beautiful, perhaps their children had to serve as vicarious victims. There were hours when Nona Manford, bewildered little Iphigenia, uneasily argued in this way; others when youth and inexperience reasserted themselves, and the load slipped from her, and she wondered why she didn't always believe, like her elders, that it sufficed to be active, benevolent, fond and firm to prevail against the powers of darkness."

goes to Lita's

Suddenly she came in one day, and almost surprises Lita in Dexter Manford's arms. It is an Aeschylean tragedy, with no Aeschylean moral ideals. Manford is madly in love, Lita half in

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5.

love, and half enchanted by his attentions, his money, and the
"self-expression" thus to be obtained. Jim, who adores her, suspects
nothing. Nona, who adores Jim, is determined that he never shall.
But how is it to be stopped?

Dexter Manford has been asked about this time to act as counsel in a suit against a mysterious Eastern sage (called "The Mahatma") whose so-called "School of Oriental Thought" has long been a cause of considerable gossip and speculation in New York. But Pauline persuades her husband not to take the case, owing to the unpleasant disclosures which she suspects may result, and in which their friends and even their relations might be disagreeably involved. She herself has followed the Mahatma's teachings with profound admiration, yet her native honesty makes her feel that all may not be quite right in the mysterious "School"'s inner circle. Manford not only yields to her wishes, but persuades his client not to bring suit, and everything is once more hushed up and smoothed over. But not long afterward Manford discovers that Lita Cliffe had spent two or three months under that sinister roof, and been hopelessly corrupted, and he curses himself for his cowardice, and yet is glad that nothing unfavourable to Lita need now come out.

At length, in despair at what she suspects, Nona Manford
determines to consult Arthur Wyant about Jim's matrimonial troubles,
though of course without bringing in the name of her own father,
Dexter Manford, whom she loves and admires, and cannot yet believe
guilty of more than a foolish sentimental friendship with Lita.

Nona Manford has always kept up a queer desultory friend-
ship with her mother's first husband, encouraged therein by Pauline,
as part of the general plan of good-will and "smoothing things over".
Arthur Wyant is obviously horrified by what she hints at, but has

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no advice to give. He has lately slipped back into his drinking
habits, and she finds him in a mood of fitful depression, and sees
too late that she has made a disastrous impression, for he is in-
tensely proud of his son, very ambitious for him, and deeply humiliat-
ed to find that Jim is to be discarded as he himself was. He
instantly suspects Manford, and is beside himself at the thought
that his son is to be sacrificed to the man who, as he imagines, is
responsible for his own misfortune.

In Wyant's idle brooding mind all the cold embers of
failure — wounded vanity, unfulfilled ambition, poverty, the
sense of being left on one side — flame up again in sombre fury.
The old elemental jealousy wakes with them, and he hates Manford
with so fierce a hate that he sacrifices his son's peace to it,
and tells Jim of his dishonour.

Jim is dazed. He does not know what to do with the
information. He belongs to the new generation, and though he is
heart-broken, he does not even know what to do with a heart-break.
And besides, "dishonour" doesn't mean anything in the new optimistic
vocabulary in which he has been brought up. He feels baffled and
ridiculous. But suddenly Arthur Wyant finds out that Lita and
Manford are planning to go off together. He comes to the Manford
country house (where the family are all staying for the week-end)
to warn Jim, and stumbles on the lovers. It all happens in the night
in the darkness, hurriedly, confusedly —

Nona Manford has feared that something was about to
happen, and is on the scene before Wyant (whose arrival at the
house is unknown to her). She rushes into Lita's bedroom to warn
her. Arthur Wyant, half-drunk, follows. Manford is there, and Wyant
draws a revolver and aims it at him. Nona flings herself between
the two men, and is wounded.

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7.

At this moment Pauline appears. She is in a beautiful sort of Greek garment. She has been doing her "Uplift" evening exercises, to prepare for a dreamless sleep and greater serenity and efficiency the next day.

She has been startled by the noise of the shot, supposes it is a burglar, sets in motion all the perfect burglar-alarms of the great country house, summons in an instant butler, footmen, chauffeurs, secretaries, etc (even the village fire-brigade turns out), and, thus supported and surrounded, herself arrives on the scene, pale, capable, efficient — to find that her divorced husband has shot her daughter, and that her daughter-in-law is her second husband's mistress.

The next day all the papers announce that there has been a burglary at the Manford country-place, and that the burglars, in escaping, had shot, and wounded, Miss Manford, who had been waked by their entrance and had rushed out of her room to give the alarm.

But Nona's wound is not serious, and the smooth old Manford life gradually closes in over them all. Lita will give Jim Wyant "another chance". Mr. and Mrs. Dexter Manford are going to India and China for a year; in a last scene, Nona is lying in bed, her arm in a sling, and all her friends are calling to congratulate her on her escape, and get her to tell the story — which she can now recite by heart, with occasional thrilling variante.

THE END.