(Summary: Lying in her berth on a train sweeping through the country from Colorado to New York City, a wife reflects on her marriage to her stricken husband. They were a vibrant couple when they courted, but his sickness has driven a wedge into their relationship. She is leaving him behind and he has become resentful of her vigor. They are returning to New York City after living in the high, dry country to see if the conditions would benefit his health. It did not. As the train rifles across the country side, her husband deteriorates at an alarming rate. Waking up the next morning, she discovers his dead body. Afraid that train officials will stop the train and leave her alone at some outpost with the corpse, she hides his death from the train crew and the other passengers. When they finally arrive in New York, her nerves are shot, and she faints, striking her head against her husband’s berth.)

Analysis: Edith Wharton is among the royalty of American letters; a grand dame of literature who was born with a silver spoon (and a fork and a knife) in her mouth. Wharton’s maiden name was “Jones” and her family’s known for being the “Jones” in the axiom “Keeping up with the Joneses.”

Wharton penned the classics “House of Mirth” (1905), “Ethan Frome” (1912), and the Pulitzer Prize winning “The Age of Innocence” (1920). She is famous for her passionate realism and her seething criticism of upper-class American society at the end of the 19^th century.

So the short story, “A Journey,” is a bit of a jolt for such a prim and proper literary figure. It’s as if Wharton started channeling Edgar Allan Poe and took a tip-toe into the darkness.

One doesn’t expect horror tales from Wharton, but there’s no disguising “A Journey.” It’s a story about a woman who hides the corpse of her husband from train porters and passengers – and is nearly driven mad by it.

Wharton is a perceptive observer of human emotion. Her prose captures the complexity of the relationship between the unnamed wife and her husband – poking at the chasm that has opened between them because of his illness. It’s an unspoken estrangement, yet it dictates their actions and the way they treat one another. He’s irritated by her health and she sees him as an anchor to getting on with life.

It’s proves to be a combustible mix. She moves with him to Colorado, but resents him for it. She misses New York City, so when the mountain air doesn’t have its desired effect on his health, she wastes no time in convincing him it is time to head back East.

The couple silently understands that the return to New York signifies the end. He is going to die. But New York has become symbolic for the woman – a place where she will again be surrounded by family and friends. She will have her freedom at last.

The tone “A Journey” is gloomy and depressing. The weight of it can be felt in passages like this:

“The hours dragged on in a dreary inoccupation. Toward dusk she sat down beside him and he laid his hands on hers. The touch startled her. He seemed to be calling her from far off. She looked at him helplessly and his smile went through her like a physical pang.”

But “A Journey” is so much deeper. In Wharton’s hands the overland journey becomes a metaphor for death – the journey from birth to death. The journey becomes Charon’s boat re-imagined as a train flying through the heartland of the United States. It’s all blurs and darkness outside the train window.

The twilight, for example, is described as “sepulchral” and the countryside becomes “flying trees and houses, meaningless hieroglyphs on an endlessly unrolled papyrus.” As the woman’s guilt at her deception builds, she becomes haunted by the ghost of her dead husband. But her fear at being stuck with him – alone – is just too much to bear.

She feels his presence and his yearning for her to acknowledge his death – perhaps even to validate his life.

Until the very end, when reaching New York, the train plunges into the Harlem tunnel and the car grows dark. It all ends horribly and in black confusion: “She flings up her arms, struggling to catch at something, and fell face downward, striking her head against the dead man’s berth.”

Apparently, even grand dames of letters, have nightmares.

Read our Literary Criticims of Richard Matheson's "I Am Legend" here

Read our picks for the books, movies, and music that defined decades here

Labels: Edith Wharton, literary criticism, literature

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