Shame in Edith Wharton's The Mother's Recompense

The Wharton revival of the 70's and 80's has produced striking reassessments of her life and work. Feminist and psychoanalytic readings of her novels have yielded major new insights into her “classic” novels like The House of Mirth and Ethan Frome, along with reevaluations of some less critically hailed works like The Reef. The Mother's Recompense has not yet benefited by the resurgence in Wharton studies, but perhaps that is changing—this novel was the major focus of a panel at the recent Edith Wharton Conference at Wharton's home in Lenox, Massachusetts.

In a paper at this session it was suggested that Kate Clephane's return to France at the end of The Mother's Recompense was a sign of growth and insight, even “redemptive.”1 In the subsequent lively discussion, this view was vigorously supported by those in the audience who ridiculed the idea of Kate marrying fat and red-faced Fred Landers. Others defended Fred as Kate's last chance for happiness. Marriage to him, or a tentatively hopeful return to France thus emerged as Kate's polar possibilities.

There is certainly critical support for these alternatives. Adeline Tintner argues that Kate finds “she has a new identity” at the novel's conclusion and has at last “become an individual.” R.W.B. Lewis and Elizabeth Ammons acknowledge loneliness and “abnegation” in Kate's return, but balance it—as does Blake Nevius—by her commendable decision not to cause her daughter “sterile pain.” Conversely, Louis Auchincloss is convinced that Kate and Fred would have had “happier and better lives married to each other.” With more sensitivity, Cynthia Griffin Wolff suggests that Kate must reject Fred's steady, uncapricious and comfortable love because she wishes to avoid plunging “into time and