The Bolted Door by Edith Wharton
Hubert Granice, a fifty-year-old man who has spent ten years failing to succeed as a playwright, prepares in his library to receive his lawyer, Peter Ascham, having already found himself too fearful to shoot himself with the revolver kept in his desk drawer. A rejection letter from a theater manager, refusing his blank-verse play and reminding him of the earlier failure of "The Lee Shore," has pushed him toward despair. When Ascham arrives late, delayed by a visit from a Mrs. Ashgrove seeking advice about her husband's unsolved poisoning, the two discuss how clever murderers are never caught, and Ascham mentions the old unsolved murder of Granice's cousin, Joseph Lenman. Granice then astonishes Ascham by declaring that he himself murdered Lenman, and, unable to kill himself, wants his guilt made known so he can be executed. Granice recounts his story: after a childhood and young manhood of poverty and drudgery supporting his mother and sister Kate, and years of failed playwriting, he and Kate had stayed one summer at Wrenfield near their wealthy, self-satisfied cousin Joseph Lenman, whose passion was cultivating prize melons. When Granice begged Lenman for a loan to escape his grinding circumstances, the old man refused with condescending advice about not "worrying." Around this time, an Italian under-gardener was blamed and dismissed for damaging Lenman's prize melon, then reappeared and frightened Lenman with "threatening language." Granice, seizing the opportunity, secretly bought a motor car, drove it to Wrenfield at night in disguise, broke into the pantry, and injected poison into a melon prepared for Lenman's recovering appetite; Lenman died after eating it, and suspicion fell permanently on the vanished Italian, while Granice's alibi (established by a rigged silhouette in his window, witnessed by neighbors and later corroborated by his friend Robert Denver) was never questioned. Ascham does not believe him, attributing the confession to nerves, and afterward Granice desperately tries to get others to believe and act on his guilt: he confesses to Denver, who finds the story implausible and suggests he needs medical help; he confesses to District Attorney Allonby, who humors him and eventually sends the alienist Dr. Stell (posing as a detective named Hewson) to evaluate him; and he confesses to a reporter, Peter McCarren, who eagerly investigates but cannot corroborate any physical evidence—the garage, the motor's buyer, and the source of the poison all prove untraceable. Diagnosed as suffering from overwork and hallucination, Granice is advised to travel and rest, but finds himself unable to feel remorse in any way others will accept, and equally unable to secure the death he craves. Wandering the streets searching for a stranger's face intelligent enough to believe him, he seizes a young woman on a park bench in Union Square, frightening her, and is arrested—not for murder, but as a disturbed man, leading to his confinement in an asylum. There, he continues drafting statements of his guilt to give to visitors on visiting days. He encounters McCarren again, who is accompanied by an unnamed man; Granice hands over a fresh written statement, which the stranger accepts but does not read seriously. Outside, the stranger asks McCarren whether there was ever any real basis for Granice's delusion. McCarren reveals that he had in fact found genuine evidence, by accident, proving Granice truly did commit the murder—but says he could not report it, since doing so would mean sending "the poor devil" to be hanged rather than safely confined. The stranger, shaken, thrusts the statement back at McCarren and the two walk on in silence.
By Edith Wharton · First published 1911 · Genre: Mystery, Psychological Fiction, Gothic Fiction · 7 chapters · 18,819 words
First lines
HUBERT GRANICE, pacing the length of his pleasant lamp-lit library, paused to compare his watch with the clock on the chimney-piece.
Three minutes to eight.
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The Bolted Door is listed on Textopian as a novel by Edith Wharton, dated 1911 CE.
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- Work type: Novel
- Author: Edith Wharton
- Date: 1911 CE
- Language: English
- Genres: Mystery, Psychological Fiction, Gothic Fiction, Drama
- Length: 18,819 words
- Structure: 7 chapters, 348 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Fairly Easy (7th Grade)
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- Work identity for The Bolted Door by Edith Wharton
- Canonical title URL and first readable passage URL
- Genre and topic classification from the Textopian catalog
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Similar titles
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- The Tomb by Guy De Maupassant
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Genres
- Mystery — The narrative revolves around a man's investigation into a friend's sudden disappearance, creating a suspenseful atmosphere.
- Psychological Fiction — The story delves into the mental state of the protagonist, exploring themes of guilt, fear, and paranoia.
- Gothic Fiction — The narrative employs elements of horror and death, and is set in a gloomy, haunting atmosphere.
- Drama — The narrative is characterized by emotional conflicts and intense interactions between characters.
Tags
Gothic Fiction · Mystery · Suspense · Thriller · Romance · Tragedy · Family Drama · Psychological Insight · Social Commentary · Dark Atmosphere · Isolation · Confinement