The Muse's Tragedy

The Muse's Tragedy by Edith Wharton

Danyers, a young American critic who has long worshipped the poet Vincent Rendle and the "Silvia" of his sonnets, finally meets Rendle's celebrated inspiration, Mrs. Mary Anerton, at the Hotel Villa d'Este, having previously learned of her through her friend Mrs. Memorall. Mrs. Memorall had described Mary's long, carefully guarded intimacy with Rendle during his years of near-residence in the Anerton household, her husband Anerton's absurd pride in "our poet," and her own present loneliness and idleness since editing Rendle's juvenilia after his death. Mrs. Anerton, recognizing Danyers's name from his published essay on Rendle sent to her by Mrs. Memorall, approaches him at the lake, and they spend a month together at the Villa, talking daily of Rendle's work, thought, and craftsmanship. Danyers is struck by how thoroughly her mind seems to have shaped the poet's, and by the discreet dignity of her position as Silvia, never claiming intimacy yet never denying it. As their friendship deepens, Mrs. Anerton draws Danyers out about his own ambitions, urging him to write, and finally proposes that he write a full book on Rendle—with her help. They part agreeing to meet six weeks later in Venice to discuss the book, and Danyers leaves half in love with her. The remainder of the text is a long letter Mrs. Anerton writes to Danyers from Lago d'Iseo after their month together in Venice, confessing she will not return to him or marry him as he apparently wished, and revealing the truth she has concealed: Rendle never loved her. Their bond was purely intellectual—fifteen years of close companionship, dependence, and correspondence—but never romantic; the famous asterisks in his published letters, which readers assumed hid passionate passages, were her own invention, inserted where nothing had been cut. She recounts her private torment over the years: hoping his eventual dependence or her widowhood might turn into love, noting his one real infatuation with a younger woman that came to nothing, and finally, after his death, being celebrated by the world as the woman he loved while knowing privately that she had never been anything but his valued friend. Haunted by never knowing whether she was capable of inspiring love in a man, she admits she used Danyers, deliberately and half against her own wishes, as an experiment to answer that question—delighting when he grew jealous of Rendle's memory and moved by his evident feeling for her in Venice. She confesses this manipulation, expresses fear of his anger, and closes acknowledging that what she has done can only wound herself, since it has shown her, too late, everything in life and love she has missed. The text ends here, with no further resolution given.

By Edith Wharton · First published 1907 · Genre: Drama, Romance, Psychological Fiction · 3 chapters · 8,028 words

First lines

Danyers afterwards liked to fancy that he had recognized Mrs. Anerton at / once; but that, of course, was absurd, since he had seen no portrait of / her -- she affected a strict anonymity, refusing even her photograph / to the most privileged -- and from Mrs. Memorall, whom he revered and / cultivated as her friend, he had extracted but the one impressionist / phrase: "Oh, well, she's like one of those old prints where the lines / have the value of color."

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Romance · Tragedy · Literary Fiction · Classic Literature · American Literature · Early 20th Century · Social Class · Upper Class · Marriage · Infidelity · Adultery · Love Triangle

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