Whitegates

From a narrow perspective, Whitegates is clearly the place of the setting of the main plot of “All Souls’.” In this house Sara Clayburn finds herself, abandoned by her servants, all alone for thirty-six hours after All Souls’ Eve. In the story, the narrator explains that Whitegates was built around 1780. Furthermore, the narrator describes Whitegates as “[…] open, airy, high-ceilinged, with electricity, central heating and all the modern appliances […].”[1] Considering that the house was built around 1780, these modern appliances suggest that it was renovated and modernized. Assuming that the story takes place around 1937, Whitegates can be described as modern, according to the time. The Clayburns have already lived in the family house for three generations. The original building is portrayed as “[…] four-square, with four spacious rooms on the ground floor, an oak-floored hall dividing them, the usual kitchen-extension at the back and a good attic under the roof.”[2] When Jim Clayburn’s grandparents were interested in the Colonial architecture they “[…] had added two wings, at right angles to the south front, so that the old “circle” before the front door became a grassy court, enclosed on three sides, with a big elm in the middle.”[3] According to Dwight “[…] the detailed description suggests a roomy and pleasant house once thronged by people who enjoyed full, happy lives […].”[4] The location of the “[…] pleasant, hospitable looking house […]”[5] is described as on the top of a hill, “[…] overlooking the stately windings of the Connecticut River […]”[6] and five or six miles away from the fictional town of Norrington, the closest town to Whitegates. The isolated location of the house is emphasized through the townspeople, who consider that it must “[…] be lonesome, winters, living all alone up there atop of that hill”[7] and also through Dr. Selgrove, who asked whether he should send over a nurse for Sara, after she fractured her ankle, because “[…] this is a pretty lonely place when the snow begins […].”[8]

According to the narrator’s view on ghosts, Whitegates as a “[…] comfortable suburban house […][9] seemed for him/her, just like the “[…] calm, matter of fact […]”[10] Sara Clayburn, likely to be haunted by them. Although other houses are associated with the term “suburban” nowadays, the reader would expect, particularly because of the isolated location, even without the narrator’s preparatory explanations, a “[…] story of heightened psychological, emotional, and spiritual awareness in the house/self known as Whitegates.”[11] Furthermore, the word “gate” in Whitegates suggests that a transition from one state of being to another could take place. Moreover, it could be seen as a “gate” to the world of the supernatural or the underworld.[12] Traditionally innocence and purity is associated with the color white. In combination with the interpretation of gate, as stated above, “Whitegates” could therefore be seen as gate for the servants and the strange woman, who possibly participated at a coven, from their innocent being as dutiful servants to the sinful and corrupt world of the supernatural.

From a biographical point of view Whitegates offers some parallels to a house where Wharton lived, called the Mount. The Mount was built in 1902 by Edith Wharton and her husband Teddy Wharton, and is located in Lenox, Massachusetts.[13] Therefore, it is, just like Whitegates, located in New England. Moreover, the Mount was built on a hilltop too. While the Mount is overlooking Laurel Lake, Whitegates overlooks the Connecticut River. Furthermore, the Mount had, in contrast to most other houses in an area that had black gates, white gates.[14] Edith and Teddy Wharton sold the house in 1911.[15] The people who bought it from them named it White Lodge. Although Edith Wharton never returned to the Mount, this was a fact that she knew.[16] In her autobiography “A Backward Glance” Edith Wharton called the Mount her “[…] first real home […].”[17] This is conveying that she had a special emotional connection to the Mount. Therefore, it is possible that her “first real home” inspired her to construct “Whitegates” in “All Souls’.”

The mount from above:

The mount from above
The east facade of the Mount

Source: http://www.edithwharton.org/gallery/the-estate-gallery/ (accessed March 24, 2015).

[1] Edith Wharton, “All Souls’,” in: The Demanding Dead – More Stories of Terror and the Supernatural, ed. Peter Haining (London: Peter Owen Publishers, 2007), 184.

[2] Ibid., 185.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Eleanor Dwight, Edith Wharton. An extraordinary Life (New York: Abrams, 1994), 232-233.

[5] Wharton, “All Souls’,” 185.

[6] Ibid., 185.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid., 187.

[9] Ibid., 184.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Kathi Fedorko, Gender and the Gothic in the fiction of Edith Wharton (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1995), 158.

[12] Ibid., 158.

[13] Sara Bird Wright, Edith Wharton A to Z. The Essential Guide to the Life & Work (New York: Roundhouse, 1999), 172.

[14] Annette Zilversmit, “All Souls’: Wharton’s Last Haunted House and Future Directions for Criticism,“ in Edith Wharton. New critical essays, eds. Alfred Bendixen and Annette Zilversmit (New York: Garland, 1992), 316-317.

[15] Wright, Edith Wharton A to Z, 172.

[16] Zilversmit, “All Souls’: Wharton’s Last Haunted House ,“ 317.

[17] Edith Wharton, A Backward Glance, (New York: Scribner, 1964), 125.