Afterward

"Afterward"

Youtube (This is the 1910 Century Magazine version of the story)

Youtube (The movie is different from both versions of this story)

1910

First publication in Vol. 79 of "The Century Magazine" in January 1910.

The revised version of the story was first published in "Tales of Men and Ghosts" in 1910.

Ghost Stories

Lyng, a fictional house somwhere in Dorsetshire, England

Agnes, the boilermaker, Edward Boyne, Mary Boyne, Mary's correspondent, Mrs. Docket, Robert Elwell, Mrs. Elwell, Elwell's children, Elwell's mother, the gardener, Hugo, Hugo's cousins, the kitchen maid, Mary's friends, Mr. Parvis, Peters, Alida Stair, Trimmle, the undergardener, the villagers

Wharton's connection to the Gothic, Homosexuality, The house, The marriage, Money

None

Tudor

England, Dorsetshire, The Middle West, New York, Pangbourne, Waukesha

Cedar, Lime, Pear, Yew

Benedictine, Bowls, Sphinx, Squat lions, Tudor

I

The story starts in December as Mary Boyne remembers the conversation her husband Edward, Alida Stair and herself had in June, six months earlier. The Boynes had been looking for a new home in the southern or southwestern counties of England. With this problem in mind, they had contacted their friend Alida Stair who had solved the problem by suggesting them several relatively good places to live in. However, the Boynes had a very specific taste and wanted a really old building with a ghost. This is why Alida ultimately suggested Lyng, which is a house with a ghost that a person can only recognize long after actually encountering it. Edward and Mary Boyne are a couple that had become rich due to a business deal concerning Edward’s Blue Star Mine. With the money from this deal, they planned to seclude themselves from the outer world by living at a place far away from everyone else. There, they wanted to pursue their life of leisure, doing only the things they wanted to do. Upon arriving at Lyng, Mary started to notice that her husband seemed worried and as they settled in, Mary encountered a hidden stairwell. This stairwell lead her and Ned Boyne to the roof from which they spotted a figure. Mary remembered that the sight of the stranger, caused Ned to hurry down. When she finally caught up to him, there was no stranger to be found and Ned seemed oddly relived. She had given this no more thought at the time, because at Lyng they were visited regularly by tradesmen or specialists (Wharton 342-349).

II

The story then moves on with Mary remembering a December day when she sat with her husband in the library. The feeling that something bothered Ned didn’t allow her to think of something else and she questioned him if he had seen the ghost. Edward Boyne declined and both of them inspected their letters. Mary had noticed that upon reading his own letter, Ned Boyne seemed to look less worried, somewhat happy even. In return, she herself was shocked when she read hers. An unnamed friend of hers had sent her a part of the Waukesha Sentinel, a newspaper. Said newspaper had informed Mary about the fact that a man named Elwell had brought suit against Ned Boyne. Mary of course questioned her husband about this matter and he successfully manages to calm his wife down by explaining to her that the suit had been an old matter and that it was alright now (Wharton 349-354).

III

Chapter three starts at the very next day. Mary recalled waking up in a good mood. Her husband was no longer worried and the suit was as he had said, no problem. The hothouse piping wasn’t working properly, so Mary waited in the garden for a specialist from Dorchester to arrive. When finally a person shows up it is not the specialist but a stranger that told her that he wanted to see Mr. Boyne. At first Mary wanted to send him away, saying that Ned was busy and that without an appointment there was no chance that a stranger could interrupt her husband. This however changes once she realized that the stranger had come from far away. In order to be somewhat nice to him she told him to go and visit Ned in the library. After her eventual meeting with the specialist from Dorchester, Mary herself went back into the house where she is confronted with the news that her husband had left with another man (Wharton 354-364).

IV

The next chapter is comparatively short and is about Mary once more remembering how she had set the search for Ned in motion. Her husband had not returned and she had already accepted that he would never return to her (Wharton 364-367).

V

The final chapter of the story takes, again, place in the past as Mary thinks of how Parvis, her husband’s lawyer had visited her at Lyng. During their conversation he explained to her that Edward Boyne had cheated a man called Bob Elwell in a deal concerning the Blue Star Mine. Mary realized that she should not have turned a blind eye on her husband’s business and further information allows her to recognize that the stranger they had seen from the roof and the person that had visited her in the garden had been Bob Elwell and that she had told him to visit Ned in the library (Wharton 367-373).

• Fedorko, Kathy A. “”Forbidden Things”: Gothic confrontation with the Feminine in “The Young Gentlemen” and “Bewitched””. Edith Wharton Review. Vol. 11, No. 1 Spring, 1994: 3-9. Web. (online available under: https://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/wharton/ewr11-1s94.pdf) (Retrieved 15/06/2019)

• Fedorko, Kathy A. Gender and the Gothic in the Fiction of Edith Wharton. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 1995. Print.

• Heller, Janet Ruth. “Ghosts and Marital Estrangement: An Analysis of “Afterward””. Edith Wharton Review. Vol. 10, No. 1 Spring, 1993: 18-19. Web. (online available under: https://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/wharton/ewr10-1s93.pdf) (Retrieved 15/06/2019)

• Jacobsen, Karen J. “Economic Hauntings: Wealth and Class in Edith Wharton’s Ghost Stories”. College Literature. Vol. 35, No. 1 Winter, 2008: 100-127. Web. (online available under: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25115480?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents) (Retrieved 15/06/2019)

• Kaye, Richard A. “”Unearthly Visitants”: Wharton’s Ghost Tales, Gothic Form, and The Literature of Homosexual Panic”. Edith Wharton Review. Vol. 11, No. 1 Spring, 1994: 10-18. Web. (online available under: https://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/wharton/ewr11-1s94.pdf) (Retrieved 15/06/2019)

• Patten, Ann L. “The Spectres of Capitalism and Democracy in Edith Wharton’s Early Ghost Stories”. Edith Wharton Review. Vol. 25, No. 1 Spring, 2009: 1-8. Web. (online available under: https://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/wharton/ewr25-1s09.pdf) (Retrieved 15/06/2019)

• Rives, Darcie D. “Haunted by Violence: Edith Wharton’s The Decoration of Houses and Her Gothic Fiction”. Edith Wharton Review. Vol. 22, No. 1 Spring, 2006:8-15. Web. (online available under: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43512990?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents) (Retrieved 15/06/2019)

• Wharton, Edith. "Afterward". The Muse's Tragedy and Other Stories . Ed. Candace Waid. London: Penguin Books, 1992. 342-373. Print.