Sphinx (Afterward)

The sphinx is a well-known creature that has the body of a lion and the head of a human. Legend says that it once terrorized the people of Thebes, in Greece, by demanding that they answer a riddle. Whenever a person answered the riddle incorrectly the person was killed by the sphinx. Ultimately it was Oedipus who stepped up and answered the riddle correctly. Upon hearing the correct answer the Sphinx killed itself. The Great Sphinx of Giza is not necessarily connected to this legend since King Khafre saw it as a portrait of himself and not as some form of symbolization (Britannica.com).

The sphinx is mentioned in “Afterward” once in chapter IV:

A confoundedly hard place to get lost in! That had been her husband’s phrase. And now, with the whole machinery of official investigation sweeping its flash-lights from shore to shore, and across the dividing straits; now, with Boyne’s name blazing from the walls of every town and village, his portrait (how that wrung her!) hawked up and down the country like the image of a hunted criminal; now the little compact, populous island, so policed, surveyed, and administered, revealed itself as a Sphinxlike guardian of abysmal mysteries, staring back into his wife’s anguished eyes as if with the wicked joy of knowing something they would never know! (Wharton 364)

The island, England is here depicted by the sphinx and as in the legend, the sphinx knows something that the person confronted with her does not know. More specifically, the sphinx knows some form of secret that Mary Boyne does not know. It seems obvious that with this secret, Edward Boyne’s secret is meant, in detail, his dealings with Bob Elwell and the Blue Star Mine.

• Britannica.com. “Sphinx”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. 30. May. 2018. 15. June. 2019. https://www.britannica.com/topic/sphinx

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

• Image 1: A sphinx: https://www.greekboston.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Sphinx.jpg (Retrieved 15/06/2019)