Atrophy Notes

In the short story “Atrophy”, written by Edith Wharton and published in 1930, a young married woman of New York’s upper class, Nora Frenway, wants to see her lover Christopher for the last time after learning about his lethal disease. However, the undertaking is restrained by Christopher’s sister Jane Aldis who turns out to play a more important role than Nora thought. The story begins with the protagonist Mrs. Frenway sitting in the train on her way to Westover Junction where her lover Christopher lives. So far, she is absolutely sure that “no one had ever known she had a lover. No one – of that she was absolutely sure” (Lewis 501). While she is sitting in the train, Nora has much time to think about her complicated situation. On the one hand, she is longing to see Christopher for a last time but on the other hand, she knows that by visiting him she is risking her family life.

Thus, knowing that she has much to lose makes the young Mrs. Frenway very nervous while she is on the train. It is crucial for her further fate that nobody sees her riding this train and reports it to her husband. When the porter comes along, Nora “instinctively lowered her voice and glanced about her” (Lewis 501) for fear she might be recognized. After she catches a glimpse of her nearest neighbors, she is relieved that “fortunately none of them [is] known to her” (Lewis 501). In the following minutes of the train ride, Nora is thinking about the consequences that could happen if her husband learned about her trip to her lover. She comes to the conclusion that there is a huge discrepancy between the degree of liberty she appears to have and the one that she actually has. This low amount of freedom is partly caused by the conventions of society but also by the influence that her husband’s family has. In fact, her modern lifestyle is no expression of freedom because her husband expects her to live up to the modern conventions. Moreover, Mr. Frenway's family, whose members are constantly observing Nora, is “so influential, that she would have been defeated at every point, and her husband would have kept the children” (Lewis 502).

However, although much is on stake, Nora’s feelings for Christopher are stronger than her fear. Christopher is so meaningful to her that she thinks of their affair as “her only real life” (Lewis 501). From the moment the train leaves the urban area of New York City and the landscape becomes more rural, Nora’s mind becomes increasingly flooded with thoughts of Christopher. While she is looking out of the window, she recalls having “dreamed of dashing off down an unknown road with Christopher” (Lewis 502). A few moments later, it comes to her mind that her lover always wished to spend a whole weekend with her at his place. When the train gets closer to Westover Junction, Nora starts dreaming about Christopher’s room and about “other rooms where she and he had been together in their joy and their strength” (Lewis 504). The young woman is convinced that meeting her lover is the only thing that matters now and is looking forward to seeing “her own Christopher, the one who had lived in her soul” (Lewis 504).

But to get to her lover’s room, Nora has to convince his sister Jane Aldis to bring her to that room. Now that Christopher is ill, Jane is in charge of everything at his place and Nora will have to lead a conversation with her. As Jane has never been very important to Nora or to anyone of Nora’s social circle, the conversation might be difficult. Anyways, the young Mrs. Frenway is convinced that she will reach her goal quickly and has already “gone over their conversation so often that she knew not only her own part in it but Miss Aldis’s by heart” (Lewis 503). In Nora’s imagination, the worrying about Christopher will “fling them together [and] she wouldn’t have to say much,” (Lewis 503) regardless of the fact that they have never had an emotional connection with each other.

When thinking about Jane Aldis, Nora is also wondering if the old miss knows about her affair. It seems possible to Nora that Christopher’s sister might know something as “somehow, under her unobtrusive air, Nora had – on the rare occasions when they met – imagined that Miss Aldis was watching and drawing her inferences” (Lewis 503). When thinking further, Nora remembers that her lover’s cousin, “Gladis Brincker, in speaking of Christhopher’s illness, had looked at Nora queerly, as though suspecting something” (Lewis 503). However, at this point of the story, the young Mrs. Frenway is still able to find arguments against her suspicions as “there wasn’t a precaution she hadn’t thought of” (Lewis 504). After all, she has always made sure to keep her affair a secret by finding pretexts for all aspects that are affected by it.

When Nora finally arrives at Westover Junction, she is possessed by her goal of getting to Christopher. She seems restless and loses her patience: “She started up and pushed her way out of the train. All the people seemed to be obstructing her, putting bags and suitcases in her way” (Lewis 504). Nora manages to get out and catch a taxi that brings her to Oakfield, Christopher’s place near Westover.

The beginning of Nora’s visit at Oakfield happens as she imagined it. The parlormaid shows her into a low paneled room that is well known to her. However, while she is sitting in that room, she feels overwhelmed by her lover’s personal belongings that are spread all over the room. When the parlormaid returns, Nora gets excited and thinks she is going to meet Christopher. She is very disappointed when she realizes that “she was only being led across the hall into a stiff lifeless drawing room” (Lewis 505). The atmosphere of the room is depressing as the “spring sun slanting in […] seemed to bring no heat or light with it” (Lewis 505) and the “chairs and sofas looked at her with an undisguised hostility, and then resumed the moping expression common to furniture in unfrequented rooms” (Lewis 505).

The following conversation with Jane Aldis matches this cheerless mood and is different from what Nora expected. Christopher’s sister talks in a cool and distant manner “as if her real self were elsewhere and she were simply an automaton wound up to repeat the familiar forms of hospitality” (Lewis 505-506). Nora tries several times to lead the conversation towards the point where she could ask to see Christopher. However, Jane is very uncooperative and acts as if she did not understand what Nora is trying to ask her. For example, after Nora has just started talking about Christopher’s illness, Jane changes the topic into tree moving. Miss Aldis even brings up Nora’s husband and tells her that Christopher “thought a great deal of Mr. Frenway’s advice about moving trees” (Lewis 507).

Soon, Nora finds herself trapped in a pointless small talk and begins to regret having shown so little interest in her lover’s sister. As the conversation continues, Nora has a hard time concentrating and feels more and more desperate. Her situation is exacerbated as she gets increasingly distracted by a buzzing fly. The noise produced by the fly “seemed to be going on inside of Nora’s head, and in the confusion of sound she found it more and more difficult to regain a lead in the conversation” (Lewis 507).

Nora is feeling progressively powerless while her interlocutor is ruling the conversation. It becomes clear to Nora that she missed out on a crucial aspect concerning her love affair but in the same time she realizes that it is already too late to fix it. Nora’s ability to lead the conversation is increasingly vanishing. No matter what she says, Miss Aldis comes up with an answer that drives Nora further away from meeting Christopher. The situation finally culminates in Miss Aldis making plans for Nora’s trip home. Finally, Nora finds the courage to ask if Christopher has seen anyone. Jane’s answer that their cousin Hal Brincker has already visited the sick is a special side blow at Nora. As she is very close to Christopher, she knows that he “thought of his Brincker cousins [as] blighting bores” (Lewis 509). It hurts Nora a lot that a person like Hal Brincker is allowed to see Christopher while she, who really loves him, is prevented from seeing him.

The tragic end of the story is that Nora has to leave Oakfield without having seen Christopher. At that point, she is absolutely sure that Miss Aldis “knows everything” (Lewis 510) about her affair with Christopher. The way out of the house seems endlessly long to Nora and she is struggling to walk the distance. Her body feels very sore and “at every step she seemed to be lifting a leaden weight” (Lewis 510). When Nora is finally sitting in her taxi, Miss Aldis announces to write a letter to Nora’s husband and thank him for sending his wife.

After her trip to Oakfield, Nora has lost everything. First of all, her husband will probably learn about her affair. What is even worse is that she risked her marriage in vain as she did not even see her lover. On top of that, Nora is in a terrible emotional state as she was denied the only thing that really matters to her which is being with Christopher for a last time before he dies. To express it in Edith Wharton’s words, Nora was “dismissed from life – from hope – even from the dear anguish of filling her eyes for the last time with the face which was the one face in the world to her!” (Lewis 509).

Sources, Research articles and further reading:

Banta, Martha. “Wharton’s Women: In Fashion, In History, Out of Time.” A Historical Guide to Edith Wharton, edited by Carol J. Singley, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2003, 51-88. Print.

Beck, R. et al. Basislexikon anglistische Literaturwissenschaft. Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2007. Print.

Benstock, Shari. No Gifts from Chance. A Biography of Edith Wharton. Austin: University of Texas, 2004. Print.

Lewis, R. W. B. The Collected Short Stories of Edith Wharton. Vol. 2. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1968, 501-510. Print.

Hale, W. G. et al. Dictionary of Biology. 3rd ed. London: Collins, 2005. Print.

King, Greg. A Season of Splendor. The Court of Mrs. Astor in Gilded Age New York. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2009. Print.

Kornetta, Reiner. Das Korsett im Kopf. Ehe und Ökonomie in den Kurzgeschichten Edith Whartons. Frankfurt am Main, New York: P. Lang, 1996. Print.

Mutschler, E. et al. Anatomie Physiologie Pathophysiologie des Menschen. 6th ed. Stuttgart: Wissenschaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft mgH Stuttgart, 2007. Print.

„Viscera.“ Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, 9th ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2015, 1742. Print.

Image(s) used:

Pierre-Auguste Renoir: La Loge. 1874. https://1tq45j21k9qr27g1703pgsja-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/renoir-1280x640.jpg