Wall Street, New York (Diagnosis)

Paul Dorrance lives in a flat high above Wall Street. The location alone illustrates what type of person Dorrance must be. If he lived in a house in the countryside, he would rather be assumed to be a calm and physically hard working family man. But, as a businessman in New York, he is assumed to be a restless, profit-oriented and mentally hard-working person.

Later in the story, after Paul and Eleanor Dorrance have traveled through Europe and Africa, they contemplate going back to their flat in New York.[i] This ‘coming back’ or ‘returning’ means both their having to live within narrowed square meters and, for Paul, it also means that he has to “insert himself painfully into his furrow.”[ii] This furrow is his former life as an eminent member of New York’s upper class society.

Since Wall Street was the only place in the early 20^th century (besides Chicago) where Skyscrapers had been constructed[iii], Paul Dorrance must have been a rich man to be able to pay for a flat in an apartment tower. In the short story, Paul is assumed to live there in the time of the Roaring Twenties,[iv] which was a time of wealth and excess. He, as a business man in Wall Street, is rich enough to travel around the world for years without having to sell the New York flat.

Later, the “Wall Street crash of 1929”[v] caused the Great Depression for the following 12 years; it is however not mentioned in Edith Wharton’s short story “Diagnosis”, which was first published in 1930, if Paul Dorrance was affected by the “Great Depression” in any way.

Pictures: Wall Street, New York: early 20th century

[i] Cf. Wharton, Edith; Robinson, Roxana (2007): The New York stories of Edith Wharton. New York, NY: New York Review Books (New York Review Books classics). p.394.

[ii] Ibid. p.395.

[iii] Meyers großes Standardlexikon. In 3 Bänden (1983). Mannheim: Bibliograph. Inst. p.631.

[iv] Roberts, Paul M.; Franklin, Paula A. (2004): Comprehensive United States History. New York, NY. Cf. p.389.

[v] Ibid. Cf. p.398ff.

New York. Wall Street. Online verfügbar unter www.google.maps.de, zuletzt geprüft am 15.06.2018.

New York Wall Street. End of great Depression. Online verfügbar unter https://www.pinterest.de/pin/244883298463764238/, zuletzt geprüft am 15.06.2018.