The Use of Places in "The Duchess at Prayer"

Places, that is to say locations, play a role in fleshing out Wharton's short stories. "The Duchess at Prayer" is set in Italy, a country Wharton adored and travelled to many times. This setting of the story in Italy in and of itself is meaningful; by further setting the stage with Rome, Venice and smaller out-of-the-way towns, fields of association are opened for the reader and the feeling of comprehensive verisimilitude is enhanced. This can be interpreted as one of her more naturalist approaches to writing.

“Edith Wharton conceived of houses, dwelling places, in an extended imagery of shelter and dispossession. Houses – their confinement and their theatrical possibilities…they are never mere settings."[1]

In her work The Decoration of Houses, Wharton stipulates a structural relationship between the private inside of a home and its public façade.[2] In basic terms, this means that there is a significant connection between the inside and outside of a house. In Wharton's writing, this inherent interrelation is often imbued with meaning. Characters' (emotional) inner struggles - as well as conflicts with other characters and resulting changes - are reflected through the descriptive materiality of their dwellings.

In her book The Writing of Fiction, Wharton cites Honore de Balzac as the first novelist who investigated the „relation of his characters to their houses".[3] Interesting to note, then, that Balzac's tale "La Grande Bretèche" seems to have heavily inspired "The Duchess at Prayer" (see point 3.8.1).

"The Duchess at Prayer" presents the villa as the main place of dwelling which is interestingly expanded upon by the garden and the crypt.

The villa is both stage and framework for "The Duchess at Prayer". All of the story's main events take place here, both in the framing narrative and in the nested narrative.

The villa at Vicenza is described using adjectives and attributions that would typically be ascribed to human beings. This leads to a cessation of seeing the villa as a mere house; it morphs from a static dwelling into something more closely resembling a character of its own. In the opening paragraph of "The Duchess at Prayer", in Part I, Wharton poses the question to the reader whether they have ever questioned old Italian houses' - and by extension, the villa's - façade in terms of what may lay hidden within. Wharton describes the houses as having a motionless mask of a face behind which secrets perhaps buzz, tall windows are likened to blind eyes and the great door is a closed mouth.[4] In another instance, in Part III, the villa "looked across [...], composed as a dead face, with the cypresses flanking it for candles. . . "[5] In Part V: "The sky had turned to a steel gray, against which the villa stood out sallow and inscrutable."[6]

The descriptors that make the villa seem more metaphorically human.

In the nested narrative, the villa is the Duke's domain - he has it set in order before he brings the Duchess there, having the space prepared for her arrival while they are travelling.[7] When the Duchess arrives, she busies herself with the outer beautification of the place, namely by investing time and aesthetic effort into the gardens.[8] The villa remains largely untouched by her; there are no mentions of her rearranging the furnishings or having work done on the inner structure of the villa. Thus, the villa presents itself as the male domain and the gardens, as well as in chapel located on their outskirts, as the female domain of the story. Cavaliere Ascanio is an interesting bridge between the two, being invited to live at the villa but spending his time with the Duchess in the gardens and later, implicitly, in the chapel and crypt. Another interesting fact is that the Duke is largely absent[9], yet still maintains a firm hold on the villa and all its inhabitants from afar. He comes more often only when he begins to suspect his wife of adulterous behavior.[10]

The Gardens play a different role. As the perhaps more archetypically feminine[11], they are an opportunity for the Duchess to grow in her personality and explore her sexuality. A garden is inherently organic and ever-changing; the growing, blossoming, decaying and growing again form the life/death/life cycle often present in modern Jungian psychoanalysis[12]. Thematically, this positions the garden most fittingly between life and death - as the Duchess herself is precariously placed in "The Duchess at Prayer."

From the garden, the unnamed first person narrators picks up the framing narrative.[13] The garden is also where the old man's grandmother supposedly told him the story of the Duke and Duchess[14] and is where the old man reveals the tale to the unnamed first person narrator. Here, the memories held in the villa at large "stand up as distinct as statues in the garden..."[15] The narrator also makes a mental note of the decay: the once opulent horticulture has been neglected and has thus become chaos where once it was order. This is nature reclaiming the curated space, metaphorically the Duchess finally freed from the confines of her marriage and life at the villa; perhaps also the wheel of time turning on the terrorized soul of the Duchess trapped in the statue. Even in their dilapidated state, the gardens are teeming with life[16] - a metaphoric rebirth of the Duchess's tortured spirit has taken place.

To delve further: upon arriving at the villa, the Duchess becomes engrossed in the care, keeping and pleasure enhancement of the gardens. She designs grottoes and groves and adds disporting details to be discovered by leisurely strollers but also quickly tires of her creative work.[17] It is to the beautification of the gardens to which the Duchess returns after her denial of the chaplain's request (by focusing on flowers which are also symbolically relevant, see point 3.7) - this demonstrates her need to create a space of her own in a tight-knit world that seems to fold inward on her. The Duke comes into the garden only to banish Ascanio and has no interest in aiding or let alone quenching the Duchess's need for freedom and expression.

A garden can notably be seen as a symbol for wilderness vs. cultivation, sacred vs. profane, unknown vs. known.[18] The garden offers a transformational ambivalence of being the Duchess's own space vs. being part of the Duke's estate, being a publicly available space to the inhabitants vs. being a place of intimate meetings, being a place for the Duchess to let her own nature flow freely vs. a garden inherently being a place of nature tamed. Its role changes slightly in each part of the story. In the nested narrative, it is first akin to being the Duchess's playground whereas the middle of the tale sees it become the backdrop of Ascanio's supposed banishment. Subsequently, the garden remains a place of secret meetings between the old man's grandmother and Antonio and the chaplain trying to spy on Ascanio and the Duchess. The end of the narrative has the significance of the garden lessened further. This arc from the garden being a central setting to being of lesser importance mirrors how the Duchess herself moves with it as a place: at first she invests time and effort beautifying it as well as spending leisure time in it and later she tires of it both as a plaything and creative outlet. It also no longer is a place of refuge.

This could be interpreted as a sign of her spiritual exhaustion in a place where her care-free and joyous nature is met with disapproval and dislike. She tries, tirelessly at first, to create a place for herself within the confines of her home and, by extension, her marriage, but is ultimately unable to carve out such a space for herself. Her efforts to come to terms with her situation and her husband fail. Interpreted on a grander scale, the decline of the garden may be the exhaustion and disillusionment one is met with when trying to master an insurmountable task.

A garden is also a sexual symbol, “both setting and symbol of love encounters.”[19] Furthermore invoking the Garden of Paradise and God's banishment of Adam and Eve[20], the garden functions as both the Duchess's personal 'Temporary Respite Found' and, ultimately, Paradise Lost. It is not surprising then that the setting of the Duchess's questionable exploits is located on the outskirts of the garden.

The chapel is situated in a space between villa and gardens. One door leads from the chapel into the saloon on the ground floor of the villa and the only other way out is through the Duchess's tribune.[21] On the other side of the small building, the garden extends forth. The crypt below this chapel is where the Duchess goes to worship and pray and, between the lines, secretly meet Cavaliere Ascanio. The crypt is similar to a cave in terms of symbolism: a journey within, into the heart of a person or a matter and the unification of ego and self/ subconscious. A crypt is a place of death, however, and so an eerie element is added to the Duchess spending so much time there. She is seeking freedom from her husband's oppressive presence, liberation from her unfulfilling marriage, alleviation of her loneliness and satisfaction of her sexual appetites. One could see Ascanio as the subconscious and the Duchess as the self, trying to come together to conquer these struggles - essentially the feminine striving to free itself from harmful patterns and to attain balance with the masculine once more.[22] On a less Jungian and more surface level reading, one can see the crypt as the slow death of the Duchess's psyche. Either way, the crypt below the chapel is an excellent choice of setting.

In Wharton's The Writing of Fiction, she proposes this: "The impression produced by a landscape, a street or a house should always, to the novelist, be an event in the history of a soul, and the use of the 'descriptive passage' and its style should be determined by the fact that it must depict only what the intelligence concerned would have noticed, and always in terms within the register of that intelligence."[23] In "The Duchess at Prayer", Wharton achieves exactly this by presenting the villa, the garden and the chapel through the eyes of multiple characters across different time periods. The reader experiences atmospheres, moods and poignant aesthetics through this lens. The use of this technique and the embedded symbolism have the capacity both captivate the reader and reach the deepest parts of their psyche.

[1] Howard 2001

[2] see Kinmen 2000

[3] see Stevenson 2010

[4] Wharton 1901, p. 1

[5] Wharton 1901, p. 6

[6] Wharton 1901, p. 19

[7] Wharton 1901, p. 7

[8] Wharton 1901, p. 8

[9] see Wharton 1901, p. 9

[10] see Wharton 1901, p. 9

[11] see Metzler 2008, p. 120/ 121

[12] see Pinkola Estés 1992

[13] see Wharton 1901, p. 1

[14] Wharton 1901, p. 5

[15] Wharton 1901, p. 7

[16] see Wharton 1901, p. 6

[17] see Wharton 1901, p. 8

[18] see Metzler 2008, p.120 - 123

[19] Ferber 2007, p. 84

[20] see Metzler 2008, p. 121

[21] see Wharton 1901, p. 11

[22] see Pinkola Estés p. p. 35ff; 111ff

[23] Wharton 1925, p. 63