The Letters

The short story “The Letters” written by Edith Wharton, published 1910 in New York, tells the story of a young woman named Lizzie West and her naïve love with Vincent Deering, a married man and American artist. The story is written from the point of view of Lizzie, centering on her feelings and the relationship with Vincent.

At first glance, Lizzie appears to be a young modern woman with a job; reading on, it becomes clear how naïve and dependent she is on Vincent. The main issue in this short story are the letters that both lovers exchange and how they become Lizzie’s entire world. Also, in a cliché way, the story depicts the difference of thoughts, views, and the showing of emotions of men and women around the beginning of the 20 ^th century.

Part I

The story begins with a spring morning when the main character Lizzie West approaches the House of the Deering’s at St. Cloud , where she has been working as a teacher for their daughter Juliet for two years. On her walk to the house, Lizzie thinks about the first encounter with Mr. Vincent Deering, Juliet’s father.

Mrs. Deering couldn’t meet with Lizzie on her first day as a teacher for she had to deal with a headache.

Lizzie wanted to talk to Mr. Deering about Juliet. One always had to address Vincent Deering concerning Juliet’s education; Mrs. Deering preferred to spent her time upstairs on a lounge chair: “[…] reading relays of dog-eared novels [her servants] fetch[ed] […] for her from the cabinet de lecture […]” (Lewis 177/178). Mr. Deering’s interest in his daughter was rather erratic but he was willing to listen to Lizzie’s problems or pleas for class material. Often times he responded to the requests by handing her money or telling Lizzie to put it on her account.

Lizzie didn’t come to Vincent Deering about learning material; she came to see him about a report that she left on his crowded desk two months prior, that he must have overlooked or forgotten about. She came to complain about Juliet. Juliet’s interest was rather in the latest gossip in the kitchen than in her own education. In Lizzie’s eyes this issue became such a big problem for herself that she only saw two options. Either she resign her position as Juliet’s teacher, or Mr. Deering take action. “[…] [F]or Juliet’s sake she chose the harder alternative” (Lewis 178), when she came into Mr. Deering’s studio where he was working on a painting she felt rather embarrassed to bring that topic up since Vincent Deering was in the middle of working on a painting. Lizzie told him about her decision with tears in her eyes , but Mr. Deering didn’t want to come to peace with that and blamed his daughter’s poor interest in education on his wife. He told Lizzie how important she was for Juliet’s upbringing since her mother neglected her child.

“”You do me good, at any rate — you make the house seem less like a desert,” she heard him say [.]” (Lewis 179) and then he kissed her.

This was the first kiss that truly touched Lizzie's heart. The consequences of this kiss, especially regarding Mrs. Deering, were not of any concern to Lizzie in that moment. Lizzie has seen the ruined marriage and also sensed the failure of Mr. Deering’s painting career. Lizzie liked Deering’s paintings, but unfortunately they weren’t very popular anymore otherwise. He was successful at one time, but the public turned its back on him over time. Lizzie couldn’t believe how somebody as special as Vincent Deering had to endure the same misery that dominated her life. On the other hand, she thought that this experience deeply bonded her and Vincent.

During the last months, she loved the troublesome journey to the house of Mr. Deering - but they never kissed again since that emotional day in Vincent’s studio, as Lizzie didn’t want to lose respect for herself.

On her free days, they met in galleries or museums and shared their thoughts and interest in art, literature and poetry. These shared hours allowed Lizzie to escape her dull and gray life.

One day, Mrs. Deering decided to travel to St.Raphaël to visit family. One month later, Mr. Deering and Juliet joined her. The farewell of Lizzie and Mr. Deering took place on a rainy afternoon in the Aquarium at the Trocadéro.

Lizzie thought “[y]ou’ll never see him, never see him again[.]” (Lewis 181)

All these memories come back to her, two weeks after Vincent’s departure for St. Raphaël, when she is on her way to the Deering’s house, heart filled with joy and eagerness. When she reaches the house door and rings the bell, she expects Juliet to rush to the door, but nobody opens it. She rings the doorbell a second time. After the third ring, she steps back to look up the house. Mrs. Deering’s windows are closed. That is nothing out of the ordinary, as Mrs. Deering must have be exhausted from the journey. Lizzie’s gaze reaches the window of the studio where she sees Vincent standing. He sees her and rushes downstairs to open the door. He appears paler than usual and is dressed in a black jacket. “He looked at her gravely […]” (Lewis 182) when he lets Lizzie inside. Vincent tells Lizzie that his wife died ten days ago. Lizzie is shocked by this news and asks the whereabouts of Juliet. Mr. Deering explains that he left her with the family in St. Raphaël. Deering turns away from Lizzie and walks up and down in his studio. Lizzie asks when Juliet will return, Vincent answers that she would not be back for a while. He is going to travel to America, where his wife left some property and money for him and Juliet. When Lizzie asks how long he is going to be gone he can’t tell her. Lizzie begins to cry, yet also feel the guilt lift from her shoulder: now she can be fully his. Deering enfolds her in his arms and kisses her.

Before his departure, Lizzie and Vincent decide to meet one last time. They take the omnibus from Passy at the corner from the Pont de la Concorde where they go to a quiet restaurant near the Seine. A waiter leads them to a room. Lizzie doesn’t want Vincent to see the pain she feels about his leaving and remains quiet, trying to show him courage and happiness concerning their upcoming separation. Vincent gives her trust and calms the worries of her inexperienced heart. After an hour spent together, Lizzie starts to wonder if Vincent is earnest in his feelings towards her or if he only takes advantage of her - these worries subside when he puts an arm around her shoulders during the dinner they share together. In this restaurant by the Seine they make a pact. “That pact […] seemed to have consisted mainly, on his part, in pleadings for full and frequent news of her, on hers in the promise that it should be given as often as he wrote to ask it.” (Lewis 185) Lizzie thinks about this pact a lot during a restless night and is sure that Deering loves her, although he never said the words when he left. She doesn’t need verbal assurance of his love for her, she thinks to herself.

Lizzie promises him to write. It is his task to let her know when he wants to hear from her (even though he will be busy with the move) as she doesn’t want to appear presumptuous. Vincent just smiles at her and simply asks her “You don’t know much about being in love, do you, Lizzie?” (Lewis 185) and promises that she is the only one inside his heart.

A couple days after his departure, Lizzie receives letters in which Vincent declares his love for her. “Unused to the expression of personal emotion, she wavered between the impulse to pour out all she felt and the fear lest her extravagance should amuse or even bore him.” (Lewis 185/186) But she is convinced that no other woman could love him more then she does. She keeps his letters with her and even puts them under her pillow at night. She pities the other women living with her in the pension, for their eye look sad and unhappy. One of the women she feels sorry for is Andora Macy, a young woman from the Southern States, who studies French to work as a teacher at a girl’s school in Macon, Georgia.

Andora is pale and acts rather childish. She has a flat southern accent and her behavior is torn between a courageous appearance and troublesome pride. She always seems to want everyone to adore her but also fears the possibility to be insulted. Andora seems to be aware of failing both extremes. At first, Lizzie tries to avoid her because she fears she could end up like her. But after a while, Andora becomes the object of Lizzie’s pity.

Part II

Lizzie’s and Andora’s rooms are next to each other, and one day Andora knocks on Lizzie’s door. Lizzie is about to get dressed and Andora enters the room without waiting for an invitation. A letter that Lizzie carries in her bodice falls to the ground. Before Lizzie can retrieve the letter, Miss Macy picks it up. Lizzie tries to give the letter no meaning when she explains, “It’s too stupid, having no pockets! If one gets a letter as one is going out in the morning, one has to carry it in one’s blouse all day.” (Lewis 187)

Miss Macy gives the letter back, hesitating for a moment and commenting that the letter is still warm from Lizzie’s heart. Lizzie only feels sorry for Andora, since she will never experience this great happiness.

" Lizzie laughed, for she knew it was the letter that had warmed her heart. Poor Andora Macy ! She would never know. Her bleak bosom would never take fire from such a contact." (Lewis 187)

When Lizzie meets Andora in the hallway the next evening, Andora hands her a letter.

It is the letter that Mr. Deering wrote on the steamer. Vincent wrote her another long, unhappy sounding letter, which includes less about his projects overseas and more of his love for Lizzie. She reads every syllable over and over; however, she would be happier if he wrote any information about their joined future. She thinks to herself that this information will come as soon as Vincent finds time to think about it. Full of anticipation, she longs for the day that the mail from the States arrives. She can hardly concentrate on her work, dreaming of the day finally it will finally arrive.

When she rushes back to the pension from work, she discovers that there is no letter for her on the little pile on the table by the entry. She rummages through the pile of letters feverishly, when suddenly a thought strikes her. Maybe Andora took the letter. Lizzie storms up the stairs and knocks on Miss Macy’s door.

“You’ve a letter for me, haven’t you?” she panted.

Miss Macy enclosed her in attenuated arms.

“Oh, darling, did you expect another?”

“Do give it to me!” Lizzie pleaded with eager eyes.

“But I haven’t any! There hasn’t been a sign of a letter for you.”

“I know there is. There must be,” Lizzie cried, stamping her foot.

“But, dearest, I’ve watched for you, and there’s been nothing.”

(Lewis 188)

In the following weeks, this scenario repeats itself. Lizzie doesn’t make any effort to hide her sadness and worries anymore after a few weeks and the loving Andora is assigned to keep an eye out for the postman to see if he is just being sloppy performing his work. But all these preparations remain unsuccessful and no letter from Mr. Deering comes.

Lizzie’s resourcefulness for explaining why Deering doesn’t write to her anymore is drained empty. Sometimes, she thinks that Vincent Deering has simply forgotten her. She has to keep those thoughts at bay if she wants to be able to get out of bed in the morning and pursue her work: the laundry lady and Mme. Clopin and all the little extras that come with living, even though she lives such a simple life, have to be paid for.

In the first weeks of Deering’s silence, she pleas for a word or at least a simple sign of life. “[S]he now charged herself with having been too possessive, too exacting in her tone.” (Lewis) She is certain that the feelings that Mr. Deering had for her were honest, even if they were short lived. She is convinced that Vincent didn’t just take advantage of her, and for a moment, really needed her. Since he is silent now, he might think his past letters might have raised hope in Lizzie for a long-term relationship. “[In the] last short letter she explicitly freed him from whatever sentimental obligation its predecessors might have seemed to impose.” (Lewis 189) She finishes the letter with the request that they remain friends, which she always thought of as the basis for the sympathy for one another. With this, she wants to show him that she is a modern woman, but she will never know the effect of this letter on him, since this letter also remains unanswered.

Two years later, on a spring day, Lizzie is sitting outside the Laurent’s Restaurant in the midst of high society with Andora Macy. Their wardrobe clearly reflects a festive occasion. From a table in the corner of the garden, a lonely gentleman glances repeatedly towards Lizzie and her group. For almost a year, Lizzie is meeting her Cousin Harvey Mears of Providence and his wife as well as their friend Mr. Jackson Benn.

Lizzie inherited from her distant cousin, Hezron Mears, who divided his millions on all his living progeny. She inherited enough money to escape the boring, gray life in Mme Clopin’s pension. In the beginning, her new freedom was wonderful, but it also came with the destruction of “her former world without giving her a new one.[…] She had hoped great things from the opportunity to rest, to travel, to look about her, above all, in various artful feminine ways, to be ‘nice’ to the companions of her less privileged state; but such widenings of scope left her, as it were, but the more conscious of the empty margin of personal life beyond them.” (Lewis 191)

Mr. Jackson Benn was showing a lot of interest in Lizzie, and Lizzie saw a good match to her new life in him. This was further supported through Andora’s exaggerated complicity and the acknowledgement by her cousins. Lizzie didn’t daunt their expectations. She endured Andora’s constant allusions to Mr. Benn’s infatuation and the boasting of Mr. Mears about Mr. Benn’s successful career.

“I never saw anything like the way these Frenchmen stare! Doesn’t it make you nervous,

Lizzie?” (Lewis 191)

This comment made by Mrs. Mears brings Lizzie back from her thoughts. She wonders if someone is staring at her.

"Don't turn round, whatever you do! There -- just over there, between the Rhododendrons -- the tall blond man alone at that table. Really, Harvey, I think you ought to speak to the headwaiter, or something: though I suppose in one of These places they'd only laugh at you," Mrs. Mears shudderingly concluded. (Lewis 191)

Thereupon Mr. Benn turns his head in the direction of Mrs. Mears’ gaze.

Relaxed, he says that this man at the table isn’t a Frenchman but an American, who arrived with him the steamer: some kind of an artist, named Deering, Mr. Benn explains. He is probably looking at him asking himself if he will recognize him, Jackson Benn finishes. Finally, Mr. Benn introduces Mrs. Mears, Mr. Mears, Andora and Lizzie to Mr. Deering who arrives at their table. With a smile, Vincent Deering replies: “I have the pleasure of knowing Miss West.” (Lewis 192)

Lizzie notices how much Vincent has changed. Vincent gives Lizzie a note and a couple of days later they meet.

The first time she read the note she was picturing how his letters might have been. Just touching the note flooded Lizzie with a myriad of emotions, and before she could answer it, she threw the paper into the fire.

“Now that he was actually before her again, he became, as usual, the one live spot in her consciousness.” (Lewis 192) Worries and failure are deeply carved into his handsome face. She discovers that, after Vincent’s arrival in the States, he found his dead wife’s property in bad condition. Nevertheless, he moved into the house, or whatever was left of it, even sold two paintings and tasted a short moment of success. After having a few assignments he was able to setup a studio. But for unknown reasons, this wave of success died down and no one bought his works anymore. Quickly, he found himself in a rising mountain of debt, which consumed all of his little profit. He tried to make a life as an interior designer, a designer of wallpapers, an illustrator for magazines and even as an actor. His experience overseas was influenced by good friends (Lizzie thinks this means other women) as well as scheming enemies. Lizzie feels sorry for Mr. Deering. He does not explain his behavior towards her. Lizzie is more than happy to have made the decision to marry Jackson Benn, even if that is for the reason to cope with the case of Deering. Lizzie wants to let Vincent know about her decision but before she can open her mouth to do so he says, “But many things have happened to you too”.(Lewis 76)

Deering says he often thought what Lizzie was doing in his absence but Lizzie only wonders if he was truly thinking about her, since she never received a word from him.

“No, you had no word. I kept my vow,” he said.

“Your vow?”

“That you shouldn’t have a word — not a syllable. Oh, I kept it through everything!” (Lewis 194)

Confused, Lizzie demands an explanation of why she never heard from him. He avoids an answer and comes closer to Lizzie; looking around the room in which they are meeting now, saying, that things really have changed for Lizzie. His avoidance made Lizzie angry. And when Mr. Deering asked, if Lizzie had ever thought of him, she simply replied “Didn’t my letters tell you so enough?”( Lewis 82)

Mr. Deering assures her that her letters were always with him, and Lizzie asks herself if he read them at all. He asserts that they were full of beautiful things, but Lizzie says in anger,

“You’ve waited three years to tell me so!” (Lewis 195)

She is outraged by his dodging answers and would love to just push him up against the wall to get the truth out of him.

Vincent explains he couldn’t write her since his circumstances didn’t allow it. When he arrived in America he lived in poverty and barely had enough money to buy clothes or provide for Juliet’s education; he felt too bad to say anything to Lizzie. She tells him that she could have understood his situation and asks why he let her suffer so much. He only says that he has suffered as well.

Although Lizzie set a negative picture of Vincent in her head, this image is shaken up badly by the way he appears and speaks to her now. Old feelings for Vincent Deering being to creep up and rekindle inside her. During their conversation, her thoughts drift more than once to Jackson Benn, whose mental picture in her mind seems to appear more and more blurry the more she thinks about him.

Lizzie is shocked to hear Deering say that in all his misery, Lizzie would have learned to hate him. He didn’t want to make her unhappy and wanted to keep his distance after his return from the States, but seeing her in the restaurant he can’t stay away any longer. Lizzie notices in his gesturing that he wants to bid farewell and in her panic she tells him “I never hated you”. (Lewis 197)

Deering assures her he is happy about her fortune, that she is rich and free, and soon will be married. Lizzie blurts out “It’s not true that I’m engaged!” (Lewis 197) Any thought or image of Jackson Benn vanishes in this moment.

Part III

Lizzie and Vincent have been married for three years, have a son together and live in a small house in Neuilly. Andora Macy lives with them.

One day, Andora and Lizzie sit together in the small morning room. Lizzie bought the house because the morning room is located directly underneath Vincent’s studio, and she could hear her husband’s steps when he was walking in front of his easel. Those steps became fewer and fewer over time and her husband now prefers to spend his days on his lounge chair, smoking and reading the newspaper. Lizzie never finds any time to read the paper, for she has not unlearned her sense of organization and often wonders about her husband, who doesn’t seem to concern himself with their the daily life at all.

In the beginning, Lizzie blamed his behavior on the past incoherent household but she was soon aware, that Vincent was living under her providing hand and would therefore never feel the urge to go to work. This manner of his is the reason why Lizzie and Andora are sitting in the room together this morning to tend to his affairs.

In front of them are two travel chests and a suitcase whose contents are spilled over the floor. These contents are the remains Mr. Deering left behind after his departure from the New York boardinghouse. Among these items is a letter from his former landlady in which she wrote of her outrage and that these items would not make up for the debt he left behind. Lizzie isn’t surprised to learn that her husband left the States in debt. She was in the same situation not too long ago, so she doesn’t see any humiliation in it; however, she is angry that in the three years of their marriage he couldn’t pay back the debt himself with his own account. She knows that Vincent isn’t obsessed with her money, rather he is simply too lazy to write the check to pay the debt in America.

Lizzie’s son is playing in the room while she and Andora sort through the items. Before her son can cause any damage to her delicate Chealsea in the room, she asks Andora to give him the embroidered sack to she is holding. Lizzie’s son takes the sack and starts to play with it and Andora asks Lizzie, if she knows where the sack is from. Lizzie doesn’t, and Andora asks further if Lizzie isn’t jealous that maybe another woman made this sack for Vincent. Lizzie says no and continues organizing the remains while she thinks of her love to Vincent.

“Oh, do look at him, Lizzie! He’s found out how to open the bag!”, (Lewis 200) Andora cries out.

Sources, Research articles and further reading:

Sneider, Jill, "Edith Wharton: Vision and Perception in Her Short Stories" (2012). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 728. 50-63.
Kornetta, Reiner. "The Letters". Das Korsett im Kopf. Ehe und Ökonomie in den Kurzgeschichten Edith Whartons. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang GmbH, 1995. 239-242. Print.
Lauer, K.O., Murray, M.P. and Tuttleton, J. Edith Wharton. The Contemporary Reviews. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992. 175-176. Print.
Lewis, R.W.B.. The collected short stories of Edith Wharton (Volume II) . New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1968. 177-206.

Image(s) used:

Gabriël Metsu: Man Writing a Letter. Oil on Panel. National Gallery of Ireland. Public Domain.