The Pretext

The short story “The Pretext”, by Edith Wharton, starts with the female, middle-aged main character, Margaret Ransom, cheerfully running through her and her husband’s house in Wentworth after being visited by Guy Dawnish, a young Englishman, with whom she has fallen in love. This brings back joy and youth in her rather boring and monotonous life which is hard to believe for her: “Her blushes? Was she really blushing?” (Lewis, 1968, p. 632). In “The Collected Short Stories of Edith Wharton” (Lewis, 1968) Edith Wharton underlines the importance of the first page of a short story and that it has to contain the core or the struggle of the story which is also true for “The Pretext”.

The author describes the main character as an already aged person with wrinkles on her face (Lewis, 1968, p. 632), but the blushing caused by her visitor lays a veil of youth on it which she recognizes while being alone in her bedroom. Mrs. Margaret Ransom sees this as positive and negative at the same time. On the one hand the blushing makes her look younger and on the other hand she asks herself if it was right to encourage a blush or make your hair thicker and wavier than it actually is because she thinks of her rigid New England ancestry and how none of them had surely ever done such a thing. She then tries to collect herself and searches for an explanation why today’s visit was so different from the others by fixing “her eyes upon the inward vision” (Lewis, 1968, p. 633). The reader hears more about Guy Dawnish who was sent to Wentworth from England. On one of the visits the Ransoms took to England they got to know an eminent Q. C. who then sent Guy Dawnish to be under the care of Mr. Robert Ransom and thus under Mrs. Robert Ransom as well. Furthermore, it is stated that there can be nothing more than friendship between Guy Dawnish and Mrs. Margaret Ransom because of the social code of Wentworth after which “any social relation between the sexes remained unhallowed and to be viewed askance.” (Lewis, 1968, p. 634).

Her thoughts are then suddenly interrupted by her husband knocking on her door asking her why she is not already dressed for this evening’s event, the speeches, where Mr. Robert Ransom speaks in front of certain University members. A small paragraph explains that Mrs. Margaret Ransom has adapted her toilet habits to the passing through of her husband through her bedroom, what shows a certain prudery which survived “this massacre of all privacies” (Lewis, 1968, p. 634) and reappears in different parts in the short story.

Mrs. Margaret Ransom tells her husband that she will not go to the speeches because she does not have a companion. Her husband then suggests Guy Dawnish as a companion and tells the housemaid to call him. After having a closer look at his wife, he asks her if she wanted to go like this and compares her to the Brant girl which upsets Mrs. Margaret Ransom because the Brant girl is “the horror of all right-thinking Wentworth.” (Lewis, 1968, p. 635 - 36). Again, the social code and behavior of Wentworth is shown, and it becomes clear that it always has influenced and determined Mrs. Margaret Ransoms life.

In the second chapter the author reveals some more information about Guy Dawnish and his familiar origin through Mrs. Margaret Ransom looking at some pictures Guy Dawnish brought with him from England. He has a wealthy and educated family which is expressed through his “light unconscious talk” which “fascinated and bewildered” (Lewis, 1968, p. 638) Mrs. Margaret Ransom. On one of the pictures Mrs. Margaret Ransom can spot a girl who wears a flapping hat which hides her face, but it turns out to be Gwendolen Matcher, a good friend of Guy Dawnish and later his fiancée. The reader can sense a hint of jealousy because Mrs. Margaret Ransom hates the flapping hat and wants to know more about Gwendolen Matcher (Lewis, 1968, p. 637 - 38).

III

The third chapter takes place in and outside of Hamblin Hall where the speeches are held. Mrs. Margaret Ransom cannot stand the heat and the bad air in the hall and is then accompanied outside by Guy Dawnish to catch some fresh air. He leads her to a small, separated place near a stream what later becomes the place Mrs. Margaret Ransom always associates with Guy Dawnish. The author again states that “there was nothing wrong about this” (Lewis, 1968, p. 641), the being alone with another man who is not her husband. After a complicated beginning of a conversation, Guy Dawnish says that he wanted to tell Mrs. Margaret Ransom something but she wants him to keep it for himself and let their ‘friendship’ be as it is, what obviously irritates him. It is not revealed what Guy Dawnish wanted to say what means that his true feelings towards Mrs. Margaret Ransom are never confessed. While walking back to Hamblin Hall Mrs. Margaret Ransom regrets not using “her one hour” (Lewis, 1968, p. 644) with Guy Dawnish.

The last visit of Guy Dawnish at the Ransom’s house is also different from the others because he seems “ill at ease, ejaculatory, yet somehow mature, more obscurely in command of himself.” (Lewis, 1968, p. 645). Mrs. Margaret Ransom stays calm and restrains herself and then says good-bye to Guy Dawnish with all her life “concentrated in the hand that lay on her knee, the hand he would touch” (Lewis, 1968, p. 645).

After he leaves to go back to England, Mrs. Margaret Ransom switches from regretting her cowardice and being ashamed of what happened because it was “as much outside the sphere of her marriage as some transaction in a star.” (Lewis, 1968, p. 645). She only returns to the one moment with Guy Dawnish in her thoughts (Lewis, 1968, p. 645 - 46). She feels lonely and her life seems “phantasmal” (Lewis, 1968, p. 646) but then the Ransoms receive a letter from Guy Dawnish. Even though he speaks of their friendship and their time together in Wentworth Mrs. Margaret Ransom reads her very own message in Guy Dawnish’s first letter. On the following arrivals of his letters, she forgets what she has been doing or what happened during the day. But then again, she manages to live her normal life during the times when no letters from England arrive. Though Mrs. Margaret Ransom’s normal and daily life becomes real again she does not forget about the one moment by the river, but she starts telling herself that it “might well have been, for her companion, a mere passing explosion of gratitude, of boyish good fellowship touched with the pang of leave-taking” (Lewis, 1968, p. 646) and she even starts believing it is better like that so she can think of their time together without reproach. Until this point, she was not able to pass by the spot at the stream but now she is able to take one step further towards it every day and it seems to her that this is a good sign of recovery because eventually she is even able to take a one-hour break from her daily life on that bench.

After not receiving a letter from Guy Dawnish for more than six weeks, Mrs. Margaret Ransom opens a letter from a friend who is currently in England on vacation. In this letter her friend tells her about the surprising news about Guy Dawnish. Miss Bruce-Pringle, a woman Mrs. Margaret Ransom’s friend gets to know while having tea at a professor’s house, met Lady Caroline Duckett, Guy Dawnish’s aunt, who told her that she and the family of Guy Dawnish are all concerned about him. She said Guy Dawnish was being engaged while he was in Wentworth and that he, as soon as arriving back in England, dissolved his engagement because he “’formed an unfortunate attachment’” (Lewis, 1968, p. 647) in America. Reading this, Mrs. Margaret Ransom regrets that she is not a part of Guy Dawnish’s life anymore. She walks home, wondering if someone notices her emotions while looking on her face but she reaches her home without any occurrences.

At home, she tidies up her husband’s writing table and then finds a newspaper article in which she reads that the engagement between Guy Dawnish and, to her surprise, Gwendolen Matcher was dissolved, and that the marriage will not take place. On the one hand she feels deeply sorry for Guy Dawnish and sad because she already suspected something when she saw the picture with the girl wearing the flapping hat, and on the other hand she is “so glad—so ineffably, impenitently glad.” (Lewis, 1968, p. 648).

Since Guy Dawnish had never told Mrs. Margaret Ransom about his engagement and it is only known that he formed an unfortunate attachment in America, Mrs. Margaret Ransom can only build up her own theory of the events. She then concludes that he must have loved her or still does so.

After accepting her own theory, she continues her life; not like before but with a “sacrificial sweetness” (Lewis, 1968, p. 649). She travels in spirit and reads a lot about architecture and English Gothic and discovers her big interest in these subjects. It is also important to her because of the Higher Thought Club in which she is a member and a lecturer, too. As she prepares for the last meeting of the Higher Thought Club the housemaid Maria announces that a visitor is waiting downstairs. At first the identity of the visitor is unknown but as soon as Mrs. Margaret Ransom walks down the stairs to her drawing room the visitor introduces herself as Lady Caroline Duckett, the aunt of Guy Dawnish. The straight and strict visitor then asks to see Mrs. Ransom but does not seem to understand that she sits right in front of her. After making sure that she entered the right house and not taking up the conversation with Mrs. Margaret Ransom she asks again to see Mrs. Margaret Ransom. While expecting the worst, like a message of maybe his death, Mrs. Margaret Ransom now utters that she actually is the person her visitor searches for. Again, Lady Caroline Duckett is not satisfied with Mrs. Margaret Ransom’s answer and then asks for Mrs. Robert Ransom in hope for a better understanding of her request. She once again does not give Mrs. Margaret Ransom the chance to speak, supposes that Guy Dawnish may be in love with Mrs. Margaret Ransom’s daughter-in-law and now wants to talk to the mother-in-law first.

Suddenly, Mrs. Margaret Ransom interrupts Lady Caroline Duckett and yells: “I am Mrs. Robert Ransom” (Lewis, 1968, p. 652). The answer of Lady Caroline Duckett to that is not what one expects. She simply answers: “You can’t be” (Lewis, 1968, p. 652). Again, she does not believe Mrs. Margaret Ransom and after having another idea she asks for Mrs. Robert Ransom Junior. Mrs. Margaret Ransom states that there is no other Mrs. Robert Ransom at Wentworth which confuses Lady Caroline Duckett even more. Her final suggestion and the final climax of the story is that she thinks Guy Dawnish just used Mrs. Margaret Ransom as a pretext because Lady Caroline Duckett cannot see any other possibility looking at the rather old woman in front of her.

After Lady Caroline Duckett leaves the Ransom’s house, Mrs. Margaret Ransom walks back to her room and realizes while looking in the mirror that all the youth which Guy Dawnish had brought back on her face was gone. She now believes the code of Wentworth and that there had not been anything than friendship between her and Guy Dawnish and that he just used her name to have a reason to dissolve his engagement. She then sees the long and monotonous life she was so tired of in front of her eyes, and it seems even longer now. With her destroyed hope she goes back to her paper for the Higher Thought Club and continues to read.

Source:

Lewis, R. W. B. (1968). The Collected Short Stories of Edith Wharton. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Sources,Research articles and further reading:

Beer, J. (2005). Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Studies in Short Fiction. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Kornetta, R. (1996). Das Korsett im Kopf. Ehe und Ökonomie in den Kurzgeschichten Edith Whartons. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang GmbH.

Lee, H. (2008). Edith Wharton. London: Vintage.

Wharton, E. (1964). A Backward Glance. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

White, B. A. (1991). Edith Wharton. A Study of the Short Fiction. New York: Twayne Publishers.

Wright, S. B. (1998). Edith Wharton A to Z: The Essential Guide to the Life and Work. New York: Facts on File.

Image used: Carl Larsson: Karin by the Shore. 1908. https://fineartamerica.com/featured/karin-by-the-shore-1908-carl-larsson.html?product=greeting-card.