Painting of college President (The Pretext)

After Mrs. Margaret Ransom’s faintness she is accompanied out of Hamblin Hall by Guy Dawnish into a committee room where her male companion fills a glass of water for her at a nearby water jug. Meanwhile Mrs. Margaret Ransom leans back and is watched by a “frowning college President in an emblazoned frame.” (Lewis, 1968, p. 641). The “academic frown” (Lewis, 1968, p. 641) of the college President in the painting seems to Mrs. Margaret Ransom like an anathema which means that he, in a way, condemns the behavior of her because she follows another man to be alone with him, or rather it is what she feels. It seems like the president in the painting is watching Mrs. Margaret Ransom from above with the social code of Wentworth in his observing stare.

Source:

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