Woburn

Woburn is the protagonist of Edith Wharton's short story “A Cup of Cold Water”. He is a poor, prudent young man with high ambitions, an appetite for extravagances, and a longing for a wealthy lifestyle. He adores Miss Talcott, a young girl from the upper class.

The conditions Woburn lived in while growing up explain the reason for his susceptibility to a life of wealth and leisure. Woburn's father lost the family's property and wealth due to his incapacity of doing any kind of business.

When the father died, the family was left unprovided for, turning his wife and daughter into bitter women. Woburn tries to escape that embitterment by staying reasonable and rational.

Due to his circumstances, the company of the vibrant Miss Talcott means a lot to him. He is captivated by her shiny and glowing world where life seems easy, especially since he associates poverty with dreadful and negative things, for instance being a weak character. “Poverty might make a man fascinating, but a settled income was the best evidence of stability of character. If there was anything in heredity, how could a nice girl trust a man whose parents had been careless enough to leave him unprovided for?”¹

The way Woburn's family is described suggests that Woburn holds his parents, more precisely, his father responsible for all the financial troubles they had to face as a family.

In order to become a member of this glamours world, he tries to escape his own. “It was natural that he should be drawn toward the luminous atmosphere where life was a series of peaceful and good-humored acts, unimpeded by petty obstacles. To spend one's time in such society gave one the illusion of unlimited credit; and also, unhappily, created the need for it.”²

Even though Woburn is drawn to a life of wealth and an assumed carelessness, he is still aware of the negative aspects of a life of “cheerful materialism”³. He points out the simple mind of Miss Talcott and her inability to understand the complexity of the human moral spectrum. Woburn is amused by her helplessness. He “[...] had been enchanted once by seeing her helpless before a smoking lamp: she had been obliged to ring for a servant because she did not know how to put it out.”⁴

Also, Woburn is charmed by her vibrant opinions even though they have no connection to reality.

According to Woburn, that simple and childish mind of Miss Talcott is the result of her bringing-up. He holds the parents responsible for raising their daughters in a shallow way, equipping them with a plain and infantile mind.

In order for Woburn to escape his dull life, and become a rich man he plans to marry Miss Talcott. Therefore he had to spend a lot of time with her, taking her out and provide her with specific extravagances, which he could manage to afford for a little while. After his debts began to pile up, he started to invest his patrimony. As “Miss Talcott was growing tender […] he began to feel that the game was in his hands. The nearness of the goal exasperated him.”⁵ Which led him to borrow money from a friend of his. Eventually, everything collapses and he is sold out.

In order to repay the money given by his friend, he turns to the firm he has worked for for a couple of years and “increased his debt to his employers and bought more stocks”⁶ and again lost everything to unfortunate investments. He ends up owing fifty thousand dollars to his employers. Now he is in big trouble because the semiannual inspection is scheduled in two days. “He realized then that within forty-eight hours what he had called borrowing would become theft.”⁷

After he had comprehended what he has done and the consequences he had to face, the only way to get out of his current situation in order to survive unscathed, is a clear cut and his decision to “start life over again somewhere else.”⁸

His plan to win Miss Talcott over had not only cost him all his money, but also the woman herself. One night before his departure he goes downtown to attend a Gildermere's ball again, for the last time. Miss Talcott has invited him and he is captured by the thought of seeing her one last time and to have one last moment with her.

However, as soon as Woburn arrives, the urge to see her vanishes. He remains in the doorway and watches the whole scene, disconnected, just like a random bystander, observing the “petty maneuvers of the woman and the resigned amenities of their partners.”⁹

While he is standing there watching everyone, a growing sense of detachment towards these people comes over him. Something shifts in his perception. It seems to him as if he is watching a bunch of strangers. He asks himself if these people are actually his friends? “These mincing women, all paint and dye and whalebone, these apathetic men who looked as much alike as the figures that children cut out of a folded sheet of paper? Was it to live among such puppets that he had sold his soul?”¹⁰ The society he, not too long ago desperately wanted to join appears in a new light. The artificiality and superficiality appall him and alienate him from the crowd. Every inch of authenticity gets lost in a whirl of shallow social conventions. “It was a domino party at which the guests were forbidden to unmask, though they all saw through each other's disguises.”¹¹

It dawned on him that no matter if his investments had paid off, they would still welcome him and if he leaves now as he has planned in order to make a fortune, he could still come back without facing any consequences. “They would all deny that anything had been proved against him. […] Well – why no? Was not all morality based on a convention? What was the stanchest code of ethics but a trunk with a series of false bottoms? Now and then one had the illusion of getting down to absolute right or wrong, but it was only a false bottom – a removable hypothesis – with another false bottom underneath.”Ibid., 157.¹²

When he spots Miss Talcott, he watches her dancing with another man, to whom she is sending out smiles “of which Woburn had fancied himself sole owner.”¹³ He knows that she will probably marry that man and he seems at peace with that.

After the dance has ended she makes her way through the crowd towards him in order to hand him a Legion of Honor. Woburn takes that opportunity to dance one last time with her. During their whole encounter, they don't exchange one word and Woburn leaves right afterward, relieved that “he had not spoken to Miss Talcott. There had been a healing power in their silence. All bitterness had gone from him and he thought of her now quite simply, as the girl he loved.”¹⁴

With this melancholy moment, the first half of the story ends. The second part of the story starts with Woburn looking for a hotel where he wants to spend the night since he still has a few hours to spend before his steamer departs. After renting a suitable room and sitting down, he notices a crying woman in the adjoining room. Her grief expresses “the slow down-pour of a whole heaven of sorrow.”¹⁵

Woburn keeps listening. “There was nothing else to be done; and at least his listening was a mute tribute to the trouble he was powerless to relieve. It roused, too, the drugged pulses of his own grief: he was touched by the chance propinquity of two alien sorrows in a great city throbbing with multifarious passions.”¹⁶

This paragraph somehow resembles the essence of the story: “the drugged pulses” of grief and “alien sorrows in a great city throbbing with multifarious passions.” It underlines the issue of living in a big city like New York, where people, fooled by all the lives they could live if they only forget everything about themselves are saddened by unanswered passions, desires and empty promises they made to themselves.

In that context, it is worth having a closer look at the name “Woburn”, which sounds a lot like woe [is] burn. This also adds to the theme and to the mood of the whole story.

In checking on the woman by peeking through the keyhole of the connecting door, he spots a pistol and realizes that the woman is about to commit suicide. As a man of character, he breaks through the door and soothes the woman, named Ruby Glenn. He comforts her by reassuring her there is another way and therefore a solution to her problems.

She tells him her story about her humdrum life in Hinksville, her boring husband Joe and the fact that she had run away with another man to pursue a more exciting life. After her new lover had abandoned her, she wanted her old life back but had no money for a ticket back to Hinksville.

It's a story within a story. Woburn takes care of Ruby's situation by using his remaining money to pay for her hotel bills and a train ticket. Smoothly the whole story has been divided, because by now, not only Woburn but also the reader lost track of all the events, including Miss Talcott, that have led Woburn to this particular situation.

Since this is a great city “throbbing with […] passions”¹⁷, it is Woburn's distress he undergoes in the first part of this story which connects both halves of the story and holds them together. His suffering led him to the poor woman in the adjoining room and in taking care of her situation financially, he “has sacrificed his means of escaping debtors.”¹⁸ The story ends with him going back to the firm he had worked for and which he had betrayed, to amend for his wrongdoings.

Prior to that, right before Woburn puts Ruby on the train, she “with a quick movement, [...] stepped close to him, and putting her hands on his shoulders lifted her face to his. "I believe you're the best man I ever knew," she said, "the very best - except Joe."¹⁹

This particular moment, and not Legion of Honor, makes Woburn a hero. His reward is exactly that authentic, genuine and heartfelt statement. “He may never have Miss Talcott as a wife, he may be poor for the rest of his life, he may even face prosecution and jail for embezzlement, but he saved a poor woman from killing herself and got her back to her husband to save her marriage.”²⁰

With that, he makes peace with himself.