I Had Barbara” Women’strongsstrong Ties and Wharton’strongsstrong “Roman Fever”.pdfVIP

rachel bowlby “I Had Barbara”: Women’s Ties and Wharton’s “Roman Fever” The setting of Edith Wharton’s short story “Roman Fever” (1934) is consciously casual. Two wealthy American widows with “time to kill” (10) sit chatting through the afternoon, on the terrace of a restaurant in Rome, overlooking the ruins of the ancient city. They have known each other off and on all their lives. Both have daughters who are presently out together with two eligible young Italian men, and the women recall their own courting days, also together, also in Rome. There is a risky edge to this talk because they had both been in love with the same man and knew it at the time. One of the women had been engaged to him, and duly married him, yet it is she, Mrs. Slade, who now asks herself, in relation to the other, “Would she never cure herself of envying her?” (17)—and who pushes the conversation forward with further questions. In its final pages, the story moves into high gear with the dis- closure, one after another, of three interlocking secrets from that time. Mrs. Ansley had received a letter from Delphin Slade inviting her to meet him one night at the Colosseum. The first thrust comes from Mrs. Slade, Volume 17, Number 3 doi 10.12152006-010 © 2006 by Brown University and d i f f e r e n c e s : A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 38 Women’s Ties a