Blog Post 1: The Other Two

Hello! If you are reading this I assume you are either my teacher or a fellow student from my American Literature II class. Because this is my first blog post I really have no idea how I want to tackle this thing as a whole, but I think I will just wing it. Thank you for reading!

The story I want to talk about in this blog is Edith Wharton's "The Other Two" because I have a lot I want to say. The Other Two is essentially a story about four central characters in the early 1900s coming from three different social situations. We have Mr. Waythorn and Mrs. Waythorn (Alice), Gus Varick and Mr. Haskett. Mr. Waythorn is from the high class of society, Alice is from low class but due to her marriage is now high class, Gus Varick is of the middle class and Mr. Haskett is of the low class. Alice has married all of 'em. Her first husband was Mr. Haskett, where Alice married in to her born class, had a child called Lilly and eventually divorced, marrying up the class chain to Varick...Who which she also later divorced. .We fall upon these characters right after Waythorn and Alice are married. Lilly, Alice's daughter, has fallen ill with typhoid and is bedridden. Her father, Mr. Haskett has weekly visits with his daughter and due to these circumstances has requested to see her in her own bed, in the home of Mr. Waythorn. I hope that is enough background information to start us off, so here we go.

Throughout the story we see Alice's exes and current husband interact which brings me to the question brought up in class that I would like to address: Does this story have a happy ending? I would argue that it does. The ending has all of these characters in one room together having tea. This sounds pretty boring until you consider the time period of which it was written. How often have you heard of lower, middle and high class men sitting around sharing tea in the early 1900s? Probably almost never. This is why I think the story has a happy ending. If these men did not have Alice they would never be in this situation. Waythorn would never invite a low class citizen like Haskett in to his home for a cup of tea. It was just not kosher back in those times. But here we are, due to the fact that they all at once married this lady, are sitting in the same room together. It is a community that back in those times never happened. Lower class men would talk with other lower class men, middle class men would talk with middle class men and so on. It shows that all of these classes of gentlemen can coexist due to this common ground, which is Alice.  I think that through Wharton's writing we see a sense of progression between these classes. I think it is her way of showing us that in her mind these classes do not define a person and we shouldn't limit ourselves by turning others away because doing so limits us from becoming a more well rounded, mature society. I like that.