A Journey by Edith Wharton

A Journey Reviews

• 
  Sidharth Vardhan

  Horror! Horror!
  
  A good place to get an idea of Wharton's prose if you haven't already tried her.
• 
  Candi

  3.5 stars
• 
  Cecily

  “The hours dragged on in a dreary inoccupation.”
  
  A claustrophobic story of a literal and metaphorical journey. A couple are crushed by: illness transforming their recent marriage; the physical confines of a sleeper train; the need to be polite to well-intentioned strangers; and by terror of what's to come. The ambiguous ending was welcome release.
  
  * “Their imperceptible estrangement… the conductivity between them was broken”, as if separated by a pane of glass.
  * A teacher “forced innutritious facts upon reluctant children”.
  * Newlyweds start with “prodigal confidence in an exhaustless future”.
  * “There were moments, indeed, when warm gushes of pity swept away her instinctive resentment.”
  
  
  More Wharton Stories
  
  I read this as one of twenty stories in The New York Stories of Edith Wharton , which I reviewed
  here.
  
  Reading them one after the other made me notice her favoured ingredients, from which she selected a unique combination for each story, and which led me to concoct a recipe for Write Your Own Wharton Short Story, which I posted
  here.
  
• 
  K. Anna Kraft

  I've arranged my thoughts into a haiku:
  
  "Stranded on the rails,
  Losing dreams, sense, sick husbands. . .
  Anxious to get home."
• 
  Andd

  What is the meaning of the title?
  Who is on a journey? The woman? The man? The reader?
  How does Wharton lull the reader into complacency?
  Were you shocked by the ending?
• 
  Adam Lund

  A well written, properly paced short story with some beautiful writing, including a few of these lines. I did find the ending unsatisfying.
  
  ...her brain moved slowly from one idea to another, as though they were stepping-stones set far apart across a whirling flood.
  
  She shrank into her corner and looked out of the window at the flying trees and houses, meaningless hieroglyphs of an endlessly unrolled papyrus.
  
  Her head was spinning and she tried to steady herself by clutching at her thoughts as they swept by, but they slipped away from her like bushes on the side of a sheer precipice down which she seemed to be falling.
• 
  Holly Weiss

  From the introduction to the story...The journey itself becomes a metaphor for an unhappy marriage: “Life had a grudge against her; she was never to be allowed to spread her wings.” If there’s an epilogue to this story, perhaps it’s to be found in the increasing distance in subsequent years between Edith and Edward Wharton, leading to their inevitable divorce in 1913.
• 
  Heather

  I love how Wharton uses space in this story. It’s so claustrophobic and confining. It makes the story really tense. Also symbolizes how the unhappy marriage is as a whole
• 
  Kate

  A very tense little short.
• 
  Arman

  در این روزهای بی حوصلگی و البته مشغولیت ذهنی فراوان، یکی از بهترین قالب هایی که اتصال من را به ادبیات و کتابخوانی حفظ کرده است، خواندن داستان های کوتاه است.
  امیدوارم در آینده نزدیک، منتخبی از این خوانده ها را ترجمه و در قالب یک مجموعه منتشر کنم.
  
  اديث وارتون رو از همخوانی "عصر معصومیت" شناختم و عاشق نثر او و جزئیاتی که وارد آن میکند، شدم.
  در این داستان هم با نثری بسیار شاعرانه طرف هستیم که عجیب آنکه بجای اینکه خسته ات کند، بخوبی ضربآهنگ آن، فضای دلهره آور و خفه کننده را منتقل کرده است.
  در اینجا هم وارتون به رابطه زناشویی و البته نقشی که جامعه برای یک زن متاهل قائل است، می پردازد.
• 
  hiromi

  Although she is fully aware of what awaits at the tunnel's end, she continue to walk through it, in shattered hearts, imperturbably accepting the inevitable end.
• 
  Forked Radish

  Another milk related casualty.
• 
  Phil Syphe

  I found the opening pages slow-paced and dull, but about halfway through something happens to one character, which in turn makes the main character more interesting.
  
  The dialogue is good. The piece would’ve benefited from more character interaction and less rambling third-person narrative.
• 
  Shauna

  I think this was more interesting and thought-provoking, rather than compelling or entertaining.