Review Sheet

Characters

Mrs. Delphin Slade, Alida Slade

Mrs. Horace Ansley, Grace Ansley

Setting

Plot

Discussion

Study Guide for Wharton's "Roman Fever"

Other topics that you can think about:

• Great-Aunt Harriet's story
• beauty
• happiness
• innocence
• views, lens, perception
• character portrayal
• matrilineage, generations of women, grandmothers, mothers, daughters
• Barbara
• Jenny
• time: time of day, season, meal; how does the light (quality, intensity of light) reflect the plot of the story?
• relationship between men and women (you can compare to George and Evie's relationship in "The Colonel's Lady")
• fear, being afraid
• Roman fever: as an excuse, as cover or protection, as a weapon, as an illness/disease, as a myth, as a threat, as punishment, as a person (cf. "When Roman fever stalked the streets" 30), as illicit desire
• monster v. prude
• history

Memory and Mortality

youth

• a girlish voice (1)
• a voice as fresh laughed back (1-5)
• "Kids have such silly reasons for doing the most serious things." (100)
• "Well, girls are ferocious sometimes, you know. Girls in love especially." (105)

remembering, forgetting, collective v. individual memory

• We must remember that. (5)
• "After all, it's still the most beautiful view in the world." (5-10)
• "It always will be, to me" (10)
• "...When we first met here we were younger than our girls are now.  You remember?" "Oh, yes, I remember" (10)
•  A full-moon night, they would remember...(10-15)
• Mrs. Slade drew her lids together in retrospect (15)
• so full of old memories (25-30)
• "...it all brings back the past a little too acutely." (40)
• for her also, too many memories rose from the lengthening shadows of those august ruins. (40)
• "I remember that story about a great-aunt of yours, wasn't she?" (50)
• "I--I dare say.  I don't remember." (60)
• "You don't remember? You don't remember going to visit some ruins or other one evening, just after dark, and catching a bad chill!..." (60)
• "...but perhaps you've forgotten what the letter said?" (70-75)
• "No; I know it by heart too." (75)
• "...But I was the girl he was engaged to. Did you happen to remember that?" (85)
• "I'm not trying to excuse myself... I remembered... " (85)
• "I cared for that memory," said Mrs. Ansley. (95)
• It all happened so long ago, as you say; and you must do me the justice to remember that I had no reason to think you'd ever taken it seriously. (95-100)
• "And I remember laughing to myself all that evening at the idea that you were waiting around there in the dark, dodging out of sight, listening for every sound, trying to get in—of course I was upset when I heard you were so ill afterward." (105)

Height, Vertical Relationship; the stairs mediating between high and low?

• two American ladies of ripe but well-cared for middle age moved across the lofty terrace of the Roman restaurant (1)
• looked first at each other, and then down on the outspread glories of the Palatine and the Forum (1)
• As they leaned there a girlish voice echoed up gaily from the stairs leading to the court below. (1-5)
• the two ladies were alone on the air-washed height (5-10)
• would like to spend the end of the afternoon looking down on the view (10-15)
• It was a big drop from being the wife of Delphin Slade to being his widow. (20)
• In living up to such a husband all her faculties had been engaged; now she had only her daughter to live up to (20)
• It seemed as though, to both, there was a relief in laying down their somewhat futile activities in the presence of the vast Memento Mori which faced them. (25)
• She looked straight out at the great accumulated wreckage of passion and splendor at her feet. (35-40)
• Already its golden flank was drowned in purple shadow, and above it the sky curved crystal clear, without light or color. It was the moment when afternoon and evening hang balanced in midheaven. (45)
• "Oh, we're all right up here. Down below, in the Forum, it does get deathly cold, all of a sudden...but not here." (50)
• Aloud she said: "Whenever I look at the Forum from up here, I remember that story about a great-aunt of yours, wasn't she? A dreadfully wicked great-aunt?" (50)
• Mrs. Slade continued to look down on her. She seemed physically reduced by the blow—as if, when she got up, the wind might scatter her like a puff of dust. (95)
• The clear heaven overhead was emptied of all its gold. (100)
• Here and there lights began to twinkle through the foliage at their feet. (100)

Roman Sites and Landscape

• the outspread glories of the Palatine and the Forum (1)
• the stupendous scene at their feet (5)
• the presence of the vast Memento Mori which faced them (25)
• the golden slope of the Palace of the Caesars (25)
• her eyes ranging from the ruins which faced her to the long green hollow of the Forum, the fading glow of the church fronts beyond it, and the outlying immensity of the Colosseum. (35)
• Her gaze turned toward the Colosseum. (45)
• Dusk spread over it, abruptly darkening the Seven Hills. (100)
• Mrs. Ansley stood looking away from her toward the dusky mass of the Colosseum. (115)

Critical Works on Wharton and "Roman Fever"

Drabble, Margaret.  "Wharton's Sharp Eye."  Atlantic Monthly Jul.-Aug. 2001: 166-67. (reviews her Collected Stories; requires EBSCOhost subscription)

Petry, Alice Hall.  "A Twist of Crimson Silk: Edith Wharton's 'Roman Fever.'"  Studies in Short Fiction 24.2 (1987): 163-66. (pdf file of full text requires EBSCOhost subscription; significance of knitting in the story, questions the ladies as stereotypical matrons)

Selina, Jamil S.  "Wharton's 'Roman Fever.'"  Explicator 65.2 (2007): 99-101. (pdf file of full text requires EBSCOhost subscription)

Key Terms to Date

character

foil

personality

direct presentation of character

indirect presentation of character

show v. tell

consistency in character behavior

motivation

plausibility of character: is the character credible? convincing?

flat character

round character, multidimensional character

static character

developing character

direct methods of revealing character:

• characterization through the use of names

• characterization through physical appearance

• characterization through editorial comments by the author, interrupts narrative to provide information

• characterization through dialog: what is said, who says it, under what circumstances, who is listening, how the conversation flows, how the speaker speaks (ex. tone, stress, dialect, diction/word choice)

• characterization through action

plot

beginning, middle, end

scene

chance, coincidence

double plot

subplot, underplot

deus ex machina

disclosure, discovery

story

conflict, internal conflict, external conflict, clash of actions, clash of ideas, clash of desires, clash of wills

• man v. self

• man v. man

• man v. society

• man v. nature

protagonist

antagonist

suspense

mystery

dilemma

surprise

ending

• happy ending

• unhappy ending

• indeterminate ending

artistic unity

time sequence

exposition

complication

rising action, falling action

crisis

climax

conclusion

resolution

denouement

flashback, retrospect

foreshadowing

Reference

Barnet, Sylvan, Morton Berman, and William Burto.  A Dictionary of Literary, Dramatic, and Cinematic Terms.  2nd ed.  Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1971.

Pickering, James H.  Fiction 50: An Introduction to the Short Story.  New York: Macmillan, 1993.  1-26.

Links

Digital Roman Forum (from UCLA's Cultural Virtual Reality Laboratory)

Home  |  Introduction to the Study of English Fiction  |  Literary Terms  |  Learning English  |  Blackboard Academic Suite

Last updated August 6, 2007