MASTERCLASS

Helen Walters looks at the potential of problematic relationships in your short fiction, with an example story

by Edith Wharton

TO READ THE STORY https://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/OthTwo.shtml

We’re going to look at this month’s story, ‘The Other Two’ by Edith Wharton, in a slightly unusual way. For reasons which will become clear, we’re going to start at the end. As always, you will get the most out of this masterclass if you read the story for yourself: https://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/OthTwo.shtml

Imagine you are a married woman. Life’s been a bit complicated and, as it happens, you are on your third husband. You arrive home one afternoon to find not only your current husband, but also your first and second husbands, smoking cigars and chatting. How would you react?

This is exactly what happens to Alice in this month’s story. Let’s circle back to the beginning to find out how she ends up in this situation.

The story is told from the point of view of Alice’s third husband, Waythorn. We join him in the midst of what should have been his honeymoon, which has been curtailed by the illness of Alice’s daughter with her first husband. We get to hear Alice’s back story through the eyes of her current husband, and he is also instrumental in bringing about the rather odd gathering at the end of the story.

At the beginning of the story, Waythorn is a man very much in love with his new wife. He is aware that she has brought colour into his otherwise dull life, and equally aware of the details of her earlier life before she met him. We learn through him that her first marriage had been a teenage indiscretion. And that her marriage to husband number two, Gus Varick, occurred when she moved to New York, and secured her a place in polite society.