Madame de Treymes

Madame de Treymes Summary

Madame de Treymes by Edith Wharton, published in 1907, is a novella that explores the complexities of cultural differences, societal expectations, and personal desires. The story follows John Durham, an American in Paris, who wishes to marry his childhood friend, Fanny de Malrive, now trapped in an unhappy marriage within the rigid French aristocracy. The narrative delves into the challenges they face, particularly the intricate negotiations with Fanny's enigmatic sister-in-law, Madame de Treymes, to secure a divorce.

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Madame de Treymes Excerpt

Short Summary: John Durham, an American in Paris, seeks to marry Fanny de Malrive, who is entangled in an unhappy marriage within the French aristocracy. To secure her divorce, Durham must navigate the complex social structures of French society and engage with the enigmatic Madame de Treymes, Fanny's sister-in-law, leading to a tale of cultural clash and moral dilemmas.

Excerpt:

John Durham, while he waited for Madame de Malrive to draw on her gloves, stood in the hotel doorway looking out across the Rue de Rivoli at the afternoon brightness of the Tuileries gardens. His European visits were infrequent enough to have kept unimpaired the freshness of his eye, and he was always struck anew by the vast and consummately ordered spectacle of Paris: by its look of having been boldly and deliberately planned as a background for the enjoyment of life, instead of being forced into grudging concessions to the festive instincts, or barricading itself against them in unenlightened ugliness, like his own lamentable New York. But to-day, if the scene had never presented itself more alluringly, in that moist spring bloom between showers, when the horse-chestnuts dome themselves in unreal green against a gauzy sky, and the very dust of the pavement seems the fragrance of lilac made visible—to-day for the first time the sense of a personal stake in it all, of having to reckon individually with its effects and influences, kept Durham from an unrestrained yielding to the spell. Paris might still be—to the unimplicated it doubtless still was—the most beautiful city in the world; but whether it were the most lovable or the most detestable depended for him, in the last analysis, on the buttoning of the white glove over which Fanny de Malrive still lingered. The mere fact of her having forgotten to draw on her gloves as they were descending in the hotel lift from his mother's drawing-room was, in this connection, charged with significance to Durham. She was the kind of woman who always presents herself to the mind's eye as completely equipped, as made up of exquisitely cared for and finely-related details; and that the heat of her parting with his family should have left her unconscious that she was emerging gloveless into Paris, seemed, on the whole, to speak hopefully for Durham's future opinion of the city. Even now, he could detect a certain confusion, a desire to draw breath and catch up with life, in the way she dawdled over the last buttons in the dimness of the porte-cochère, while her footman, outside, hung on her retarded signal. When at length they emerged, it was to learn from that functionary that Madame la Marquise's carriage had been obliged to yield its place at the door, but was at the moment in the act of regaining it. Madame de Malrive cut the explanation short. "I shall walk home. The carriage this evening at eight." As the footman turned away, she raised her eyes for the first time to Durham's. "Will you walk with me? Let us cross the Tuileries. I should like to sit a moment on the terrace." She spoke quite easily and naturally, as if it were the most commonplace thing in the world for them to be straying afoot together over Paris; but even his vague knowledge of the world she lived in—a knowledge mainly acquired through the perusal of yellow-backed fiction—gave a thrilling significance to her naturalness. Durham, indeed, was beginning to find that one of the charms of a sophisticated society is that it lends point and perspective to the slightest contact between the sexes. If, in the old unrestricted New York days, Fanny Frisbee, from a brown stone door-step, had proposed that they should take a walk in the Park, the idea would have presented itself to her companion as agreeable but unimportant; whereas Fanny de Malrive's suggestion that they should stroll across the Tuileries was obviously fraught with unspecified possibilities. He was so throbbing with the sense of these possibilities that he walked beside her without speaking down the length of the wide alley which follows the line of the Rue de Rivoli, suffering her even, when they reached its farthest end, to direct him in silence up the steps to the terrace of the Feuillants. For, after all, the possibilities were double-faced, and her bold departure from custom might simply mean that what she had to say was so dreadful that it needed all the tenderest mitigation of circumstance. There was apparently nothing embarrassing to her in his silence: it was a part of her long European discipline that she had learned to manage pauses with ease. In her Frisbee speech, no less than in her gestures and movements, there was an exquisite harmony between freedom and reserve; and the mere fact that she sat silent, letting her eyes stray across the gardens to the thin grey-blue line of the Seine, had for Durham the inestimable value of seeming to place them both at once on a plane of frank and equal intercourse.

"You are wondering," she suddenly began, "why I have made a point of seeing you alone—why I asked you to walk with me just now." She turned her eyes full on his, and their look was like a firm hand laid on his shoulder. "I think I know," he answered. "Because you wish to tell me what you have decided." She smiled slightly. "Because I wished to ask you a question first." "A question?" "Yes. How much do you care?" He grew very pale, and stood motionless, staring down at her. "How much?" he repeated. "Yes—how much? Enough to take things as they are—enough to let them be?" The blood rushed back to his forehead. "What do you mean?" he said. "That there is no way out?" "None—none. That if you wish to keep her, you must keep her as she is. That if you will take the situation as you find it, you may have her still—but on no other terms."