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Living Section of the San Bernardino SUN February 26, 2006 Issue 
Twilight Sleep by Edith Wharton 
A
Timely and Timeless Classic In December 2005, the Department of Education released the National Assessment of Adult Literacy study. The findings are simply frightening. Not only are there 93 million illiterate Americans but also the literacy level of the college educated has hit a dismally low level. "Only 31% of those with the highest level of education have mastery of complex activities such as critically evaluating information in legal documents, comparing viewpoints in two editorials or interpreting a table about blood pressure and physical activity." The most common solution to this problem offered in editorials across the country is to make "reading fun again." But how is reading made fun again for a person who has gone through years of university education without ever reading the most important classics in literature, sociology or history? In the beginning of Woody Allen's film "Match Point" we see the main protagonist reading Dostoyevsky. We make the connection to the book later on in the film when that protagonist murders a la Raskolnikov an expendable old woman. Imagine the dismay when, during a casual conversation with some acquaintances about the film, we discovered amongst us a person with a master's degree who had never heard of Raskolnikov because he had never read "Crime and Punishment" - not even the Cliff's Notes. The above instances make a strong case for a return to the reading of the classics. We are inundated with new books that are frequently bestsellers, which just as frequently vanish into oblivion within a few years of their publication. But the classics are staples that offer rich and valuable life lessons. Although Edith Wharton's "Twilight Sleep" was published in 1927, it is still a remarkably timely book, as if set in the present - of this time and this place. It has all the ingredients of contemporary life - illicit sex, dysfunctional families, spiritualist fads and aimless empty lives.Mrs. Manford is a rich New York society woman whose life, in a similar fashion to the lives of yuppies, is driven by a schedule. She multitasks just like today's multitasking workaholics, doing everything and not doing anything well enough. She collects cardinals and impoverished but titled European nobility for her lavish dinner parties, gives speeches to the Birth Control Committee as well as to the Motherhood Society, has a thoroughly contemporary friendship with her first husband and just like today's stressed out professionals, she does exercises for a slim waist and goes to various spiritual healers for stress relief. Mrs. Manford does not suffer self-doubts or introspection. Perhaps precisely because of her inability to see nuances of life beneath the surface, she is so taken with the various Healers and Prophets. On the one rare occasion when she finds herself alone with her husband, she is at a loss about how to connect to him: "If only she had known how to reveal the secret tremors that were rippling through her! There were women not half as clever and tactful - not younger, either, nor even as good-looking - who would have known at once what to say... Intimacy," Wharton tells us, "to her (Mrs. Manford), meant the tireless discussion of facts." Although surrounded by frenzied activities, each member of Mrs. Manford's family lives in isolation and emptiness. "Something about it was fundamentally wrong," reflects Mrs. Manford's husband. "They all had these colossal plans for acquiring power, and then, when it was acquired, what came of it but bigger houses, more food, more motors... and more self-righteous philanthropy?" While Mrs. Manford fleets about in a torrent of activity, her husband is beginning an affair with his stepson's ravishingly beautiful, aimless and bored wife. It is the Manfords' daughter who saves the family from a tragedy. But throughout the entire drama Mrs. Manford remains oblivious to reality, living a psychotic life of total disconnect. Emptiness and boredom lurk beneath the wealth and glitter and entwine with the novel's other major theme, that of the "Twilight Sleep" - maternity establishments popular amongst the rich in those days where women glided through childbirth in hypnotic and painless haze, rendering even this important moment in a mother's life - unreal. Ophelia Georgiev Roop Library Director San Bernardino Public Library |
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