Autres Temps... 1916 — Reading Companion

The Past as an Afflicted Relative

Wharton gives Mrs. Lidcote's past a startlingly physical presence. It is "like the afflicted relative suddenly breaking away from nurses and keepers and publicly parading the horror and misery she had, all the long years, so patiently screened and secluded." This metaphor does more than convey shame; it suggests that the past is a living, unruly entity that requires constant management. Mrs. Lidcote has become its keeper, learning "to screen and manage and protect it." The language of caregiving — "afflicted member of one's family" — inverts the expected relationship: the past is not something she possesses but something she serves. This inversion colors every social encounter, from the captain's table to the drawing rooms of New York.

The Geometry of Social Space

Wharton maps social judgment through spatial arrangements. On the ship, Mrs. Lidcote shrinks "back into her corner of the deck" as New York looms. Later, at her daughter's country house, she is urged to "stay quietly up here" — confined to an upper room while a carefully curated party assembles below. The guest list itself becomes a social diagram: Mrs. Lorin Boulger, the ambassadress whose "revolving eye-glass" once blanked out Mrs. Lidcote, is now the guest of honor whose approval Leila needs for her husband's diplomatic appointment. The older set — the Ashton Gileses, the Sam Fresbies — are invited to legitimize the new marriage. Mrs. Lidcote's placement in the house mirrors her position in this social geometry: present but peripheral, acknowledged but contained.

Generational Displacement and Repetition

The story's title promises change, but the narrative structure suggests recurrence. Leila's divorce and remarriage force Mrs. Lidcote to confront her own history, yet the younger woman's situation is not simply a repetition. The social penalties have shifted: Leila can host a party that includes the ambassadress, something unthinkable in Mrs. Lidcote's day. Yet the very need for such a party — the careful orchestration of social approval — reveals that the old rules have not vanished; they have merely been rewritten. Miss Suffern's reassurance, "The times have changed!" is undercut by the anxious maneuvering it accompanies. Wharton leaves the reader to measure the distance between the two generations' experiences, a distance that may be shorter than it appears.

Readers attentive to Wharton's precise social notation will find a story less about divorce itself than about the architecture of reputation — how it is built, maintained, and sometimes demolished. The excerpts offer no resolution, only the tense interval before the party. Pay particular attention to the way objects and spaces carry moral weight: the ship's screws, the tea-table, the motor-horn. Wharton's irony is quiet but persistent, and the story rewards careful attention to what is said, what is left unsaid, and who is allowed to speak.

Reading Autres Temps..., I kept thinking how strange it is that we measure our freedoms only by what the next generation endures. Wharton’s widow, so careful in her new marriage, reminded me of the silences in The Dead Are Silent 1907 — Key Ideas to Explore—those unspoken rules that bind us long after we think we’ve escaped them. A quiet ache, both.