Afterward review: Edith Wharton puts a price on the picturesque

Edith Wharton's Afterward is a ghost story about people who want their history attractively weathered and somebody else's. Its wealthy Americans, Mary and Edward Boyne, choose an English country house partly because it lacks modern comforts. They even want a resident ghost. The problem is their assumption that a haunting belongs to the property, like an especially interesting fireplace. Wharton lets that assumption furnish the trap.

First published in 1910, the story gives the couple a warning with an infuriating timetable: a visitor to Lyng may only be recognized as supernatural much later. That premise does more than postpone a reveal. It makes ordinary confidence dangerous. You cannot protect yourself by being observant if you have already decided what sort of thing you are willing to see.

The opening comedy earns its place. Edward treats the lack of heating as a certificate of authenticity; inconvenience becomes something money allows him to enjoy. Wharton does not need a castle piled with bones. A buyer congratulating himself on his excellent taste supplies a more pointed beginning. The house is a lifestyle purchase before it is a frightening place.

Then the financial vocabulary starts tugging at the upholstery. The Boynes' retreat is funded by the Blue Star Mine, and Edward plans a book called Economic Basis of Culture. That title is a small, sharp joke. The comfortable life supposedly devoted to beauty has an economic basis already, one Mary has not examined closely. The ghost story asks what happens when a beautiful setting successfully distracts its occupants from its cost.

Mary receives a newspaper clipping about a lawsuit. Edward makes the dispute sound too technical to deserve attention, and her relief follows his manner as much as his explanation. That is the scene to watch. Affection is doing the work of a missing answer. Wharton leaves room for Mary's limited knowledge without turning her into an innocent pair of eyes floating through a room: she also benefits from having business remain somebody else's subject.

The unsettling effect comes from how reasonable each small act of dismissal feels. Nothing needs to become obviously impossible for the household to get into trouble. Manners, professional habits, and the wish to preserve a pleasant morning keep producing acceptable explanations. The eventual dread reaches backward through those explanations. A detail does not have to change for its meaning to turn ugly.

For an artist, that is a useful compositional lesson. A peaceful room can contain a conflict the picture's owner has arranged to keep outside the frame. Wharton builds that pressure through contrasts between cultivated comfort and the questions needed to maintain it. The reader's task becomes looking past the tasteful foreground. Adding another skull would make the argument less precise.

There is a limitation: the final gathering of information is more explicit than the opening's wonderfully slippery uncertainty. Readers who want the supernatural to remain wholly unclassified may prefer the earlier movement. The prose also asks for patience with pauses and social distinctions; this is a poor choice for a night when you want immediate pursuit or physical spectacle.

Choose Afterward for a compact haunting whose strongest accusation concerns selective attention. Compare it with our review of The Eyes, where Wharton lets another confident speaker manage an uncomfortable account, or the unreliable-narrator guide. The particularly sour pleasure here is watching the Boynes discover that wanting an old story in the house does not let them choose which story arrives.

Questions from the crypt

Sources & further reading

• Edith Wharton: Afterward, full primary text, Project Gutenberg
• Edith Wharton Society: short-story publication information, Washington State University archive

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