Corporate Thinking: Edith Wharton's The Fruit of the Tree

JENNIE A. KASSANOFF Corporate Thinking: Edith Wharton's The Fruit of the Tree ETWEEN 1905 and 1 9 1 1 , Edith Wharton published a sequence ' of three novels, all ofwhich circulated in fascinated horror around the prone body of an immobilized woman. The House ofMirth (1905), Wharton's first best-seller, concluded its tale of a New York socialite's decline only when, in the novel's final chapter, Lawrence Seiden discovers "on a bed, with motionless hands and calm, unrecognizing face, the semblance of Lily Bart" (325). Four years later, the image would recur in the bleak, New England narrative of Ethan Frome (1911). The novella draws to a close when a shocked narrator finds Ethan's sallow wife Zenobia preparing dinner for a withered, "much smaller and slighter" Mattie Silver: She sat huddled in an arm-chair near the stove, and when I came in she turned her head quickly toward me, without the least corresponding movement of her body. Her hair was as grey as her companion's, her face as bloodless and shrivelled, but amber-tinted, with swarthy shadows sharpening her nose and hollowing the temples. Under her shapeless dress her body kept its limp immobility, and her dark eyes had the bright witch-like stare that disease ofthe spine sometimes gives. (125) Although Wharton would return to this image six years later in Summer 's harrowing description of Mary Hyatt, who "lay there like a dead dog in a ditch" (163), The House ofMirth and Ethan Frome form an odd, Arizona Quarterly Volume 53, Number 1, Spring 1997 Copyright © 1997 by Arizona Board of Regents ISSN 0004-1610 26Jennie A. Kassanoff compact trilogy with the lesser-known novel that links them, Wharton 's peculiar examination of industrial reform, paralysis and euthanasia , The Fruit ofthe Tree (1907). Working with titles like "The Cup ofMercy," "The Boundary," "The Shadow of a Doubt," "The Chariot of the Gods," and "Justine Brent," Wharton began writing a new manuscript within months ofpublishing the enormously popular House ofMirth. She eventually completed the book, Miltonically retitled The Fruit of the Tree, after two years of uncharacteristically sporadic work. It would precede Ethan Frome by four years and, like its successor, it would find its sparse setting largely in rural Massachusetts. In contrast to the economical Frome, however, which Wharton herself described as "only an anecdote in 45,000 words," The Fruit of the Tree would burgeon into a sprawling saga that oscillated between two seemingly unrelated subjects—the reform of a mechanized textile mill and the painfully intimate trauma ofa woman's paralyzed body (letter to Bernard Berenson, May 19, 191 1). As the narrative opens, Dillon, a factory worker, has lost his hand in a mill accident. John Amherst, an idealistic manager, comes to plead Dillon's case and the cause, more generally, of industrial reform before the factory's beautiful, widowed owner, Bessy Westmore. Captivated by the young mother and the institutional power she represents, Amherst marries Bessy, only to make the disappointing discovery that his new wife is more committed to her social life than she is to her workers' welfare . The couple's estrangement culminates midway through the novel when Bessy is thrown from a horse and suffers an excruciating spinal injury. Her childhood friend, Justine Brent, formerly a reform-minded nurse at the Westmore factories, arrives to take care of the heiress, whose suffering grows steadily worse. Finally, against the doctor's selfserving orders, Justine secretly administers a fatal dose of morphine, mercifully ending Bessy's agony. Amherst returns and, unaware ofwhat has transpired, falls in love with the like-minded Justine. They marry and share custody of Bessy's young daughter Cicely. Predictably, however , the couple's passion permanently sours when Amherst discovers Justine's role in Bessy's death. Critics have generally followed the lead of Henry James, who dismissed The Fruit of the Tree as a disappointing and deeply flawed novel. With typical ambiguity, James conceded that the book contained "a great deal of (though not perhaps of a completely) superior art." He The Fruit of the Tree27 added that he continued to have reservations as to "the composition & conduct of the thing" (letter...