The 1700-1939 Book Club! discussion

This is for the discussion of The Buccaneers by Edith Wharton (Book 4).

This brings us to the end of the story. Did anyone find it satisfying? Was this a "happy" ending?

I do think that I could feel the influence of the new author within this book. I know she was going off of Wharton's notes, but I do think that book four did become something more of an idealized love story than would be typical of Wharton novel. And certainly though Marion Mainwaring did a decent enough job, and I can appreciate the difficulty of her task, she lacked Wharton's ironic humor and social satire.

There is no way of knowing what Wharton ultimately would have done with this novel if she could have completed it, but I feel it would have been a very different story by the end had she been able to do so.

That is not to say I did not enjoy it. I did feel bad for Miss Testavaglia and the the way in which Nan's choices and her own quest for happiness back lashed against her and her own relationship with Sir Helmsley.

Silver wrote: "I did feel bad for Miss Testavaglia and the the way in which Nan's choices and her own quest for happiness back lashed against her and her own relationship with Sir Helmsley."

I felt bad about that, too. It did not seem absolutely necessary to the story. Couldn't Miss Testvalley have married Sir Helmsley, even though Nan was running off with Guy? I suppose it might have been an even greater scandal, somehow, but it's not like making Miss Testvalley and Sir Helmsley unhappy was going to make their situation better. Was this some sort of intentional demonstration, yet again, of how careless the rich are of the feelings of those who serve them, and how dedicated the people serving them are?

I agree. I feel like we could have been given some hope to see Miss Testvalley and Sir Helmsley together in the future. I don't want her to be like Miss March. I thought Sir Helmsley and his son could break the mold. I also think it was sad Nan's own sister did not say goodbye to her at the funeral. Over all I liked the book and was glad Mainwaring kept the rest short. It had to be difficult to write because Wharton understood that time period and it's society much better and had a wonderful way of telling her stories. I was glad Nan was happy but I wish they would have felt like Miss Testvalley did and refuse to be banished.

I've been having fun comparing and contrasting the Buccaneers with modern romances. Yesterday, on the Kindle Daily Deal, I picked up a piece of fluff called Any Duchess Will Do. The story is about a Duke who is being pressured to marry, and has no interest in doing so. When his mother drugs and kidnaps him and drags him to "Spinster Cove," they make a bizarre bargain. She tells him he can pick any girl in the room, but he must marry one of them. To teach his mother a lesson, he picks a serving girl who has just stumbled into the room, late for work and covered in mud, sugar and alum (long story). Mother and son agree that Mother will give the girl "duchess lessons," and if, at the end of the week, the girl can dazzle society at a ball, the Duke will marry her. The Duke makes a private side deal with the girl that he will pay her 1,000 pounds at the end of the week if she proves to be a "total catastrophe" by the end of the week.

The story is so different from Wharton's tale in so many ways, although both Dukes like to tinker with broken clocks. But the modern ending is that the Duke falls in love with the serving girl, but lets her go home to Spinster Cove and start a business (a lending library), and only after the girl has achieved a kind of independence and success that will make the girl feel she has accomplished something, only then does the Duke buy property in Spinster Cove and marry her. Whereas in Wharton's book, the Duke expects Nan to become a self-effacing duchess, the modern romance hero, who really loves the woman he marries, lets her stand on her own two feet and run her own business, even while being a duchess.

What would Wharton have thought of the modern romance? Even in Wharton's day, there must have been Cinderella stories and people who liked them. Did Wharton write the Buccaneers as an "anti-romance"?

Casceil wrote: "I've been having fun comparing and contrasting the Buccaneers with modern romances. Yesterday, on the Kindle Daily Deal, I picked up a piece of fluff called Any Duchess Will Do. T..."

I think the Wharton was writing stories that were reflections of the reality. While in a sense it is a love story, it was not written as a romance exactly, I do not believe, but as a social criticism.

While Cinderella stories may have possibly happened, and may have been possible they did not in truth reflect the typical reality for the majority of both men and women.

Though I do not read modern romances I think they are more fantasy than reality, though Cinderella stories may be a good deal more possible in today's world than in Wharton's world.

Unlike modern romances Wharton was not trying to write some warm and fuzzy feel good story, she was writing a story which critiqued the problems that arose in the marriage system and social class system of the time in which she lived.

I understand Wharton was writing about reality, and modern romances are fiction and/or fantasy. If we are looking for a "stand up and be self-sufficient" character in Wharton's book, it would be Miss Testvalley. Her dreams don't come true. As you say, this book was social criticism. But I found the contrast entertaining.