An Ethics of Reading :: Edith Wharton Literature Feminism Essays

An Ethics of Reading At the age of nine, Edith Wharton fell ill with typhoid. The local doctor told her parents nothing could be done and that their daughter would soon die. Only the ministrations of another physician, who happened to be passing through town and was prevailed upon to examine the girl, saved her life. Her fever fell, and the young Wharton began to recover. During her convalescence, she read voraciously. One of the books she was given contained a â€Å"super-natural† tale — a story which turned out to be, in Wharton’s own phrase, â€Å"perilous reading† (Wharton, p.275). In the original manuscript of her autobiography, Edith Wharton describes how reading this uncanny story occasioned a relapse, which brought her, once again, â€Å"on the point of death†: This one [book] brought on a serious relapse, and again my life was in danger and when I came to myself, it was to enter a world haunted by formless horrors. I had been a naturally fearless child; now I lived in a state of chronic fear. Fear of what? I cannot say — and even at the time, I was never able to formulate my terror. It was like some dark undefinable menace forever dogging my steps, lurking, threatening; (pp.275‑6).[1] According to Wharton, an act of reading plunged her body back into fatal illness. The young Edith Wharton did recover from the relapse, but its uncanny effects continued to haunt her well into adulthood. In â€Å"Women and Madness: the Critical Phallacy† (1975), Shoshana Felman tells another uncanny story of reading. Analyzing the critical commentary that brackets Balzac’s Adieu in a Gallimard/Folio pocket edition, she demonstrates how two scholars, Pierre Gascan and Patrick Bertier, effectively rewrite Balzac’s story by focusing their analyses entirely on a section of historical backstory – despite the fact that this element comprises but one-third of Balzac’s narrative.[2] In addition, by adopting a criteria of alleged ‘realism’ and labeling Stà ©phanie’s madness as ‘super-natural’, they excise Balzac’s main character (a madwoman) and replace her with protagonists who are soldiers in the Grand Army. The madwoman inhabits, according to these critics, â€Å"a state of semi-unreality† linked to â€Å"the presence of the invisible† — which renders her inexplicable and outside the purview of discussion (qtd. in Felman, 1975, p.6). As a result, Felman argues, critical commentary meant to situate Balzac Adieu in a wider literary context ends up repeating Philippe’s ‘cure’: in erasing from the text the disconcerting and ex-centric features of a woman’s madness, the critic seeks to ‘normalize’ the text [†¦] making the text a reassuring, closed retreat.