It is clear that as time has passed, Mrs. Ansley and Mrs. Slade in The Roman Fever have grown apart. As they sat beside each other and watched their young daughters, they pondered quietly. You would imagine, growing up together, the two would be extremely close. Yet, as the two sit and take in the view, they realize how little they know about each other. Even when they were speaking of generational differences, they mention how their grandmothers worried about the Roman fever, their mothers would try to hold on to their daughters to protect them from danger. Yet their parents did not know that the more they tried to cage them in, the more they wanted to be set free. I think this is something that needs to be considered because you can see how unfamiliar different each generation was with one another and how they all valued something entirely different.
In terms of friendship, I don’t think one really existed or it was severely damaged along the way. It was overcome with jealousy and envy. Wharton mentions, “So these two ladies visualized each other, each through the wrong end of her little telescope”(27). The two women sat there passing off negative judgments on each other the majority of the time. Towards the end of the story, the women realized the whole foundation of their friendship was a lie. As a reader, I was quite enthralled by Wharton’s process of unveiling the truth piece by piece. When Mrs.Slade revealed that she knew her husband and Mrs. Ansley were having an affair and she had written a letter out of spite to mislead Mrs.Ansley, I thought, of course, they had hidden agendas. When Mrs. Ansley got the last laugh by saying, “I had Barbara” I was completely shocked. The dramatic turn this story took made me question not only the characters in the story but how much I really know about my own friends, family, and loved ones. It’s like you think you know everything, but then you are stumped when you realize you truly know nothing at all. I feel that is what Wharton wanted to establish and she delivered it spectacularly.