The tension in the story functions as a way to kind of keep the women from boiling over and making the setting a violent place. The readers go to the story with descriptions of Mrs. Ansley and Mrs. Slade describing their younger selves and their relationship to their daughters. However, the tension rises because Mrs. Slade is fed up that Mrs. Ansley is trying to hold the demeanor that she’s perfect and never did anything disgraceful; therefore, leading to her exposing the real reason Mrs. Ansley got so sick because she “simply can’t bear it any longer”(30). Mrs. Slade reaching her boiling point showed that she had enough of looking like the troubled one, when Mrs. Ansley had a thing for her [now] husband and betrayed the loyalty between them.
One thought on “How does the tension in the story function? What does Wharton do to sustain it? Does it rise and fall or change or remain constant throughout? Why? What is/are the source(s) of it?”
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I completely agree with how you spoke about how tension functions in the text. What may also contribute to keeping the women from boiling over may also be the fact that Mrs. Slade would sometimes say something and Mrs. Ansley would not answer. They were sort of passive in the way they spoke to each other so that may have contributed to tension being built throughout the story along with remarks both would make about each other’s daughters and remembering the past. Do you think their relationship was ever genuine? Why do you think Mrs. Slade decided to confront Mrs. Ansley after her husband’s death instead of confronting both of them when they were both alive?