'Desolation is a delicate thing': Shelley’s Poetics in Edith Wharton’s Writing

“Desolation is a delicate thing”: Shelley’s Poetics in Edith Wharton’s Writing, a talk by Dr Margarida Cadima on Thursday 11th December at 5 pm

In a letter to Margaret Terry Chandler on June 9th 1925, Edith Wharton replies to her friend’s feedback on her most recent novel thus: “No one else has noticed “desolation is a delicate thing,” or understood that the key is there.” The Mother’s Recompense was published in April 1925, but it began as the reworking of a  fragment entitled “Disintegration” that Wharton wrote in 1902. She chose as its epigraph a poignant line from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s 1820 lyrical drama Prometheus Unbound, uttered by the Sixth Spirit in Act I: “Desolation is a delicate thing” (I, 772). Wharton herself invites the reader to approach the novel from this perspective, and that it is fundamental to understanding the significance of Kate Clephane’s destiny: her escape from her husband’s family’s New York upper class society, the abandonment of her 3-year-old daughter Anne, her erring wanderings through continental Europe, her romance with a young American soldier and subsequent return to the United States following her mother-in-law’s death (at her daughter’s request). This paper presentation seeks to show the influence of Shelley’s poetry in Wharton’s life and in her own literary production, with specific emphasis on this later novel, where it is key to grasping the meaning of this titanic tale that brings together the Old and the New World, pre- and post-war society and the paradox of this newfound mother-daughter relationship that is doomed to fail.

Admission is free but booking is required due to the limited number of spaces (please write to info@keats-shelley-house.org).

Entry from 4:45 pm onwards. 

The event will also be streamed via Zoom. If you'd like to attend online, please send us an email and we'll share the link with you.

Margarida Cadima is a scholar of American literature whose work centers on ecocriticism and the transatlantic imagination, with a particular focus on Edith Wharton. She holds a PhD in English Literature (2021) from the University of Glasgow and is the author of Pastoral Cosmopolitanism in Edith Wharton’s Fiction (Anthem Press, 2023). She has lived, studied, and worked internationally: in Rome, Lisbon, Nairobi, Geneva, New York City, Paris, Glasgow, and Montbéliard. She has held teaching positions at the Université de Franche-Comté, The American University of Rome, and the University of Glasgow. Her research has been published in journals, edited collections, and she has presented at multiple international conferences.