Edith Wharton Roman Fever

Edith Wharton’s “Roman Fever” is centered around the envy toward that Mrs. Slade tenaciously harbors for Mrs. Ansley. It is this envy that drives Mrs. Slade to lash out at Mrs. Ansley, and that ultimately leads her to experience more shame, pain and suffering herself. By emphasizing on nature and the emotions of the characters, Edith Wharton is able to use theme of battles to reveal the deeper layers of her characters and form a critique on the life of upper class women at her time. This story takes place in Rome, known historically as a vast warring empire. As Mrs. Ansley and Mrs. Slade speak, they experience a kind of war themselves. The battle is seen through the diction of the story and the way the women react to each other. After being
Just as Mrs. Ansley had used roman fever to frighten Mrs. Slade in their youth, Mrs. Slade attempted to use it as a weapon to stop Mrs. Ansley from loving Delphin. Wharton establishes roman fever to have two significances: the literal illness, and the punishment of death received for loving a man that another woman loves. The cold is thus related to roman fever as the “dreadfully wicked great-[aunt’s]… poor little sister caught the fever” that killed her in the Forum, and it “[gets] deathly cold after sunset.” Based on this premise, Wharton is able to use the cold to emphasize changes in the mood. Early on in the story, Mrs. Ansley mentions that they will be okay on the lofty terrace of the roman restaurant because “Down below in the Forum, it does get deathly cold, all of a sudden… but not [there].” However, by the ending of the story, Mrs. Ansley is on the terrace and says that “It is cold here. We’d better go.” Wharton is thus able to show that the emotions of these women are no longer being reflected by their environment. Instead, their actions have now made the terrace cold, representing the sense of death and danger than they have created in their