26 pages • 52 minutes read
Edith WhartonThe Other Two
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1904A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Home
At home, Waythorn feels safe, protected by the warm soothing space of his own walls, buffeted from the urban chaos that shoves strangers together indiscriminately. When he sees Varick on the train, they are literally shoved together, to which Varick exclaims to Waythorn: “I was beginning to feel like a pressed flower” (Part 2). It is a relief for Waythorn to come home and be surrounded by his possessions. The story opens with him lounging by his drawing-room hearth, waiting for his wife and his meal, simultaneously.
But the privacy, power, and intimacy that Waythorn delights in inside of these wealthy spaces full of luxurious objects is abruptly denied when he realizes that his wife’s ex-husband Mr. Haskett will be visiting. Waythorn is immediately uneasy with his inability to stop this man’s access to his home. He wants to stay away from home as long as he can, but, ironically, he runs into his wife’s other ex-husband, Mr. Varick, in public—first on a train and then in a restaurant.
Waythorn finally meets Haskett, discovering him in his library. He is deeply unnerved, especially as he is taken aback by Haskett’s appearance, which is nothing like what he expected. He loses his mask of calm, retreating into his room where he is embarrassed by his “womanish sensibility” (Part 3). He then hears Haskett, being taken deep inside the house, upstairs, “not a corner of the house but was open to him” (Part 3).
Even though Waythorn eventually grows used to both Haskett and Varick, he is caught off guard again when, not only Haskett, but also Varick visit him in the intimacy of his library. Wharton luxuriates in the detail of their “blended cigar-smoke” (Part 5), showing how they are all intimately bound in this domestic world despite Waythorn’s best efforts.
Coffee and Tea
Coffee and tea are not merely to satisfy thirst. They indicate rituals of the leisure class, rituals that signify membership in a life devoted to luxury and ease. While Varick is seen leisurely enjoying a meal alone at a restaurant, Haskett’s meals are shown quite differently. In the beginning of the story, his anticipation of dinner is ruined by the announcement that Haskett will be visiting his home. The next day, while observing Varick’s leisurely meal, Waythorn instead must rush through his lunch. While Varick enjoys a coffee with brandy after his meal, Waythorn’s anticipation of his coffee after dinner is ruined when his wife adds brandy to his coffee, clearly thinking of Varick’s preferences rather than his own.
In the final scene, Waythorn seems as if he is about to have another disrupted ritual when his wife prepares tea for all three of her husbands. Will he have tea with the men or not? But when he sees the “other two” welcome her gesture, there is little he can do but laugh and do the same. It is a type of communion, as if Alice is blessing this curious arrangement of husbands with a formal ceremony. Although Waythorn is the last to partake, hesitating at first, he gives in with a laugh and takes the tea, finally able to satisfy his thirst.
Clothing
Haskett’s cheap tie and “shabby hat” (Part 3) are in stark contrast to Alice’s “most engaging teagown” (Part 1). It is clear that Alice’s financial standing in society has greatly increased from her first marriage to her third marriage. Waythorn is shocked by Haskett’s “shabby” appearance, as it causes him to reevaluate his whole understanding of his wife. She had led him to believe that her first marriage had ended because her first husband was a “brute” (Part 3). Instead, he starts to think the situation may have been reversed, that maybe she had been “brutish” in ending the marriage in order to have a chance for a better, richer life. He infers that her desire for better things led her to Varick and then to him.
While Alice’s beautiful clothes demonstrate her admittance into elite society, Waythorn devalues her worth by choosing a derogatory clothing metaphor to describe her: “She was ‘as easy as an old shoe’—a shoe that too many feet had worn” (Part 4). Rather than being the possessor of rare beauty, Waythorn sees that he is in possession of a common object. This crass simile shows his disgust with how she is familiar with her ex-husbands, not privileging his status. In this society, a man’s status is enhanced or detracted by the reputation of his wife. In devaluing his wife’s worth, he is simultaneously devaluing his own worth as well.
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By Edith Wharton
