This paper briefly summarizes the plots of two of Edith Wharton's stories and then examines the
social statement Wharton
was making about the times in which she lived. The
paper looks at Wharton's treatment of the gender
roles, class roles, and relationships in Victorian society and how her stories depict people of the Victorian era as having a dualism of behavior - the outer personification of conformity, and the inner, private life that allows for deviancy and experimentation.