tinctness with which it is depicted so boldly detached, so painful to the reader. Distinctness, though, is perhaps the only artistic refuge, except style, from the harsh subject, or that one with which the artist's sympathies are imperfect. One suspects that distinctness has sometimes been her refuge in drawing the masculine character. Aside from the cool, grave cleverness of temperament which is the primum mobile of their virtues, her men have distinctness as their chief merit. They are rather more distinct than masculine.
If Mrs. Wharton is anywhere to be found dealing with qualities decidedly masculine, it would be in the case of Ethan Frome. His jealousy was a very little modified and very masculine thing, compared to which the complicated emotion of Owen Leath seems somewhat trifling and the violence of George Dorset somewhat hectic. His rather aboriginal "big talk" is something to smile at, but a manly failing. His confused stammer when his wife caught him in his one fabrication, showed a masculine lack of "suppleness in deceiving," much inferior to George Darrow's capacity for quiet half-truths. His whole simplicity in the hands of his wife sets him apart from the average of Mrs. Wharton's heroes: Mr. Langhope, for instance, was managed by his old friend Mrs. Ansell, but only with difficulty; George Darrow was a subtler person than either Sophy Viner or Mrs. Leath; even the fascinating Miss Bart was not superior to Lawrence Selden; and Justine Brent's benevolent imposition on her husband was possibly less because he was not clever than because she was extremely clever. Ethan's pleasure in his masculine accomplishments, his inarticulateness in the presence of Mattie, his clumsy wit, his gropings after the proper word—such things bespeak a masculine ingenuousness often submerged and sometimes subverted in the calm drawing-rooms that figure in Mrs. Wharton's pages.
On another side, however, he shows the qualities that run counter and ally him with the Dagonets and Fairfords and Madame de Treymes: he has the undeveloped elements of their cool and sober cleverness, their intelligence, their fineness of feeling, their soundness of temperament, and, despite his clumsiness, their delicacy. He tortured himself as to the fancied vulgarity or inappropriateness of the things he said to Mattie Silver; he was at a disadvantage in his quarrel with his wife because of his disgust at its sordidness and venom. At the end he was held back from seeking his freedom by his moral integrity.
