The Pelican by Edith Wharton, 1898
The magic trick:
Turning a bitingly satirical joke into the story’s main theme
“The Pelican” seemed to me for much of its wordcount to be a Wharton attack on a society type. She probably went to a lecture, I thought, was annoyed by the content and decided to write a story mocking the fraudulent lecturer. The repetition of the “She’s doing it to pay for her son’s education” felt like the sarcastic bow on the satirical gift.
But I undersold the story in my initial assessment. It’s not a societal satire; it’s personal. Very personal.
The scene in the end, wherein the son in question confronts his mother in front of the narrator makes that abundantly clear. This is a story about a mother’s desperate clinging to the identity she’s built her self-worth around, even at the detriment of her own son. And that line about doing it for the son’s education? It’s not a joke at all. It’s the story’s theme.
And that’s quite a trick on Wharton’s part.
The selection:
Whether Mrs. Amyot was disheartened by the lack of sympathy between herself and her hearers, or whether the sport of arousing it had become a task, she certainly imparted her platitudes with less convincing warmth than of old. Her voice had the same confidential inflections, but it was like a voice reproduced by a gramophone: the real woman seemed far away. She had grown stouter without losing her dewy freshness, and her smart gown might have been taken to show either the potentialities of a settled income, or a politic concession to the taste of her hearers. As I listened I reproached myself for ever having suspected her of self-deception in saying that she took no pleasure in her work. I was sure now that she did it only for Lancelot, and judging from the size of her audience and the price of the tickets I concluded that Lancelot must be receiving a liberal education.
As always, join the conversation in the comments section below, on SSMT Facebook or on Twitter @ShortStoryMT.
Subscribe to the Short Story Magic Tricks Monthly Newsletter to get the latest short story news, contests and fun.
Short Story Magic Tricks 