The Other Two

Unlike Crane’s poetry and story “The Open Boat”, Edith Wharton’s “The Other Two” illustrates how nature comes out in our emotions, and how forces beyond our power, like society (and marriage, depending on the time period), can have absolute control over us. The husband in this story started out being more than a little confident, happy with his choice of wife, despite her twice-divorced status. He seemed to be proud of the way she didn’t care what others thought about her, and he was especially happy with the way she cared for her child, but not overly so. When her first husband entered the picture again, he was not thrilled, and neither was she, but he told her not to worry, and was happy to see that she “obeyed”. He saw her as an object, and the idea of her first husband’s visit threatened him. Soon he met up with her second husband, and he began to think about his wife’s earlier marriages. When he saw her later, she did not seem to be as charming as she once had been to him. But then, he took in her beauty, and “yielded to the joy of possessorship”- he was filled with a sense of ownership for her. At least until she mistakenly made the same drink she used to make for her ex-husband.
As Waythorn began to have more dealings with his wife’s past husbands he began to think less and less of her; the fact that she “took her change of husbands like a change of weather” bothered him immeasurably. To him, she was “as easy as an old shoe”, one that had been worn by too many feet. She was no longer special, no longer just his. He felt like part-owner in something he didn’t know the first thing about.
Alice used the only thing available to her- marriage- to move up the social food chain. Each time, she moved farther up, until she married Waythorn. She did so without regrets on the surface, but in shadowed looks and veiled comments, Alice’s unhappiness is seen at various times. She is a victim of the time, in a way. She may have found happiness with Waythorn, she seems happy with him most of the time, but her inability to freely express herself and her thoughts never lets us know. Even in the last scene, when she is confronted by all three of her husbands, she has to conform to social conventions and be polite, regardless of what she really may have wanted to do. Even in this day and age, that would be have been an awkward situation; I can’t imagine how crazy it would have been back then.