Roman Fever and Other Stories Lesson Plan

While Edith Wharton is primarily known for her novels about turn-of-the-century New York high society, she also wrote dozens of short stories. In these brief pieces of fiction, Wharton contemplates the tension between private life and public society, gender roles, cultural changes, and the inherent hypocrisy in New York's high society. Scholar Cynthia Griffin Wolff notes that Wharton's short stories "generally focus upon a single crucial insight" and praises the writer's skill for "dissecting the elements of emotional subtleties, moral ambiguities, and the implications of social constrictions." Her stories invoke a certain time and place, and this specificity allows Wharton's writing to...