The Painless Peace of Twilight Sleep Cheryl Miller

2 2 The Painless Peace of Twilight Sleep Cheryl Miller

hen Aldous Huxley’s Upon its publication, Wharton had Brave New World was been attacked as being out of touch Wfirst published seventy- with American life (she had spent five years ago, the critical reception only eleven days in her native coun- was markedly unenthusiastic—but try since 1913), and accused of sell- it did find one appreciative reader. ing out. In the Boston Transcript, Edith Wharton, then in her seventies Dorothy Gillman wrote, “The result and living abroad in France, was not of deserting her own class is disas- a fan of the new generation of writers trous for Mrs. Wharton. She now (she detested Joyce as “pornographic,” adventures in a world which she and thought Virginia Woolf’s novels does not really know...she seems works of pure “exhibitionism”). But deliberately to set out to write a com- in Brave New World, she found a work monplace story that will delight and that spoke to many of her own res- entertain readers of serialized fic- ervations about the modern age. She tion.” Frederick Hoffman concurred, praised it as a “tragic indictment of claiming Wharton seemed “insulted our ghastly age of Fordian culture” by history,” while Carl Van Vechten, and “un chef-d’oeuvre digne de Swift” writing in The Nation, called the (“a masterpiece worthy of Swift”). “I new work, “scrupulous, clever, and suffer from a complete inability to uninspired.” read novels about a future state of Eighty years later, the novel society,” she wrote one friend, “but in remains little-read. Despite a few this case, although it pretends to be champions such as Dale M. Bauer a prophecy of the future it is really a (author of the superb study Edith cruelly true picture of the present.” Wharton’s Brave New Politics), the Huxley was flattered by Wharton’s critical consensus is that Wharton’s accolades, and wrote in response that three “Jazz Age novels” are not equal she “had ‘put the case’ already” in to her earlier works. Hermione Lee, one of her own books, the 1927 novel Wharton’s most recent biographer, Twilight Sleep. Wharton felt much finds Twilight Sleep’s satire “thin and “set up” by Huxley’s “recognition”; harsh,” while feminist critic Cynthia like Brave New World, Twilight Sleep Griffin Wolff calls it “chaotically had not been well received by critics. plotted” and “sloppy.”

The novel’s plot is indeed dis- included heavily-marked copies of jointed, its disorder meant, as Wolff T. H. Huxley (Aldous’s grandfa- recognizes, to reflect the restless- ther), Ernst Von Haeckel, George ness and constant turmoil of life Romanes, and Edvard Westermarck. in America after the Great War. Scientific themes appear often in her It focuses on Pauline Manford, the work. She drew on her knowledge wealthy, emancipated matriarch of a of anthropology and sociology (par- socially prominent New York house- ticularly Thorstein Veblen’s theory hold. Pauline, a sort of Jazz Age of conspicuous consumption) for her Mrs. Jellyby (as Lee calls her), is a great novels of the teens: The House of relentless do-gooder, taking up dona- Mirth, The Custom of the Country, and tions for Bolivian earthquake victims The Age of Innocence. One of her most and serving on endless committees famous short stories is even titled for her many causes. Meanwhile, her after Darwin’s The Descent of Man. second husband, Dexter, begins an affair with Lita, the beautiful wife of y the 1920s though, Wharton his stepson Jim. Only Nona (Pauline Bbegan to question the moral and Dexter’s daughter) and Arthur aims of modern science, particularly Wyant (Pauline’s much-abused first its ambition to relieve men of pain husband), suspect the truth. The and suffering. She was distrustful melodramatic climax comes when of a “world that believed in pana- Arthur discovers Dexter in Lita’s ceas.” As she warned one would-be bedroom, and attempts to kill Dexter. revolutionary, “The evils you rightly Instead, he shoots Nona, who had satirize will be replaced by others rushed in hoping to break off the more harmful to any sort of civilized affair. Pauline, ever worried about living.” This warning would serve as appearances, covers up the near-fatal the theme of her Jazz Age novels: The incident, and the entire family soon Glimpses of the Moon (1922), Twilight decamps overseas to avoid publicity. Sleep, and The Children (1928). In What appears on first glance to be each, she would depict a set of free- a mere domestic melodrama is really thinking moderns who believe they a searching examination of the new have “settled in advance all social, society profoundly shaped by modern religious and moral problems,” yet science and commerce. Wharton had still come “to grief over the same old long been an avid reader of what she human difficulties.” called the “the wonder-world of nine- Wharton pursued this theme most teenth century science,” and she con- forcefully in Twilight Sleep. The sidered Darwin and Herbert Spencer novel’s title refers to the mixture to be among the “greatest” of her of scopolamine and morphine phy- “formative influences.” Her library sicians administered to women to

100 ~ THE NEW ATLANTIS Copyright 2007. All rights reserved. See www.TheNewAtlantis.com for more information. THE PAINLESS PEACE OF TWILIGHT SLEEP allow them to “forget” the pains of is to be effected is modern science, childbirth. The term appears at the motivated by man’s “blind dread of end of the first chapter as Pauline physical pain.” recalls how she arranged for Lita to But the morbidity at the root of the be admitted into the choicest hospital scientific worldview is bedimmed by for the birth of her and Jim’s son. the obscuring hope of progress. Fear The procedure’s purpose was eugen- cannot be dealt with directly (say, by ic, a subtext at which Wharton hints courage), so it is evaded, kept at bay with Lita’s request that “nothing by an ever-increasing array of rem- should ‘hurt’ her” during her labor. edies and by the determined effort By relieving this pain, the advocates to think only “happy thoughts.” Like of “twilight sleep” hoped to enable Mrs. Welland in The Age of Innocence, “delicate” women like Lita and those Pauline insists on keeping her mind of her set (i.e., the upper crust) to “bright and happy.” She regards life have more children, thus provid- as “a Sunday school picnic, with ing, as the medical historian Judith lemonade and sponge cake as its Walzer Leavitt explains, “a ‘better supreme rewards.” Discussion of race for future generations.’” anything “unpleasant” is assiduously It’s a goal that Pauline, an enthu- avoided—and if it cannot be avoided, siastic disciple of modern science, then forgotten just as the drugged shares. “Of course there ought to women in “twilight sleep” forget the be no Pain,” she thinks. For Pauline, pain of labor. “avoidance of pain” is the “ultimate The forgetfulness of twilight sleep end,” and the eugenic production (and of the scientific enterprise) of offspring, using only “superbly applies not only to pain, but also sound progenitors,” is but one tactic to the past. America is the land of in modern science’s arsenal. Babies progress, its citizens so focused on are “something to be turned out the bright future they imagine they in series like Fords,” the end-prod- have no time for the past. To them, uct of “months and years of patient Europe is only the site of “obsolete Taylorized effort against the natural superstitions unworthy of enlight- human fate: anxiety, sorrow, old age.” ened Americans,” lacking in such Thus, “twilight sleep,” for Wharton, modern conveniences as plumbing, is more than just a medical procedure. dentistry, and easy divorce. Thus, the It symbolizes man’s rebellion against only culture Pauline and the others “the natural human fate,” the fool- participate in is wholly situated in ish hope that he can forget human the present: cinema, gossip rags, nature and all its attendant evils: and jazz clubs. The family’s home is pain, anger, jealousy, lust, and grief. full of books but no one ever reads The means by which this rebellion them. Dexter does attempt a course

FALL 2007~ 101 Copyright 2007. All rights reserved. See www.TheNewAtlantis.com for more information. CHERYL MILLER of literary reading, starting with that all problems can be solved in a Tallentyre’s Voltaire, which he finds a matter of minutes. With Pauline’s “revelation” since he had never heard various self-improvement exercises, of Voltaire, but his education ends Wharton lampoons the burgeoning with his second book, the first vol- self-help industry, as exemplified by ume of Macaulay, which he thinks too Émile Coué’s 1922 bestseller, Self- long. Pauline, a professed Christian, Mastery Through Conscious Auto- is flummoxed when Nona reminds Suggestion, with its recommendation her of Christ’s suffering on the cross: that the reader recite aloud every “The idea of stirring up troublesome morning the mantra: “Every day, in mysteries of Christian dogma at the every way, I am getting better and breakfast-table!” she fumes. better.” Pauline’s many gurus are Wharton’s critics may have accused also all based on real-life persons; her of being detached from modern for instance, the Mahatma, with his American life, but she remained a hip-slimming exercises, is drawn keen, if disapproving, observer of from the popular yogi, Paramahansa modes and fashions. She stashed Yogananda, who gave lectures at away stacks of news clippings and Carnegie Hall with such pseudosci- advertisements heralding the newest entific titles as “Everlasting Youth: detergent or latest scientific “break- Psycho-Physiological Rejuvenation through.” Twilight Sleep is stuffed of Cells by Recharging the Body with these researches, with Pauline Battery.” sampling every 1920s fad: psycho- Wharton captures too the hygien- analysis, New Age spiritualism, self- ic craze that swept America in the help books, consumer science, drugs, 1920s, with hundreds of new clean- plastic surgery, and, of course, eugen- ing products suddenly lining the ics. “America really seemed to have store shelves. Pauline is obsessed an immediate answer for everything,” with proper hygiene, even install- Pauline thinks, “from the treatment ing a new ventilating system in her of the mentally deficient to the elu- cow-stables. Her bathroom is like cidation of the profoundest religious “a biological laboratory, with its mysteries.” white tiles, polished pipes, weighing Those alleged answers become a machines, mysterious appliances for subject of Wharton’s vicious satire. douches, gymnastics, and ‘physical Just a page from Pauline’s crowded culture.’” She even smells, her hus- calendar (“7.30 Mental uplift. 7.45 band thinks, of “a superior disinfec- breakfast. 8. Psycho-analysis. 8.15 tant.” Control is the driving force See cook.”) affords Wharton a crack behind Pauline’s mania for hygiene; it at the modern desire for immediate is her attempt to fit one more aspect gratification and control, the idea of life into her “Taylorized” routine

(after Frederick Winslow Taylor’s consultations. Instead, she is various- Principles of Scientific Management) ly diagnosed as suffering from fatigue and thereby render it innocuous. or “brain- exhaustion.” Wharton cap- Even sin is to be scientifically man- tures here what Huxley calls “the aged. “Being prepared to suffer is contemporary tendency for super- really the way to create suffering,” stition to be magical rather than Pauline counsels Nona. “And creat- religious—to aim at specific acts of ing suffering is creating sin, because power, such as hip-slimming, rather sin and suffering are really one.” than at a theory of the cosmos.” It’s a Pauline’s lesson to Nona illustrates tendency, as Huxley put it in a letter what Christopher Lasch describes as to Wharton, that Pauline “beauti- the translation of moral categories, fully and ruthlessly exemplifies”; the such as sin or evil, to medical catego- consummate consumer, she acquires ries, like pain or disease. To Pauline, more and more but cannot identify sin is a health problem to be solved the end toward which she strives. by “the incalculable resources of “They all had these colossal plans for American hygiene.” She “want[s] to acquiring power,” Wharton writes, de-microbe life,” to “whitewash” pain “and then, when it was acquired, and suffering as she would “disinfect” what came of it but bigger houses, a dirty cellar. Every problem in life is more food, more motors...and more amenable to the latest “moral tonic.” self- righteous philanthropy?” Hearing of Lita’s plans to divorce, she dismisses them as “frustrations,” auline rationalizes her never- the “new psychological thing,” and Pending expenditures as the price arranges to have Lita visit her spiri- of “expressing herself ”—the only tual advisor for an “operation.” end, besides the avoidance of pain, she Indeed, all of Pauline’s visits to her can imagine. She is “all for personal various spiritual gurus have the air of freedom, self expression,” and never a doctor’s visit, with their emphasis wants to “feel under any obligation.” on exercise, massage, and “hip-slim- Likewise, Lita tells Nona she doesn’t ming.” Alvah Loft, who advertises “feel like duties,” and claims she can- himself as “the Busy Man’s Christ,” not be herself in her marriage: “I’m practices “operations”—“spiritual sort of an all-around fake.” vacuum-cleanings” which promise to Pauline is a fake, too; she ulti- remove the “frustrations” from his mately has no real self to express. clients “as if they’d been adnoids.” In her quest for control, Pauline has Pauline is constantly celebrating the annihilated her self, numbing with spirituality and soulfulness of her drugs or facile “happy talk” any real newest guru, but the state of Pauline’s feeling she has. Like Lita, she is com- soul is curiously absent from all her pletely externally directed, lacking

FALL 2007~ 103 Copyright 2007. All rights reserved. See www.TheNewAtlantis.com for more information. CHERYL MILLER any inner life of her own. Terrified Pauline instinctively recoils from at the thought of spending an hour this vision of a sinless world—but alone, she must be constantly around she is powerless to respond, for it people, and yet she is unable to forge is a vision to which she too sub- a connection with anyone, including scribes. She had also abandoned a her own husband. Intimacy to her is husband rather than betray herself, “the tireless discussion of facts.” To and she had viewed Arthur’s pain stave off any hint of “frustration,” and wounded pride at the divorce she throws herself into an endless as unreasonable and helplessly old- flurry of appointments and dinner fashioned. But now that Pauline’s parties. “She enjoys it as much as son, Jim, is the victim, she, like Nona, other women do love-making,” her comes to question the “new idea of husband thinks. marriage.” Leaving Lita’s house, she But Pauline cannot completely wonders, shake off the old notions of moral- ity and sin, although she is unable Perhaps, after all, her own prin- to articulate them when challenged. ciples were really obsolete to her children. Only, what was to Her “moral muscles” have “atro- take their place? Human nature phied” with disuse. She is horrified had not changed as fast as social by Lita’s stage ambitions and the lack usage, and if Jim’s wife left him of shame Lita evinces over a photo of nothing could prevent his suffer- herself dancing half-nude in one of ing in the same old way. the tabloids. But her protest over the photo’s indecency dies on her Pauline is not heartless, but in lips at Lita’s assertion that she was her unwillingness to countenance only “expressing” herself. (“She says pain, she inadvertently hurts those she wants to express her personal- she claims to love. She thinks she ity? Well, every one has the right to has handled her first divorce blame- do that—I should think it wrong of lessly, but she doesn’t see that Arthur me to interfere.”) Later, when Lita has been devastated by her loss and blithely assumes that Jim is really is slipping into alcoholism. In her her and Dexter’s “love child,” Pauline mania to save the world, she neglects becomes outraged at the perceived her own family, leaving her daughter insult. But she finds to her horror alone to cope with their various that Lita does not mean it as an troubles to disastrous results. Nona, “impertinence”; she is undisturbed the “bewildered little Iphigenia” of by adultery. For Lita, the only “real the novel, is nearly killed—a “vicari- wickedness” is to be untrue to one’s ous sacrifice” to Pauline’s folly. self, in this case, “to go on living with Only Nona seeks to understand her a man you don’t love.” responsibilities, to try to find “the

104 ~ THE NEW ATLANTIS Copyright 2007. All rights reserved. See www.TheNewAtlantis.com for more information. THE PAINLESS PEACE OF TWILIGHT SLEEP best new way of being decent.” “What Before, she had shared Pauline’s view troubles me,” she tells Pauline, “is the that divorce is just another form of plain human tangle, as it remains housekeeping, a way to clean out “all after we’ve done our best to straight- kinds of domestic evils” and start en it out.” Pauline may pride herself anew. But now she begins to doubt. on being psychic, but it is Nona who The “simple reasonable request” for sees the far-reaching and unexpected divorce sounds very differently on effects people can have on one anoth- “the lips of the other partner, the er. She is the first to notice Lita’s partner who still had a stake in the disquiet and her father’s infatuation affair....It was one thing to theorize with Lita. And while Pauline turns on the detachability of human beings, a blind eye to anything “unpleas- another to watch them torn apart by ant,” Nona seeks out those in pain the bleeding roots.” and tries to comfort them. She alone That folly leads to more than just visits the family maid, Maisie, at the family tragedy, though. The sickness hospital while her mother is having of the Manford household is shared an operation. Seeing Jim’s misery by the entire society. Just as the twi- after Lita deserts him, she suffers light sleep drugs have inured Lita to with him: “Where, for instance, did the pains of labor, so have the con- one’s own self end and one’s neigh- stant “druggings” and “thrills” of the bor begin?” Suffering, she realizes, Jazz Age inured her and her coevals can have moral worth. When Pauline to any true human emotion or con- chastises her for worrying too much nection. Childbirth connects us to about Jim, insisting that “we ought one another; it is—literally, primi- to refuse ourselves to pain,” Nona tively—the basic link between the counters, “Did Christ?” Someone, she individual and society. The modern thinks, must remember that “such desire to avoid the pain of childbirth things as wickedness, suffering and illustrates not just the desire to avoid death had not yet been banished from pain, but also the extent of our alien- the earth.” ation from one another. Nona’s pain in her brother’s loss— The pain of childbirth, recall, is and with it her recognition of the one of the curses of original sin. The duties people owe one another— quest to end that pain, to end all pain, leads her to renounce the man she is finally a quest to make man anew. loves rather than break up his mar- But as Nona finds, the experience of riage. Like Ellen Olenska, another pain is fundamental to empathy; only of Wharton’s tragic heroines, Nona through suffering can we understand realizes she cannot “have [her] hap- what men and women owe one anoth- piness made out of a wrong—an er. Twilight sleep blissfully closes the unfairness—to somebody else.” eyes— closes them to the pain of

FALL 2007~ 105 Copyright 2007. All rights reserved. See www.TheNewAtlantis.com for more information. CHERYL MILLER others, to this broken world of grief quest. This world needs our eyes and woe. Perfected man, man with- wide open. out pain, is insensate and completely alone. The quest for perfection is a Cheryl Miller, a writer living in quest for a self-destructive blind- Washington, D.C., is a 2007 Phillips ness. It is, in the end, an untenable Foundation Journalism Fellow.