Roman Fever Research Paper

According to the The Norton Anthology of American Literature, “realism implies a rejection of romantic, heroic, exaggerated, and idealistic views of life in favor of detailed, accurate descriptions of the everyday.” Naturalism tends to be confused with realism, however, realist tend to focus more on the middle class. Naturalist have a problem with realism as they (naturalist) want to shift the focus on natural forces and how it shapes human life beyond human control. Going back to The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Edith Wharton was one to “push towards” naturalism in her writings; “Edith Wharton’s view of high society pushed toward naturalism in its sense that the rich could sometimes seem as much victims of natural forces as the poor. We see both realism and naturalism in her works, such as, in “Roman Fever.” In …show more content…
Mrs. Slade longed for her daughter Jenny to be like Babs, Alida’s daughter. Then the story of Grace Ansley’s great-aunt Harriet and how she sent her sister out one night because she wanted to spend time with a man they both loved. That’s when things got interesting. It led to the argument of who wrote a note to Grace when she was a young girl in Rome. Alida read it word for word to her, including the signature. She had hoped that by sending her out, Grace would catch Roman Fever and die. She had so much hatred for her. We learn that Grace and Alida loved the same man, Delphin Slade, growing up in Rome. At the time of the letter, Alida was engaged to Delphin and Grace had been seeing Delphin. It ends when Alida feels she had everything from Delphin, and all Grace got was a letter. However, Grace ends with saying “I had Barbara,” the daughter Alida had so long desired to have. While cheating is a part of the everyday life now, and part II deals with some psychological events, the passage is quite tragic and extreme, therefore I classify it as