The Glimpses of the Moon
1922
The Glimpses of the Moon, published in 1922 by Edith Wharton, is a novel that examines love, wealth, and social dynamics among affluent Americans in Europe. It follows newlyweds Susy Lansing and Nick Lansing, who enter into an unconventional marriage allowing them to pursue other romantic interests if they find better opportunities. Set against the backdrop of the 1920s, the story critiques societal expectations and explores the complexities of their financial struggles and personal relationships, making it a notable work in Wharton's oeuvre.
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“She wondered if, when human souls try to get too near each other, they do not inevitably become mere blurs to each other's vision.””
— Edith Wharton
“Well--there it was, and the fault was doubtless neither hers nor his, but that of the world they had grown up in, of their own moral contempt for it and physical dependence on it, of his half-talents and her half-principles, of the something in them both that was not stout enough to resist nor yet pliant enough to yield.””
— Edith Wharton
“Apart from the pleasure of looking at her and listening to her--of enjoying in her what others less discriminatingly but as liberally appreciated--he had the sense, between himself and her, of a kind of free-masonry of precocious tolerance and irony. They had both, in early youth, taken the measure of the world they happened to live in: they knew just what it was worth to them and for what reasons, and the community of these reasons lent to their intimacy its last exquisite touch.””
— Edith Wharton
“Perhaps, after all, Susy reflected, it was the world she was meant for, since the other, the brief Paradise of her dreams, had already shut its golden doors upon her.””
— Edith Wharton
“It had evidently not occurred to her as yet that those who consent to share the bread of adversity may want the whole cake of prosperity for themselves.””
— Edith Wharton
“Will-power, he saw, was not a thing one could suddenly decree oneself to possess. It must be built up imperceptibly and laboriously out of a succession of small efforts to meet definite objects, out of the facing of daily difficulties instead of cleverly eluding them, or shifting their burden on others.””
— Edith Wharton
“Superficially so like them all, and so eager to outdo them in detachment and adaptability, ridiculing the prejudices he had shaken off, and the people to whom he belonged, he still kept, under his easy pliancy, the skeleton of old faiths and old fashions. "He talks every language as well as the rest of us," Susy had once said of him, "but at least he talks one language better than the others.””
— Edith Wharton
“He knew enough of his subject to know that he did not know enough to write about it....””
— Edith Wharton
“He had never seen anyone pack as cleverly as Susy: the way she coaxed reluctant things into a trunk was a symbol of the way she fitted discordant facts into her life.””
— Edith Wharton
