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A review by helgamharb
The Touchstone by Edith Wharton
5.0
We live in our own souls as in an unmapped region, a few acres of which we have cleared for our habitation; while of the nature of those nearest us we know but the boundaries that march with ours.
In order to be able to marry the woman he loves, our protagonist Stephen Glennard anonymously sells the private letters written to him by another woman, a famous authoress now deceased.
After the deed is done and the letters are published, he has married his beloved and has become prosperous, an extreme sense of guilt, remorse and shame overwhelms him.
Will he be able to confess and clean his conscience and lighten the weight of guilt?
We can’t always tear down the temples we’ve built to the unclean gods, but we can put good spirits in the house of evil- the spirits of mercy and shame and understanding, that might never have come to us if we hadn’t been in such great need.
In order to be able to marry the woman he loves, our protagonist Stephen Glennard anonymously sells the private letters written to him by another woman, a famous authoress now deceased.
After the deed is done and the letters are published, he has married his beloved and has become prosperous, an extreme sense of guilt, remorse and shame overwhelms him.
Will he be able to confess and clean his conscience and lighten the weight of guilt?
We can’t always tear down the temples we’ve built to the unclean gods, but we can put good spirits in the house of evil- the spirits of mercy and shame and understanding, that might never have come to us if we hadn’t been in such great need.