Madame De Treymes

Edith Wharton set this short novel in the Paris she knew intimately, where American money met an old French aristocracy governed by rules no outsider could read. John Durham loves Fanny de Malrive, an American trapped in a failed marriage to a French nobleman, and he wants her free to marry him. Her release depends on the family, and above all on her worldly sister-in-law, the Madame de Treymes of the title, whose motives Durham cannot begin to measure. Wharton turns a simple wish into a study of loyalty, sacrifice, and the price a closed society exacts. Compact and precisely observed, it shows her gift for moral suspense at its sharpest. Free to read in PDF and EPUB.