The Luxe

A quotation from The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton prefaces this story of the seemingly last days of Elizabeth Holland, commencing with her funeral and then going back to recount the events leading up to this sad event. Elizabeth is the daughter of one of New York’s oldest families and in 1899 has returned from Paris to find her world turned upside down by the revelation that the family fortune has dwindled and that a marriage to a wealthy man is all that will save her mother from scandal. The same message is being given to Henry Schoonmaker whose dissolute life needs to come to an end because his father has political ambitions. The scene is set for these two young people to be forced into a marriage neither of them wants but not to fall in love as one might expect. Elizabeth has a secret lover and Henry falls for Diana, Elizabeth’s sister and the drama that ensues is played out against the background of the New York society that Edith Wharton portrayed so well in her novels.

Edith Wharton this is not but still eminently readable, spelling out very clearly to today’s young women the helplessness of women at the turn of the century, to be married off to the highest bidder like Elizabeth or to be turned out like her hapless maid. For most of the story the plight of these women is well described but the ending is well flagged up setting up a sequel or even a series. It is debatable whether the lovely Elizabeth would actually have given herself to the stable boy Will and it is not clear whether she had done this before she went to Paris or not, but she wasted no time on her return. Given her upbringing and the knowledge that she would be expected to marry well, the prospect of pregnancy would surely have made her think twice. Diana her sister and Henry are strongly drawn but the two sides of Elizabeth are less credible and her treatment of her maid whom she had known from childhood does not ring true. An enjoyable read for a wet afternoon, this makes one hope for a sequel perhaps about Diana?