Roman Fever

“‘That’s what our daughters think of us!’

Her companion gave a deprecating gesture. ‘Not of us individually. We must remember that. It’s just the collective modern idea of Mothers.’”

The external world of “Roman Fever” is vibrant and modern, one in which young women fly with dashing Italian aviators to Tarquinia for tea. This passage juxtaposes this modern world and its ideas with the 19th-century past of Grace and Alida. The aggregate concept of “Mother,” capitalized to stress its generalization, has less to do with persons than with a general sense that restraint, supervision, and oversight are outmoded and unfashionable.

“Mrs. Slade drew her lids together in retrospect; and for a few moments the two ladies, who had been intimate since childhood, reflected how little they knew each other. Each one, of course, had a label ready to attach to the other’s name.”

This passage underscores the disparity between long intimacy and knowledge as both women consider “how little they knew each other.” This lack of knowledge does not cause either to delay judgment, as each is willing to “label” the other with a simple word, a reduction that possibly reflects both long familiarity and a lack of detailed knowledge.

“So these two ladies visualized each other, each through the wrong end of her little telescope.”

The narrator in “Roman Fever” notes that both main characters can “label” the other—and this passage is the final judgment the narrator passes on them for their judgments. Using a visual metaphor to convey how limited their perception is, the telescope’s inversion distances each from her friend, while cropping out much of the context that makes rendering judgments more complex or complete.

“‘I was just thinking,’ she said slowly, ‘what different things Rome stands for to each generation of travellers. To our grandmothers, Roman fever; to our mothers, sentimental dangers—how we used to be guarded!—to our own daughters, no more dangers than the middle of Main Street. They don’t know it—but how much they’re missing!’”

Alida offers a short history of Rome from the perspective of 19th-century US women. For each generation, the city has different meanings, although in each instance its connotations are defined solely by the kinds of danger it might present to a young woman in search of love. For both the “grandmothers” and the “mothers,” girls must be kept away from the Colosseum at night, or “guarded,” to protect their lives, first understood in terms of disease (malaria) and then in terms of sexual morality. To always feel at home is, Alida suggests, to miss the possibility of transgression that these previous generations could enjoy. The ending of the story casts this passage in a markedly different light, however.

“The most prudent girls aren’t always prudent.”

One of the story’s concerns is what it means to “label” someone. Here, Grace tackles the issue directly. To be called prudent does not imply that one is never imprudent. To reduce a person to one quality or trait, in other words, is an over-simplification that leads to misperception and misunderstanding, a conclusion the story examines at length.

“You think I’m bluffing, don’t you? Well, you went to meet the man I was engaged to—and I can repeat every word of the letter that took you there.”

This is the first sally in the information war that changes these women’s lives. No longer able to remain silent, Alida confronts Grace about her feelings for Delphin decades before. “Panic-stricken,” Grace drops her knitting, staring at Alida as at a “ghost,” a spectral manifestation of a secret long-hidden.

“Listen, if you don’t believe me. ‘My one darling, things can’t go on like this. I must see you alone. Come to the Colosseum immediately after dark tomorrow. There will be somebody to let you in. No one whom you need fear will suspect’—but perhaps you’ve forgotten what the letter said?”

Alida’s ability to recite the letter creates a possibility—she intercepted it or Delphin revealed it—that the next revelation will immediately undercut. Buffeted, with the characters, by the rapid pace of information, the reader does not yet know what is the case. When it becomes clear a few lines later, that Alida knows this letter because she wrote it, a different interpretation emerges, one in which she toys cruelly with the feelings of a rival, most especially in the line “There will be somebody to let you in.”

“The flame of her wrath had already sunk, and she wondered why she had ever thought there would be any satisfaction in inflicting so purposeless a wound on her friend. But she had to justify herself.”

When Wharton refers to Alida’s anger as a “flame” of “wrath,” she introduces an additional meaning for the title phrase, “Roman Fever.” Here, as across the story, the idea that words can “wound,” that they are a form of violence, is stressed. The passage notes that even Alida can appreciate that petty vengeance is “purposeless” even as she notes its purpose: self-justification.

“‘I remembered…’

‘And still you went?’

‘Still I went.’”

In a culture that defines women through their husbands, the possibilities for women’s self-fulfillment are radically curtailed. This is one dimension of the emphasis put on marriage across “Roman Fever.” But, equally important, it is the story of the kind of everyday betrayals that are common in such a society—love that exists outside the bounds of propriety or destroys friendship. All the betrayals in the story happen in the context of women concerned about whom they might marry.

“Girls have such silly reasons for doing the most serious things.”

At the end of a long paragraph of self-serving explanation, which begins with a joke and ends with “pique,” Alida offers the above passage as an explanation for her behavior. As the sentence works equally well for the present as the past—the implications of her “silly” reasoning are as “serious” as an adult as they were when she was younger—the defense is markedly weak.

“The clear heaven overhead was emptied of all its gold. Dusk spread over it, abruptly darkening the Seven Hills. Here and there lights began to twinkle through the foliage at their feet.”

This brief narrative interlude relieves the mounting tension of the confrontation between Grace and Alida. Golden light from the sky is replaced with artificial light below. The serenity of the scene puts the interpersonal drama in a larger perspective, one defined by nature and the large city in front of them. As waiters scurry around the terrace, the reader is reminded that this is just one tiny slice of a vast world.

“‘I suppose I did it as a sort of joke—?’

‘A joke?’

‘Well, girls are ferocious sometimes. Girls in love especially.’”

This assertion—that cruelty should be disregarded because it was a joke—prompts further cruelty in return. The cycle, repeated across the conversation, displaces responsibility as it both disavows and inflicts violence. In the story’s closing paragraphs, the narrative shifts slightly away from Alida’s perspective, relying primarily on dialogue to communicate the narrative.

“Mrs. Ansley stood looking away from her toward the dusky secret mass of the Colosseum. ‘Well—because I didn’t have to wait that night.’”

Grace has two answers to Alida’s claim that her actions were a joke. The first, expressed in this sentence, is that she met Delphin that fateful night—because she answered the letter, a possibility that Alida had not considered. While she has preferred not to look at the Colosseum through much of this conversation, using her knitting as a shield, her revelation is accompanied by a glance at its “dusky secret mass,” both a reminder of the evening and a symbol of the secret she has long kept.