The Valley of Decision by Edith Wharton

First published: 1902

Type of plot: Historical romance

Time of work: From the mid-1700’s until the French Revolution

Locale: Northern Italy, with excursions to Milan, Rome, Florence, and Venice

Principal Characters:

• Odo Valsecca, the protagonist, an Italian aristocrat who eventually becomes the Duke of Pianura
• Fulvia Vivaldi, an ardent liberal idealist who becomes Odo’s mistress
• Abate Cantapresto, Odo’s governor
• Count Lelio Trescorre, the Prime Minister of Pianura
• Carlo Gamba, an activist in the liberal uprising

The Novel

This two-volume romance chronicles the rise to power of Odo Valsecca during the intellectual and political tumult which preceded the French Revolution. During his childhood and early manhood, Odo comes in close contact with all the major factions—the peasantry, the clergy, the liberal freethinkers, and the nobility—which have a vital stake in maintaining or subverting the antiquated power structure based on rigid class distinctions and superstitious religious traditions. How Odo’s actions and ideals are shaped by these forces and the traditions that they represent is the focus of the novel. He comes to the throne with high ideals and expectations and the zeal of a reformer, only to discover that compassion and logic are no match for superstition and self-interest.

As a child reared in extreme poverty by peasants on his mother’s estate, Odo experiences at firsthand the brutality of the feudal system. He escapes the drudgery of this life by daydreaming; he feels a “melancholy kinship” with the suffering face of Saint Francis of Assisi painted on the chapel walls.

Once he is seen as a possible heir to his ailing cousin, the duke, Odo is brought to court and indulged in the luxuries of the ruling class. As the years pass, he grows increasingly comfortable with the superficial life of the aristocracy, a life which “made manners the highest morality, and conversation the chief end of man.” Although he retains a sense that society needs to be restructured, he is repeatedly drawn into the silken web of sensuality, a world in which “sensation ruled supreme” and “nowhere was the mind arrested by a question or an idea.”

Odo’s love of beauty, romance, and reform takes on new meaning when he attends a meeting of freethinkers, a group of literati who meet surreptitiously to discuss forbidden economic, philosophical, and religious questions. Here, he believes, are men who lead “a life in dignified contrast to the wasteful and aimless existence of the nobility.” Here, too, he meets the beautiful Fulvia Vivaldi, who comes to symbolize for him “his best aims and deepest failure.” Through her, he romanticizes the whole concept of reform and becomes convinced that good intentions will result in social improvements.

When Fulvia is exiled because of her liberal views on church and state, Odo is again tempted by the sumptuous life of the privileged. As heir-presumptive to the throne, he is required to travel to the courts of Turin, Milan, Rome, Florence, and Venice. After various travels, adventures, and political intrigues, Odo is reunited with Fulvia and, upon the death of his cousin, becomes Duke of Pianura. For social and economic reasons, he marries his cousin’s widow and takes Fulvia as his mistress. Together, Odo and Fulvia attempt to put into practice the liberal principles, espoused by the freethinkers, which would lessen the stranglehold which the nobles and clergy have on the peasantry.

They encounter resistance from all sides. Most vehement are the peasants, who, urged on by a manipulative clergy, vigorously protest the reforms which would benefit them. On the day that the duke signs the new constitution guaranteeing greater freedom, he appears in public with Fulvia only to see her shot by an angry mob. After her death, Odo’s desire—whether for reform, revenge, power, or life itself—is gone. He returns to the reactionary, dictatorial ways of his predecessors. By then, however, the bloody insurrections in France have spread to Italy. He is forced from the throne. He leaves Pianura almost willingly, with a brief stop before the picture of Saint Francis, more of an exile than the frightened nine-year-old boy who began the story.

The Characters

Odo Valsecca is a man divided. His sensitivity, his love of beauty, proves to be both his most admirable trait and his greatest weakness. He is a sensual idealist who romanticizes his love for liberty in Fulvia. This causes him to underestimate the passionate intensity of both the reactionaries and the revolutionaries. Although he has the reader’s sympathy, he does not earn his or her complete approval. He is well-intentioned—and consequently virtually unique in a world in which the lure of power and appearance are almost irresistible. Yet his early indulgence in the pleasures at court proves to be his Achilles’ heel. He is not so much torn between two worlds as he is easily diverted from his interest in liberty by luxury. Even after meeting Fulvia, Odo finds himself, amid the splendor of Venice, wondering “Why should today always be jilted for tomorrow, sensation sacrificed to thought?”

Although he travels widely, experiences life both in a hovel and at court, and comes in close contact with political opportunists and idealists, Odo’s character undergoes little development. In making Odo’s life the focus for the conflicts of a multitude of political ambitions and ideals in eighteenth century Italy, Wharton makes him too impressionable to be fully convincing. He becomes little more than an emblem for a confused and turbulent age. His high aims and his ultimate failure lack any tragic dimensions.

Odo begins his reign believing “that this new gospel of service was the base on which all sovereignty must henceforth repose.” Yet as his reforms are misinterpreted or mistrusted and as he loses the support of the peasants as well as the nobles, the liberals as well as the clergy, Odo begins to see himself as “a prisoner of his own folly.” He ends by believing that he is simply “acting out the inevitable.”

His mistress, Fulvia, is even less fully realized than Odo. From beginning to end she remains an impassioned idealist. From the beginning, her nobility of mind is an inspiration to the vacillating Odo. Yet her life is a too thinly veiled allegory to awaken any deep sympathy in the reader. All of her thoughts and feelings are directed to the service of a single cause. Even her affection for Odo is inextricably interwoven with her desire to see him initiate the reforms which she believes will free mankind from outdated beliefs and superstitions. She becomes, for the reader as well as for Odo, “a formula rather than a woman.” Near the end, she becomes increasingly dogmatic and shrill. Odo realizes that “to a spirit like Fulvia’s it might become possible to shed blood in the cause of tolerance.”

Wharton is much more successful in drawing vivid and memorable portraits of the minor characters. Odo’s grossly overweight governor, Abate Cantapresto, groaning under the “double burden of flesh and consequence,” is both a ludicrous figure and a shrewd opportunist who misses no chance to ingratiate himself with his superiors or to grow prosperous as Odo’s prospects brighten. He instructs his young charge early in the rules for success in an amoral world: The only thing necessary “to complete enjoyment of the fruits of this garden of Eden . . . is discretion.”

Count Trescorre, too, advises the youthful Odo to “form no sentimental ties but in his own society or in the world of pleasure.” The ambitious count, intelligent and polished, is a vivid portrait of the nobility whose sole passion is power. He is a master of political intrigue, with “the cool aim of the man who never wastes a shot.” He carries on an affair with the duchess while making himself indispensable to her husband, the duke. Even though he plots against Odo’s rise to power, Trescorre manages to become his prime minister.

The hunchback Carlo Gamba has pledged his life to overthrowing the system which permits—even encourages—the excesses and abuses of the nobility. He is a colorful figure: embittered, sarcastic, and a shrewd political activist. Odo meets him when they are both boys who together explore the castle at Pianura. Gamba, who describes himself as “the servant of your illustrious mother’s servants,” tells the young Odo, “Call me Brutus . . . for Brutus killed a tyrant.” Gamba reluctantly comes to trust Odo once Odo returns to Pianura to become duke. The friendship between those two men of different stations is one of the most intriguing relationships in the novel.

Critical Context

The Valley of Decision, Wharton’s first full-length novel, was preceded by three novellas, a volume of poetry, and a nonfiction volume, The Decoration of Houses (1897). The close attention to detail and design in the latter proved to be extremely valuable in her effort to evoke the myriad sights and life-styles of eighteenth century Italy. It is one of only three historical novels of her long career, the others being The Age of Innocence (1920) and the posthumously published The Buccaneers (1938). In a sense, The Valley of Decision might be seen as her first novel of manners, although it is very different from her careful scrutiny of upper-class New York society in her later novels.

The novel is also a harbinger of the social criticism which is an important quality in the later work. Although the characters are rather stock romantic figures, the insight into social conditions is penetrating. Wharton displays a remarkably evenhanded approach in her presentation of diverse segments of society. She demonstrates that the pride and prejudice within a social system run very deep. One reason why Odo’s reforms do not succeed is his failure to understand that prejudice and superstition have become “a habit of thought so old that it had become instinctive. . . . To hope to eradicate it was like trying to drain all the blood from a man’s body without killing him.”

Wharton wrote during an age of political and social progressivism. Her first novel is impressive in its balanced view of the evils both of the established order and of reform movements. As in her later novels, she leaves the reader not with answers but with a series of disturbing questions.

Bibliography

Ammons, Elizabeth. Edith Wharton’s Argument with America. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980. Ammons proposes that Wharton’s “argument with America” concerns the freedom of women, an argument in which she had a key role during three decades of significant upheaval and change. This engaging book examines the evolution of Wharton’s point of view in her novels and discusses the effect of World War I on Wharton. Contains a notes section.

Bell, Millicent, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Edith Wharton. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Essays on The Age of Innocence, Summer, The House of Mirth, The Fruit of the Tree, and The Valley of Decision, as well as on Wharton’s handling of manners and race. Bell gives a critical history of Wharton’s fiction in her introduction. Includes a chronology of Wharton’s life and publications and a bibliography.

Bendixen, Alfred, and Annette Zilversmit, eds. Edith Wharton: New Critical Essays. New York: Garland, 1992. Studies of The House of Mirth, The Fruit of the Tree, Summer, The Age of Innocence, Hudson River Bracketed, and The Gods Arrive, as well as on Wharton’s treatment of female sexuality, modernism, language, and gothic borrowings. There is an introduction and concluding essay on future directions for criticism. No bibliography.

Benstock, Shari. No Gifts from Chance: A Biography of Edith Wharton. New York: Scribner’s, 1994. A valuable work by a noted Wharton scholar, this supplements but does not supplant Lewis’s biography. Divided into sections on “The Old Order,” “Choices,” and “Rewards.” Includes a chronology of works by Wharton, a bibliography, notes, and index.

Dwight, Eleanor. Edith Wharton: An Extraordinary Life. New York: Abrams, 1994. A lively succinct biography, copiously illustrated. Includes detailed notes, chronology, and bibliography.

Gimbel, Wendy. Edith Wharton: Orphancy and Survival. New York: Praeger, 1984. Drawing upon psychoanalytic theories and feminist perspectives, Gimbel analyzes the four works that she sees as key to understanding Wharton: The House of Mirth, Ethan Frome, Summer, and The Age of Innocence. The analyses of these works, with their deeply psychological overtones, are well worth reading.

Lewis, R. W. B. Edith Wharton: A Biography. 2 vols. New York: Harper and Row, 1975. An extensive study on Wharton, who Lewis calls “the most renowned writer of fiction in America.” Notes that Wharton thoughtfully left extensive records, made available through the Beinecke Library at Yale, on which this biography is based. Essential reading for serious scholars of Wharton or for those interested in her life and how it shaped her writing.

Lindberg, Gary H. Edith Wharton and the Novel of Manners. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1975. Presents Wharton’s style with a keen understanding of the ritualism of the social scenes in her work. Strong analytical criticism with a good grasp of Wharton’s use of irony.