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“The Dilettante,” is a sly and subtle tale about a man Thursdale who tried to play things very carefully with two women in his life. He prided himself on his apt pupil: “He had taught a good many women not to betray their feelings. And Vervain just has been the one of them , accuratly the best one. She was under a seven-year training of Thursdale ,who finally got the skill of reticences and evasions. A skill almost equal to Thursdale’s, just this finest work will be discarded by this man and replaced by another woman .So this time, Vervain decieded to take a revenge on this man ,she finally succeeded by tricking Thursdale into revealing an undisguised emotion, and—perhaps—gains a triumph by ending his engagement with Miss Gaynor .
She was the fiancée of Thursdale, and now who was just falling in love with this man. On the surface, she was a happy woman who owned the love from Thursdale, but actually, she was an another work of this man, maybe the next Vervain. She was the lover of Thursdale, but actually, she was no more a lover of him than a work of art of Thursdale. She was under a seven-years’ training of this man to perfectly suit his taste, be cut in bits, and used, finally be discarded by him. A man who was called as the dilettante by Wharton. He treated himself as an artist, and was good at playing and training his women. The metaphor of a group of men in New York society of that time.
1.Social naturalism (Drawing-Room Naturalism) In her novels, she presented characters who are aware of the social forces arrayed against them, forces that prevent them from expressing original thoughts or becoming autonomous selves. These characters may wish to be realist characters in possession of an essential self, but they are pressured into living as naturalist characters subject to a tyranny of appearance that grants them limited agency. While realist characters are allowed a self-defining ability to act—permitted “to do” first in order “to be” themselves—Wharton's characters, especially her female characters, are often allowed merely “to be” passive constructions of external forces.And Vervain just be this kind of powerless naturalistic figure in this story. Drawing-room Naturalism: Wharton always made an explicit connection between the rooms of a large house and the psychology of upper-class women . “atmosphere of tacit intelligence which Mrs. Vervain imparted to her and the drawing-room at once enveloped him in that very furniture .” “The door closed on him, and she hid her eyes from the dreadful emptiness of the room”
2.Sharp-edged irony Thursdale who was called as “The dilettante” by Wharton. She creats and re-creats the dilettante bachelor figures in her novels. The “artist manque”,who looks at life with an air of detachment. These dilettantes are spectators, critics who try to avoid involving themselves too much in the world around them; they are men whose fine critical sensibilities and tastes render them incapable of living a full life and of creating art. These male authors who were always paying their attention on their fames or their status but not the true quality of their works.Obviously, Wharton just wanted to criticize this kind of man in her society. The most important “dilettante” in Wharton’s life was, perhaps, Wharter berry, Who gave a very big influnce on Wharton’s writing.
3. Feminist resistances More often, however, Wharton’s social victims are intelligent women who recognize society’s harmful effect on their personal development. In her drawing-room naturalism there is always a struggle of individuals to resist a socially constructed sense of self. That struggle for individuality occurs amid impersonal social forces that prevent self –definition. “Girls are not what they were in my days; they are no longer forbidden to contemplate the relation of the sexes.” “She thinks the pound of flesh you took was a little too near the heart.”
“The door closed on him, and she hid her eyes from the dreadful emptiness of the room” The last sentence representing her inner self, the “empty” drawing room forces Mrs. Vervain to acknowledge her lack of individuality. Revealing the bitterness and confinement of females at that time.
