The Other Two

Edith Wharton’s short story “The Other Two,” published in The Descent of Man in 1904, is an ironic exploration of marriage and divorce. Mr. Waythorn, a rich New York stockbroker, and Mrs. Alice Waythorn, twice divorced, are newlyweds. While divorce is stigmatized at the time, society has excused Alice’s divorces and approves of her new marriage to Mr. Waythorn. Yet Mr. Waythorn soon finds out that he has not fully understood the consequences of his wife’s divorces. Neither of them can escape Alice’s two earlier marriages, as they find themselves caught in situations involving the lives of her two ex-husbands, “the other two.”

Part 1

Mr. and Mrs. Waythorn have cut their honeymoon short due to the illness of Lily Haskett, Mrs. Alice Waythorn’s daughter from her first marriage to Mr. Haskett. The narrator provides limited background on Alice’s first marriage; society had “excused” her divorce since she married so young and “as nothing was known of Mr. Haskett it was easy to believe the worst of him” (Part 1). As for her second marriage to Gus Varick, society excused this divorce as well since “even Varick’s staunchest supporters admitted that he was not meant for matrimony” (Part 1).