The repudiation of sisterhood in Edith Wharton's "Pomegranate Seed."

Studies in Short Fiction, Wntr, 1996 by Judy Hale Young

Of course he had gone to see that woman--no doubt to get

her permission to leave. He was as completely in bondage as

that; and Charlotte had been fatuous enough to see the

palms of victory on her forehead.... But gradually her

color crept back. After all, she had a right to claim the

victory, since her husband was doing what she wanted, not

what the other woman exacted of him. (221)

In fact, Charlotte spends most of her time in the attitude in which Kenneth finds her just before dinner--" brooding over the problem" (215). This phrase summarizes what seems her natural state--diffident, suspicious, and virtually powerless to act in any effective manner. Deprivation of knowledge equals deprivation of power, and Elsie, Kenneth, and the letters ensure Charlotte's continued state of ignorance and weakness.

The letters in this context act not as the medium for communication of knowledge that they should be, but as obstacles to communication. Furthermore, in serving to maintain the distance between Charlotte and Elsie they act as obstacles to communication specifically among women. The letters, particularly as Charlotte characterizes them as a single unit--"they had become merged in one another in her mind, become one letter, become `it'" (201)--are the pomegranate seed of the title. In classical mythology Persephone cannot return fully and permanently to her mother Demeter because she has eaten the seeds of a pomegranate offered her by Hades. The seeds, given by a man and accepted by the woman, cement the male-female relationship but destroy that of the women, the mother and daughter. Elsie's letters reverse the gender roles somewhat; they are offered--written--by a woman and accepted--read--by a man. Still they are at least partially masculine in nature and serve like the seeds to drive a wedge between women, between Elsie and Charlotte, and to ensure their continued mutual but separate exile from the "genealogy of women" (Reader 44).

In the story's final scene, Charlotte and Elsie take a tentative step toward each other. Charlotte overcomes her scruples and opens the last letter, which has arrived in her absence while she visited her mother-in-law. In trying to read this letter, Charlotte attempts to seize the power that it and all the other letters imply, the power of knowledge that she hopes will make her, like Kenneth, the "master of the situation, however bad." The circumstances of the letter suggest that Elsie may in fact have meant it for Charlotte. True, it is addressed to Mr. Ashby, but it has been received after his disappearance. If Elsie is truly the sender and Kenneth's abductress, she cannot have meant this letter for him. Perhaps the masculine address marks it as the property of whomever in the household will take the masculine step of reading it. Which Charlotte does. Gilbert and Gubar interpret this scene as "a kind of female victory" (163), but I see it only as a failed attempt. The letter proves virtually unreadable, yielding only two words, which may or may not be what they seem--"I can make out something like `mine'--oh, and `come.' It might be `come'" (227). Charlotte now turns to the only solace left her, her bond with the elder Mrs. Ashby. As Singley and Sweeney, and Zilversmit note, "Charlotte's act of reading brings her closer to Mrs. Ashby, her `proxy mother'" (Singley and Sweeney 193, "Last Ghosts" 300). Here at last women achieve a bond, but an ineffectual bond at best, characterized by their shared bond-age in the socially-enforced state of female ignorance and silence, a bondage reinforced by Elsie Corder Ashby's collusion with masculine exclusivity. Jean Frantz Blackall sees the same kind of female bonding in Wharton's The Age of Innocence: "the female solidarity that operates within this society so long as people play by the rules" (167). And who makes the rules but men? Within the context of those rules, the two living Mrs. Ashbys, the two still bound by society, are reduced to acting not decisively or effectively, but for the sake of form alone, as their final dialogue shows: