Roman Fever Analysis

While reading “Roman Fever” by Edith Wharton, I found myself stopping in order to understand, interpret and analyze the text. The first point at which I stopped reading occurred very early on in the story. In the first paragraph, I stopped at the words “lofty terrace” and “Palatine and Forum.” I stopped at these words and looked up pictures of these things in order to be able to envision an image as I read on. I also stopped at the word parapet because I was unsure of the meaning. When I researched the definition, I found that a parapet can be more simply defined as a wall. After doing this I was able to better understand and picture the story and setting. As I approached the end of the first page I stopped reading because I realize that this …show more content…
I feel that Mrs.Slade already hated her so called “friend” at this point in the story, but was trying to mask it because if she was trying not to hate her she would not bring up an upsetting aspect of her friend’s life as a topic of conversation. The point in the story that made me think a lot began on page seven and lasted until the end of the story. These pages left me with many questions and thoughts about both women. These pages spoke about how Mrs.Ansley went to meet Delphin, the man that Mrs.Slate was engaged to after receiving a letter from who she thought to be Delphin telling her to meet him at the Colosseum, but it was really written by Mrs.Slate. I had many questions including why Mrs.Slade wrote the letter in the first place, why Mrs.Ansley burned the letter and why Mrs.Ansley would go meet him knowing he was engaged to her friend. On page ten it described how Mrs.Ansley answered the letter and Delphin actually showed up without Mrs.Slade knowing. This baffled me because why wouldn’t Mrs.Slade expect Mrs.Ansley to …show more content…
This confused me because I don’t understand why she brought up her daughter, was it to imply she had sexual relations with Dolphin, to get in Mrs.Slade’s head or was it to defend her daughter’s name because of Mrs.Slade’s previous implications of her daughter being better than