Roman Fever Rhetorical Devices

“Roman Fever” is about the cattiness of the stereotypical woman. The story revolves around two women, Alida Slade and Grace Ansley. The women hide passive aggressive undertones and back-handed compliments under a sickly-sweet smile and a pretend innocence. Throughout the story, Edith Wharton uses rhetorical devices to help the reader uncover how petty the women truly act. To convey her message, Wharton relies heavily on the tone of the words she uses to describe Slade and Ansley. She chooses powerful words that convey a sarcastic and bitter tone. When describing Slade’s unemployment, she uses the phrase “poor Grace”. This phrase makes the reader begin to question how friendly the two women truly are, and it becomes easy to assume that Alida does not actually feel bad for Grace. This uncovers Mrs. Slade’s resentful persona, teaching the reader that Alida is very good at “playing nice”. Later on, Grace talks about Alida’s “-well, ‘vividness’, someone had once called it.” The nasty jabs at Alida’s personality portrays Grace as a bitter and catty woman. This makes the reader immediately lose his or her trust in Mrs. Ansley, who pretends to be innocent and kind. The subtle comments each woman thinks about the other convey a derisive tone which shows the reader the nasty …show more content…
But, towards the end of the passage Wharton uses a metaphor to show that Grace and Alida’s judgements are based on their own insecurities. They are visualizing each other “through the wrong end of her little telescope.” The comparison shows that the women aren’t judging the each other based on the other’s flaws, but instead based on their own. The women are seeing a reflection of what they hate about themselves in the telescope, and they’re using the jabs at each other to make them feel better about themselves. But, the women will soon learn that being spiteful will only hurt themselves in the