Publisher's Synopsis
Here and Beyond is a collection of six short stories, which includes ghost stories, social dramas and character studies set in Brittany, New England, and Morocco. Two of these tales, The Young Gentleman and Bewitched, display distinct gothic leaning in their emphasis on looming architecture and the slow reveal of hidden secrets. The first story, Miss Mary Pask, pays strong tribute to Edgar Allen Poe's Fall of the House of Usher with the eponymous character suffering from a 'cataleptic trance' which leaves her with appearance of death. In the resolution, Wharton deviates from the more cataclysmic solution offered by Poe, but retains an emphasis on the fragility of the narrator. Many of Wharton's novels are characterised by a subtle use of dramatic irony. Having grown up in upper-class pre-World War I society, Wharton became one of its most astute critics. In such works as The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence she employed both humour and profound empathy to describe the lives of New York's upper-class and the vanishing of their world in the early years of the 20th century. In contrast, she used a harsher tone in her novel Ethan Frome to convey the atmosphere of lower-class rural Massachusetts. In addition to writing several respected novels, Wharton produced a wealth of short stories and is particularly well regarded for her ghost stories.
