us and wealth. Wharton shows a woman who lived her life for prestige, and now is left to feel the loneliness and emptiness that accompanies that life. This is a woman who rattles around the big house, full of possessions, and with nothing else to console her. And of course, as the story progresses to its brilliant and inevitable conclusion, Wharton skillfully continues on her path of breaking down the romantic illusion of the upper class. Roman fever may be a metaphor for transgress sexuality, for sexual rivalry, or even for the hostility among women that the social pressures of courtship catalyzes. Wharton's fiction is famous for defying unitary interpretations, and this story is no exception....
