The Mother's Recompense

Edith Wharton's little discussed Jazz Age classic, The Mother’s Recompense (1925), finds Kate Clephane returning to New York society, after abandoning her husband and three-year-old daughter years before. American Kate Clephane has lived in Europe for twenty years, the ghosts of a failed marriage and abandoned daughter haunting her as she drifts along the French Riviera. It is an aimless, turbulent life, lived in the company of other expats and outcasts, the scars of World War I still evident across the continent. When Kate is summoned back to New York by the very daughter (now a wealthy heiress) she once abandoned, Kate leaps at the chance to re-enter the world that previously shut its doors on her. Just as Kate is on the cusp of reclaiming the life she forfeited, Chris Fenno, her former lover, returns to the scene, this time as a suitor for Kate’s daughter. For Kate, this disaster cuts two ways, for not only is Chris an opportunistic and feckless man, but he also remains the love of Kate’s life. Thus begins a complex and intricate dance of secrets, desires, scandal, and shifting motives. The Mother’s Recompense is a brilliant commentary on freedom, motherhood, agency, and duty. It explores the full weight of the choices we make as we try and fail to reinvent and reimagine ourselves. Wharton’s gifts for wit, dialogue, and image are put to stunning use in this riveting social drama that sees New York society shaken to its very foundations.