The Fruit of the Tree

By Edith Wharton

Justine is a young nurse, born into a wealth that was lost before she reached adulthood. When she takes a job assisting with the recovery of an injured mill-worker, she finds herself at the centre of a struggle for power, dignity, and a better life.
 
John Amherst, the assistant manager of the mill, is fed up with the deplorable working and living conditions of the workers in his charge. When the mill’s owner passes away, leaving control in the hands of his widow, Amherst sees a chance to change things for the better. Bessy, the widow, is initially receptive to his ideas, but breaking down a lifetime of embedded ideology about class and wealth is no easy feat.
 
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• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Oct 11, 2016
• ISBN: 9780735252479

Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) was an American novelist—the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Age of Innocence in 1921—as well as a short story writer, playwright, designer, reporter, and poet. Her other works include Ethan Frome, The House of Mirth, and Roman Fever and Other Stories. Born into one of New York’s elite families, she drew upon her knowledge of upper-class aristocracy to realistically portray the lives and morals of the Gilded Age.

Reviews for The Fruit of the Tree

[etxgardener · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is definitely NOT a typical Edith Wharton novel. Instead of the foibles of the aristocracy of New York Cit, we have a book that is part a muckraking polemic on the evils of manufacturing and part lurid love story laced with adultery, drug addiction and euthanasia. Quite the topics for 1907!John Amherst, the reform-minded assistant manager at the Hanaford textile mills, meets trained nurse Justine Brent at the hospital bedside of Dillon, an injured mill worker. They agree that Dillon would be better off dead if he cannot return to the job. Their discussion of euthanasia, sets up the novel's major incident.Meanwhile, Amherst is asked show the mills to the new owner, Bessy Langhope Westmore, who a wealthy young widow with a young daughter. During the course of later meetings over the fate of the workers, Bessy falls in love with Amherst. Thinking that she shares his idealistic social vision and concern for the workers, Amherst marries her and begins his campaign of reforming the mills. However, he runs into opposition from Bessy's father and her lawyer who think that all this reforming will eat into Bessy's income. After the death of their infant son, Bessy and Amherst become increasingly estranged, and he spends longer and longer periods absent from home immersed in his work. When he is home he & , Justine meet and discussed conditions in the mills. He comes to regard her as a friend. who understands him as opposed to Bessy who lives more and more for her own pleasure.Bessy recognizes that Amherst is drifting away from her. Hurt by his indifference, she starts going to parties with the disreputable Mrs. Fenton Carbury and indulges herself in planning a "pleasure-house." Bessy has also renewed her friendship with Justine, who tacitly understands the situation. Seeing the two drift apart and urged on by Mrs. Ansell, an older friend of Bessy's, Justine writes to Amherst that he should return home. Hurt by Amherst's refusal to do so, Bessy rides over icy roads on her horse, and suffers a near-fatal spinal injuryJustine watches Bessy suffer helplessly at the hands of Dr. Wyant, an ambitious young doctor determined to keep his patient alive at all costs. Justine recalls her discussion with Amherst about euthanasia, and moved by Bessy's plight, she administers an overdose of morphine to Bessy. After Bessy's death, Justine and Amherst marry, but their happiness is short-lived.because Dr. Wyant, now addicted to morphine, threatens to expose Justine's action and blackmails her. Soon he will no longer be bought off by the small sums that Justine has sent him and she must tell Amherst the truth. He is appalled at her action and she sacrifices her own happiness and leaves. When Bessy's daughter Cicely falls ill and pines for Justine, Amherst seeks Justine out and they reconcile, but not happily for long. .Amherst finds a set of plans for Bessy's pleasure-house and mistakes them for a new recreation hall for the millworkers and believes Bessy had at last learned to share his compassionate attitude toward the workers in the mill. When he asks Justine about Bessy's motives for building the gymnasium, Justine, who knows the truth, nonetheless lies to preserve his illusions. With the specter of the now-idealized Bessy between them, however, Justine and Amherst can never again live in the total happiness of their first few months together. Wharton has clearly written a book ahead of it's time.

[startingover_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

There are three main strands to this novel: the question of the need for reform in the cotton mills, the issue of euthanasia and whether or not it is justified "when all the good of life is gone", and a conventional romance plot.The novel opens in Hanaford Hospital, where a mill worker is receiving treatment for an injury sustained at work. John Amherst, the mill's idealistic assistant manager, learns from temporary nurse Justine Brent that it is likely the man will lose his hand and thus be unable to work. When the mill owner's widow Bessy arrives, Amherst insists on conveying to her the necessity for reforming the mills. She is touched by the plight of Dillon, and vows to do what she can to help him, but from the start the suspicion is that she's more interested in John Amherst than in mill reform.Although they marry, the differences in their interests and values soon becomes clear. After the death of their young son, the marriage begins to fall apart in earnest. She resents the amount of time and money he spends on the mill. He resents her lack of interest in the mill. Amherst spends more and more time away from the house. Justine, an old friend of Bessy's, tries to act as go-between, asking Amherst to come home. His refusal to do so infuriates Bessy, who suffers a paralysing spinal injury when she falls from her horse.Justine nurses Bessy, sickened by the attempts of Dr Wyant to prolong Bessy's life even though she is in constant pain, her body a 'torture-house', with no possibility of ever walking again.There is a kind of inevitability about how the rest of the novel plays out. Wharton teases the reader - will Justine and Amherst be allowed a happy-ever-after ending? At times it seems possible, but the novel ends on a note so sour as to be almost unbearable. Even if one doesn't agree with Justine's actions, it's difficult to condone the pomposity and hypocrisy of Amherst. [May 2006]

[kplatypus_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Although not as beautifully rendered as her more well-known works (such as House of Mirth, Age of Innocence, and Custom of the Country), The Fruit of the Tree is still a gripping story, with all of the miscommunication and heartache that one would expect in any novel by Wharton. In this case, the story follows John Amherst, a visionary trying to carry out plans for industrial renewal while building a life for himself with his wife. The story looks at the problem of communicating higher ideals to those whose sole concern is with immediate profit from a more personal level than is usual; the fact that the protagonist is neither the owner of the factory nor a low-level worker is also somewhat unusual and makes for a novel perspective.Running alongside and among the story of the mills is the story of Amherst's relationships- with society, with his wife, and with his family. Wharton is in her element here, as she draws well-developed characters and then proceeds to let them destroy each other in that way that only people can. Miscommunication, often due to societal constraints, is really the heart of the novel, and Wharton does an excellent job of demonstrating how easy it is to ruin another person simply by not saying that which you mean, or by allowing prejudice and pride impede actions and speech.As is typical, The Fruit of the Tree does not have a very happy ending, though it is somewhat less tragic than many of Wharton's other novels. Sort of. But not really.

[jeffome · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I do not know why i love these Wharton books so much....it is something about the overly long sentences that read so naturally that you don't realize how long they are....the way she is able to convey so much in merely the description of one's face...the fascinating world of upper class 'manners' of that period.......and i could go on and on......I'm gonna be disappointed when i have completed all of her books....gonna space the remaining volumes out over time.....i just don't want them to end!

[japaul22 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a lesser known novel by Edith Wharton that nevertheless has her characteristic deep dive into her characters' motivations and a look at social issues. In this novel, Wharton tackles two big issues of the day - the plight of factory workers and what the responsibility of the owners should be to improve their lives, and end of life decisions regarding prolonging a painful life through medication vs. choosing to end it. Pretty different topics, right? And the novel is a bit like that. The first third has a pretty thorough focus on factory life and owner responsibility, the middle third becomes more of a bad marriage story, and the end is a happy ending disrupted by this end of life issue. Wharton does manage to tie it all together with some well thought out and developed characters, but I thought it was less successful than some of her other masterpieces. There is still plenty to enjoy and appreciate here, but I wouldn't recommend it as a place to start with Wharton's writing.