Crucial Instances

Originally published in 1901, Crucial Instances is a collection of six short stories connected, as the title suggests, by a hinging moment in the narrative through which the plot alters dramatically. In The Angel at the Grave, Paulina Anson finds herself the sole custodian of her grandfather's inheritance; an old, grand, but oppressive house and, perhaps worse, philosophical achievements that were once lauded but now forgotten so that only his name is remembered. When she researches and completes his biography she is told by a publisher that there is no public interest at all. Wharton commits two-thirds of this short story creating a morbid sense of depression and failure before, with a ring of the door-bell, she transforms Paulina's predicament.