The Mother's Recompense

Originally published in 1925, The Mother's Recompense details the predicament Kate Clephane finds herself in when recalled to New York from her self-imposed exile to the French Riviera after she had abandoned her husband and infant daughter. What makes her return is the impending marriage of that same daughter, but what she finds is that the soon to be husband, Chris Fenno, was a man she had loved before her departure from New York. Kate Clephane's moral dilemma provides the platform on which Wharton's character study is built; a battle of the consciousness between sexual love on the one side and maternal love on the other. By setting the two distinctions into play, Wharton has no concerns about the moralities of what might be implied, simply that Kate Clephane is quite capable of choosing the former and winning over the man her daughter intends to marry.