The Moving Finger

Born into a wealthy family of real estate moguls in New York City, Edith Wharton spent much of her childhood living in Europe, where she became fluent in French, German, and Italian. Wharton rejected the prescribed gender roles of her time, preferring to read books from her father and his friends’ libraries rather than concerning herself with fashion or socializing in high society. She was also a natural storyteller, publishing poems anonymously or under pseudonyms because writing wasn’t considered a suitable activity for women in the 19th century. Around the age of 18, however, Wharton took a break from writing to become a socialite and debutante—the most acceptable path for women of her social class. In 1885, she married Edwin Robbins Wharton, a wealthy man whose lifelong struggle with depression hindered Wharton’s passion for international travel. Wharton had an affair with journalist Morton Fullerton, whom she viewed as her intellectual equal, and divorced Edwin in 1913 after 28 years of marriage. Over the years, Wharton developed a strong interest in architecture and interior design, purchasing and renovating numerous homes in the U.S. and abroad. She didn’t publish her first novel, The Age of Decision, until the age of 40, but she quickly became a prolific and critically acclaimed author. Wharton went on to publish over a dozen more novels, as well as several novellas, short story collections, poetry collections, and nonfiction books. Much of her writing focuses on a critique of the upper-class society in which she was raised. Wharton won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Age of Innocence, making her the first woman to receive the award. She died of a stroke in 1937.

“The Moving Finger” was written and set in the late 19th century, when early feminism was taking shape. A few decades prior, the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention (the first women’s rights convention in history) took place. This was a landmark event wherein women’s rights activists came together to debate women’s suffrage and discuss societal gender roles. Opening up a dialogue about women’s rights led to a widespread cultural shift in the U.S., as women were increasingly seen as equal (rather than inferior) to their male counterparts. This contemporary context was important for Edith Wharton, who was pressured to publish her early work anonymously because writing was seen as an unacceptable pursuit for women at the time. The national dialogue about women’s rights and gender roles made the public more accepting of female voices in art and literature, enabling Wharton to begin publishing her writing under her own name as an adult. This context is also specifically relevant to “The Moving Finger,” as the story subtly condemns the objectification of women both in art and within personal relationships—subject matter that would likely not have been taken seriously a few decades prior.

“The Moving Finger” is a work of Dark Romanticism, a subgenre of the 19th-century Romantic movement that focuses on tragic and macabre themes and tends to feature ghosts or demons. Edgar Allan Poe is widely regarded as the preeminent writer of Dark Romantic fiction, and his short story “The Oval Portrait” (1842) is similar to “The Moving Finger” in that it features a woman who’s objectified under a male artist’s gaze. Oscar Wilde’s Gothic novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) is also thematically similar: much like Mrs. Grancy’s portrait makes her husband feel insecure about growing old in “The Moving Finger,” Dorian Gray’s youthful portrait seems to taunt him about his own mortality. Additionally, “The Moving Finger” can be read as an early feminist work, as it implicitly critiques men’s objectification of women’s beauty. In this way, it’s similar to novels like Charlotte Perkin Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper (1892) and Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (1899).