Wharton’s tone in “The Other Two” is ironic and gently mocking, especially towards Waythorn. While Wharton does not have the narrator actively disparage her protagonist, she makes it clear through specific turns of phrase that readers should question (and laugh at) his orientation to women and the world at large. Take the following passage, for example, which comes near the beginning of the story as Waythorn is looking at Alice:
He leaned against the mantelpiece, watching her as she lifted the coffeepot. The lamplight struck a gleam from her bracelets and tipped her soft hair with brightness. How light and slender she was, and how each gesture flowed into the next! She seemed a creature all compact of harmonies. As the thought of Haskett receded, Waythorn felt himself yielding again to the joy of possessorship.
Wharton’s tone here is somewhat complex. The first several sentences make it seem like Waythorn is reflecting earnestly about what he loves about his new wife—her “soft hair,” “how light and slender she was,” and how “she seemed a creature all compact of harmonies”—leaving most readers to believe that he earnestly loves her. The final sentence, though, is critical: “Waythorn felt himself yielding again to the joy of possessorship.” With this one line, Wharton communicates to readers that Waythorn loves Alice the way that he loves an object that he “possesses” and, additionally, that he is completely unaware that this orientation to his wife is questionable. In this way, Wharton encourages readers to become wary of Waythorn’s adoration of Alice and to see him as a somewhat sexist and foolish man.
