The Femme Fatale in American Literature By Ghada Sasa

Although she realizes that her husband has been ultimately defeated by the richer and the more powerful, she constantly seeks to shape him in accordance with her own beliefs. The idea of framing is reiterated in the novel as a means of showing what Mrs. Adams really strives for. In more than one situation, she tells her daughter, “If we don’t get him [Mr. Adams] into the right frame of mind now, we never will” (17). As an example of a disruptive wife, Mrs. Adams hopes to formulate, shape, and reconstruct Mr. Adams’ frame of mind according to her own beliefs and aspirations. Her ideas of framing his mind are in contrast to Alice’s ideas on what her mother is doing to him. To Alice, this is “ding-donging at him” and “hammering at him” (18–20). The daughter is able to see that her mother is trying to use the father, unfairly, for her purpose of having more money, as it is the mother’s belief that “money is family” and that “money is at the bottom of it all” (210–212).

Like The Rise of Silas Lapham, the novel ends where it begins. Mr. Adams is in bed sick, and Mrs. Adams is bewailing her fortunes and her husband. She does not, however, learn from the mistakes she has committed against herself and her husband. She does not undergo a process of moral growth, and she does not realize that her complaints will no longer be heard.

Mrs. Bart in Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth provides another example of a manipulative wife, yet she is different from both Mrs. Lapham and Mrs. Adams in that she is also a manipulative mother. Although Mrs. Bart’s actions are limited in the novel, they are very significant in the destruction of her husband and of her daughter as well.

By insisting on not being expected to “live like a pig” (31), Mrs. Bart leads her husband to his death. Although she is a member of a middle-class family, she is always persistent in not appearing as one.