The Relevance of Edith Wharton’s Roman Fever to the Modern World Essay

The Relevance of Edith Wharton’s Roman Fever to the Modern World According to the World Health Organization, â€Å"of the 75 million children under five in Africa a million and a half die each year of pneumonia.† As distressing and sad as this statistic is, it points out the great danger pneumococcus still is to young people in the developing world. It’s in the developed world, but at a time before antibiotics, at a time when acute respiratory ailments posed an even greater but still preventable threat to the younger set that concerns us here and that inspires a deeper look at the full implications of respiratory disease. The WHO goes on to say that acute respiratory infection (ARI) â€Å"is one of five conditions which account for more than 70% of child mortality in Africa.† So not only is pneumonia prevalent, it is still deadly. The danger it poses to young people has life-influencing ramifications, ones with an incredible emotional content. Though more treatable now, as we’ll see later, the persistence of pneumonia f its in with the puzzle as it presents itself, since it is linkable to a much more fundamental human ailment. In Edith Wharton’s â€Å"Roman Fever† we also see ailments of a pulmonary and life-changing import. Indeed, the entire story seems shot-through with infection. Wharton writes of Mrs. Slade and Mrs. Ansley, both widowed, both taking their daughters to Rome on holiday as they had been. Their own intertwined histories Wharton describes at the story’s onset as â€Å"all of the movings, buyings, travels, anniversaries, illnesses† (emphasis mine) (751). Wharton then begins the tale with illness. It is only as the narrative progresses that we get a sense of how important illness is to become: Yes; being the Slade’s widow wa... ...an be treated with antibiotics, it can be treated with aversion therapy or the simple addition of marriage. Other love preventatives such as war and country music are both quite feasible and can actually be very profitable for Western nations, though they seem a little cruel, especially the latter. Wharton’s â€Å"Roman Fever† at the very least points the way; it is a warning that love and pneumonia are inextricably linked, an idea that we’d do well to pay more attention to today when the ease of a high technology lifestyle fosters an arrogance that all the world’s problems have been solved. Works Cited Wharton, Edith. â€Å"Roman Fever.† Edith Wharton: Collected Stories 1911-1937. New York: Literary Classics 2001. 749-62. World Health Organization. â€Å"Childhood Diseases in Africa† Fact Sheet N 109. March 1996. 14.3.2003 http://www.who.int/inf-fs/en/fact109.html