Although Edith Wharton is better known as a novelist than a short-story writer, she was in fact writing and publishing stories well before her debut as a novelist in 1902. Her first published story was "Mrs. Manstey's View," in Scribner's Magazine of July 1891. From the perspective of her boardinghouse window the elderly Mrs. Manstey witnesses the preparations for building onto the neighboring boardinghouse an addition that will block her beloved view. Her uncharacteristic--because it is active--attempt at nocturnal arson fails, and the harsh night air brings her pneumonia, which proves fatal. This first story, somewhat contrived in that Mrs. Manstey is primarily acted upon, contains in that very respect a prefiguration of what will emerge as the chief theme of Wharton's stories: life is an entrapment, an imprisonment.

Wharton's imprisonment was the hereditary society, even the family into which she was born, which prized manners and conformity, that is...