In the following essay, Petry explores the significance of knitting in "Roman Fever."

Probably Edith Wharton's best-known short story is "Roman Fever," the product of a 1934 trip to Rome, and the most enduring tale from her uneven late collection entitled The World Over (1936). It is curious that so widely-anthologized a work has generated such a paucity of critical interest, and even more curious that the few appraisals which it has received have been so tepid: Geoffrey Walton, for example, simply dismisses it as "a very light little comedy that can be taken as a kind of farewell skit on the decorum of the great days." More appreciative are Cynthia Griffin Wolff and Marilyn Jones Lyde, both of whom — without explaining the bases of their appraisals — find the story to be one of Wharton's best works. But "Roman Fever" is considerably more substantial than Walton's remark...