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The Old Maid

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The Old Maid

By: Edith Wharton
Narrated by: Eleanor Bron
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About this listen

The story follows the life of Tina, a young woman caught between the mother who adopted her - the beautiful, upstanding Delia - and her true mother, her plain, unmarried ‘aunt’ Charlotte, who gave Tina up to provide her with a socially acceptable life.

The three women live quietly together until Tina’s wedding day, when Delia’s and Charlotte’s hidden jealousies rush to the surface. Originally serialized in The Red Book magazine in 1922, The Old Maid is an examination of class and society as only Edith Wharton could undertake.

©2010 BBC Audiobooks Ltd (P)2014 Audible, Inc. Classics

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All stars
Most relevant  
For such a short story the author gives such vivid descriptions of the characters and their emotions

Emotional and Uplifting

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A wonderful story from The Gilded Age era . Very moving. The narration was excellent.

Another Wharton Gem

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Beautiful story- and there is simply no better narrator for Edith Wharton than Eleanor Bron.

Perfect in every way

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I love Edith Wharton.always understated but with humanity and depth. Beautifully narrated. Entirely sympathetic to the story and style

Excellent writing and performance

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A moving, restrained, balanced little gem. A defining Wharton novelette in which the mores and attendant dilemmas of a long gone era are vividly evoked with a humour and compassion that keeps them timelessly fresh.

Perfection

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Classic Edith's Wharton; crisp writing, attention to detail and credible three-dimensional characters. An enjoyable two hours and forty-seven minutes.

A Gem

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full of subtlety and deep feeling. The two protagonists are extraordinary characters, and their dilemma is truly a tragic one. I loved the reading - excellent.
I can’t help feeling this might have made a great 1940s film with Aunt Charlotte being played by Bette Davis !

This is a wonderful story

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So moving, exquisite writing and so sensitively narrated. I have discovered Edith Wharton via audible and it’s a revelation!

Stunning

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As the saying goes there's no tale like an od tale. And no doubt this is a truism simply because, despite the march of time and changes in social manners and mores, people are people.
The novella concerns the choices made when people are too young to understand their own personalities and what they need and want from life. Then for the rest of people's lives, these decisions play out and they live through those irreversible decisions.
Delia, well-married to dull Jim, rejected passion and is conventionally a success. Cousin Charlotte followed her heart once and doomed herself to be an old maid. In the balance between them is Tina, officially a mysterious foundling.
To be truthful I am not sure how much I got out of this book and offers a bleak landscape of people's lives. And for me, it is the pointless polarizing discussions about a subject that can never be resolved.

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