{
  "title": "AFTERWARD",
  "category": "[SHORT-STORY]",
  "article": "“It's more along the lines of Henry James' \"The Turn of the Screw\"\n[Edith Wharton] “For imaginative handling of the supernatural no one, to my mind, has\ntouched Henry James in ‘The Turn of the Screw’…”\nOr, rather, Ned answered, in the same strain, \"why, amid so much that's ghostly, it can never\naffirm its separate existence as THE ghost.\nShe read a “robber-story” during recovery from typhoid fever and it caused a relapse of her\nillness.\n[Edith Wharton] “When I was nine years old I fell ill of typhoid fever, and lay for weeks at the\npoint of death…\n“…with my intense Celtic sense of the supernatural, tales of robbers and ghosts were perilous\nreading. This one brought on a serious relapse, and again my life was in danger; and when I came\nto myself, it was to enter a world haunted by formless horrors. I had been naturally a fearless\nchild; now I lived in a state of chronic fear…\n“But how long the traces of my illness lasted may be judged from the fact that, till I was twenty-\nseven or –eight, I could not sleep in the room with a book containing a ghost story,and that I have\nfrequently had to burn books of this kind, because it frightened me to know that they were\ndownstairs in the library!”\n[Alex, blog] “Unlike many other ghost stories, Wharton neatly pivots the genre to directly\nconfront modernity, and in addition, the startling reflections of modernity in the past.\n“Afterward” is a haunted house story – but this time this haunted house story is built upon the\neconomic basis of the large English country house. In essence, the question the story asks is what\nsuffering were these symbols of wealth built upon?\n“ ‘Afterward’ depicts the Boynes, an middle-aged American couple, who, striking it rich through\nstock market speculation, now wish to flee their drab origins in Wisconsin and purchase a remote\nand ancient Elizabethan country house in the South of England. Naturally, the house has it’s\nsecrets, but so do the Americans. The American couple initially romanticizes the old house, but\nreally as part of their romanticization of themselves. They prefer to believe that their speculations\n(eventually revealed to be somewhat dubious in precisely the archetypal American fashion) are\nburied in a now-forgotten past.\n“Since the house contains…..an entity that forces the Boynes to confront their own history which\nthey prefer to forget, the reader / viewer also wonders (since the entity has long been whispered\nabout among the house’s previous owners) what remains buried in the house’s own past. After all,\nthe previous owners of many centuries have seemingly hurriedly decamped for Switzerland........”\n“The Public Media Foundation, a tax-exempt, non-profit organization, was founded in 1979. In\n1991 the PMF began producing The Radio Play in cooperation with New Voices. This was a series\nof new plays and dramatizations of classic American literature for broadcast on National Public\nRadio and on the BBC World Service.\n“In 1993 the organizational mission changed and the PMF began producing dramatizations of\nshort stories by American women writers of the 19th and early 20th centuries entitled Scribbling\nWomen - a title taken with intentional irony from a letter a resentful Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote\nto his publisher in 1855. The plays are distributed nationwide by National Public Radio.”\n[Scribbling Women] “Edith Wharton's most consistent concern throughout her writing was the\nplight of women of her time who must somehow find a way to create meaningful lives in a world\nwhere their choices, options and movements were so restricted. In her ghost story, \"Afterward,\"\nthe heroine, Mary Boyne, lives in a golden cage. She has what looks like a perfect marriage,\nincluding uninterrupted intimacy with her husband in a dream house. Yet she is as much like a\nchild as she is a wife for she knows nothing of his life. Her innocence fosters her dependence. The\nprice for being dependent is self deception. the theme of the ghost takes on a larger meaning as\nwe begin to see shadows surface throughout the Boyne's lives.”",
  "origination": "",
  "duration": "",
  "personnel": "",
  "extant_recordings": "",
  "chronology": "WEDNESDAY MATINEE (HOME SERVICE, LONDON)\n[Wednesday—4:00-4:35 PM]\nMarch 12, 1947\n“Afterward”\nPERSONNEL: David H. Godfrey (producer), Betty Stafford Robinson\n(scriptwriter).\nCAST: Dora Barton (Trimmle), Heron Carvic (Robert Elwell), Freda Gaye (Alida\nStair), Anthony Pelly (Edward Boyne), Eddy Reed (Mr. Parvis), Rita Vale (Mary\nBoyne).\n[Wednesday—4:00-\nDecember 3, 1947\n“Afterward”\n(or 3-12-47?)\n[Note on BBC card: “(this b/c may have been cancelled for fuel cuts).”\nPERSONNEL: David Godfery (producer), Betty Stafford Robinson (scriptwriter).\nTHE HALLMARK PLAYHOUSE (KNX, HOLLYWOOD)\n[Thursday—7:00-7:30 PM]\nAugust 5, 1948\n“Afterward”\n[EXTANT RECORDING]\nPERSONNEL: Milton Geiger (scriptwriter—1948, Hallmark Playhouse), James\nHilton (narrator—1948, Hallmark Playhouse), Lyn Murray (music—1948,\nHallmark Playhouse),\nCAST: Robert Bruce, Joseph Kearns, Eric Snowden, Lurene Tuttle, Willard\nWaterman.\nTALES OF MYSTERY AND IMAGINATION (WNYE, NEW YORK)\nCirca 1965-66\n“Afterward”\n[EXTANT RECORDING]\nTHE CBS RADIO MYSTERY THEATRE (WRVR, NEW YORK)\n[???day—10:07-11:00 PM]\nMarch 2, 1976\n“Afterward”\n[EXTANT RECORDING]\n[“…Now committed to an insane asylum, Mary Boyne regrets her\nimpetuousness in trying to restore the ghost to the old house in Lyng,\nEngland. She and her husband Ted were seeking a ghost that, as the story\ngoes, no one realized was a ghost until after they had encountered it. But\nTed found out too late, and Mary is haunted in the aftermath…”]\nPERSONNEL: Himan Brown (producer-director), Murray Burnett (scriptwriter).\nCAST: Larry Haines (Ned Boyne), Celeste Holm (Mary Boyne), Ian Martin (Mr.\nWoods), Joan Shay (Alida Stair), Guy Sorel (Mr. Parvis).\nTHIRTY MINUTE THEATRE (RADIO 4, LONDON)\n[???day—11:00-11:30 AM]\nSeptember 10, 1985\n“Afterward”\nCAST: Rosemary Leach, Colin Starkey.\nTHE RADIO PLAY—“SCRIBBLING WOMEN” (PUBLIC MEDIA FOUNDATION,\nBOSTON)\nCirca 1993\n“Afterward”\n[EXTANT RECORDING]\nPERSONNEL: Donna DiNovelli (scriptwriter), Vince Fairchild (sound effects\nproducer), Martin Jenkins (director), Miles Smith (sound engineer), Tom Tiger\n(sound engineer).\nCAST: Will Le Bow (Ned Boyne/Elwell), Susan McConnell (Agnes, the maid),\nTim Sawyer (Parvis), Sandra Shipley (Alida Stair/Mrs. Trimmle), Kristin Wold\n(Mary Boyne).\nTHE BLUE RIDGE RADIO PLAYERS (\nCirca 1990s\n“Afterward”\n[“…An American wife and her  husband—a mining millionaire—buy an\nold manor house in the English countryside, only to discover that it\nharbors a ghost—the millionaire’s partner…”]\nPERSONNEL: William Shuler (scriptwriter).\nTHE FEMALE GHOST (RADIO 4, LONDON)\n[???day—10:02-10:30 AM]\nJuly 10, 1997\n“Afterward”\n[EXTANT RECORDING]\n[“…After an unexpected windfall on their American mine, Ned and Mary\nmove to a dream home in England, but their past is catching up with\nthem…”]\nPERSONNEL: Marion Nancarrow (producer),",
  "sources": "",
  "gallery": "",
  "images": []
}