AFTERWARD
[SHORT-STORY]
“It's more along the lines of Henry James' "The Turn of the Screw"
[Edith Wharton] “For imaginative handling of the supernatural no one, to my mind, has
touched Henry James in ‘The Turn of the Screw’…”
Or, rather, Ned answered, in the same strain, "why, amid so much that's ghostly, it can never
affirm its separate existence as THE ghost.
She read a “robber-story” during recovery from typhoid fever and it caused a relapse of her
illness.
[Edith Wharton] “When I was nine years old I fell ill of typhoid fever, and lay for weeks at the
point of death…
“…with my intense Celtic sense of the supernatural, tales of robbers and ghosts were perilous
reading. This one brought on a serious relapse, and again my life was in danger; and when I came
to myself, it was to enter a world haunted by formless horrors. I had been naturally a fearless
child; now I lived in a state of chronic fear…
“But how long the traces of my illness lasted may be judged from the fact that, till I was twenty-
seven or –eight, I could not sleep in the room with a book containing a ghost story,and that I have
frequently had to burn books of this kind, because it frightened me to know that they were
downstairs in the library!”
[Alex, blog] “Unlike many other ghost stories, Wharton neatly pivots the genre to directly
confront modernity, and in addition, the startling reflections of modernity in the past.
“Afterward” is a haunted house story – but this time this haunted house story is built upon the
economic basis of the large English country house. In essence, the question the story asks is what
suffering were these symbols of wealth built upon?
“ ‘Afterward’ depicts the Boynes, an middle-aged American couple, who, striking it rich through
stock market speculation, now wish to flee their drab origins in Wisconsin and purchase a remote
and ancient Elizabethan country house in the South of England. Naturally, the house has it’s
secrets, but so do the Americans. The American couple initially romanticizes the old house, but
really as part of their romanticization of themselves. They prefer to believe that their speculations
(eventually revealed to be somewhat dubious in precisely the archetypal American fashion) are
buried in a now-forgotten past.
“Since the house contains…..an entity that forces the Boynes to confront their own history which
they prefer to forget, the reader / viewer also wonders (since the entity has long been whispered
about among the house’s previous owners) what remains buried in the house’s own past. After all,
the previous owners of many centuries have seemingly hurriedly decamped for Switzerland........”
“The Public Media Foundation, a tax-exempt, non-profit organization, was founded in 1979. In
1991 the PMF began producing The Radio Play in cooperation with New Voices. This was a series
of new plays and dramatizations of classic American literature for broadcast on National Public
Radio and on the BBC World Service.
“In 1993 the organizational mission changed and the PMF began producing dramatizations of
short stories by American women writers of the 19th and early 20th centuries entitled Scribbling
Women - a title taken with intentional irony from a letter a resentful Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote
to his publisher in 1855. The plays are distributed nationwide by National Public Radio.”
[Scribbling Women] “Edith Wharton's most consistent concern throughout her writing was the
plight of women of her time who must somehow find a way to create meaningful lives in a world
where their choices, options and movements were so restricted. In her ghost story, "Afterward,"
the heroine, Mary Boyne, lives in a golden cage. She has what looks like a perfect marriage,
including uninterrupted intimacy with her husband in a dream house. Yet she is as much like a
child as she is a wife for she knows nothing of his life. Her innocence fosters her dependence. The
price for being dependent is self deception. the theme of the ghost takes on a larger meaning as
we begin to see shadows surface throughout the Boyne's lives.”
[CHRONOLOGY]
WEDNESDAY MATINEE (HOME SERVICE, LONDON)
[Wednesday—4:00-4:35 PM]
March 12, 1947 “Afterward”
PERSONNEL: David H. Godfrey (producer), Betty Stafford Robinson
(scriptwriter).
CAST: Dora Barton (Trimmle), Heron Carvic (Robert Elwell), Freda Gaye (Alida
Stair), Anthony Pelly (Edward Boyne), Eddy Reed (Mr. Parvis), Rita Vale (Mary
Boyne).
[Wednesday—4:00-
December 3, 1947 “Afterward”
(or 3-12-47?) [Note on BBC card: “(this b/c may have been cancelled for fuel cuts).”
PERSONNEL: David Godfery (producer), Betty Stafford Robinson (scriptwriter).
THE HALLMARK PLAYHOUSE (KNX, HOLLYWOOD)
[Thursday—7:00-7:30 PM]
August 5, 1948 “Afterward” [EXTANT RECORDING]
PERSONNEL: Milton Geiger (scriptwriter—1948, Hallmark Playhouse), James
Hilton (narrator—1948, Hallmark Playhouse), Lyn Murray (music—1948,
Hallmark Playhouse),
CAST: Robert Bruce, Joseph Kearns, Eric Snowden, Lurene Tuttle, Willard
Waterman.
TALES OF MYSTERY AND IMAGINATION (WNYE, NEW YORK)
Circa 1965-66 “Afterward” [EXTANT RECORDING]
THE CBS RADIO MYSTERY THEATRE (WRVR, NEW YORK)
[???day—10:07-11:00 PM]
March 2, 1976 “Afterward” [EXTANT RECORDING]
[“…Now committed to an insane asylum, Mary Boyne regrets her
impetuousness in trying to restore the ghost to the old house in Lyng,
England. She and her husband Ted were seeking a ghost that, as the story
goes, no one realized was a ghost until after they had encountered it. But
Ted found out too late, and Mary is haunted in the aftermath…”]
PERSONNEL: Himan Brown (producer-director), Murray Burnett (scriptwriter).
CAST: Larry Haines (Ned Boyne), Celeste Holm (Mary Boyne), Ian Martin (Mr.
Woods), Joan Shay (Alida Stair), Guy Sorel (Mr. Parvis).
THIRTY MINUTE THEATRE (RADIO 4, LONDON)
[???day—11:00-11:30 AM]
September 10, 1985 “Afterward”
CAST: Rosemary Leach, Colin Starkey.
THE RADIO PLAY—“SCRIBBLING WOMEN” (PUBLIC MEDIA FOUNDATION,
BOSTON)
Circa 1993 “Afterward” [EXTANT RECORDING]
PERSONNEL: Donna DiNovelli (scriptwriter), Vince Fairchild (sound effects
producer), Martin Jenkins (director), Miles Smith (sound engineer), Tom Tiger
(sound engineer).
CAST: Will Le Bow (Ned Boyne/Elwell), Susan McConnell (Agnes, the maid),
Tim Sawyer (Parvis), Sandra Shipley (Alida Stair/Mrs. Trimmle), Kristin Wold
(Mary Boyne).
THE BLUE RIDGE RADIO PLAYERS (
Circa 1990s “Afterward”
[“…An American wife and her husband—a mining millionaire—buy an
old manor house in the English countryside, only to discover that it
harbors a ghost—the millionaire’s partner…”]
PERSONNEL: William Shuler (scriptwriter).
THE FEMALE GHOST (RADIO 4, LONDON)
[???day—10:02-10:30 AM]
July 10, 1997 “Afterward” [EXTANT RECORDING]
[“…After an unexpected windfall on their American mine, Ned and Mary
move to a dream home in England, but their past is catching up with
them…”]
PERSONNEL: Marion Nancarrow (producer),