A few months ago, I first read Best Intentions by Emily Listfield about the disintegration of trust in a marriage and the slippery slope to infidelity. Then I read The Other Side of the Lake by Mary Lawson about adultery and sibling rivalry. To complete the unplanned trilogy, I read Mr. Emerson’s Wife, in which said wife, Lidian Jackson Emerson, is torn between her duty to her husband, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and her love for young Henry David Thoreau. As insightful and psychologically truthful as all three books were, I was ready for something different by the time I finished the third book. Enough adultery, how about some murder, mayhem or injustice? (Just kidding!)

Mr. Emerson’s Wife is the fictionalized history of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s second wife, Lidian. I don’t know how much of the story is true, but I assume the basic timeline of events is factual. For instance, Thoreau actually did live with the Emersons for over two years, including during nine months that RWE was away on an extended tour of Europe. Another friend, Margaret Fuller, also lived with/visited the Emersons for extended periods of time and may or may not have become romantically involved with Mr. Emerson. The Emerson household was unusual to say the least.

Both Emerson and Thoreau are presented in the novel as apostate Christians, having rejected the Christian faith in the name of intellectual honesty. Their “honesty” doesn’t seem to have given either of them much comfort or courage in the face of suffering. Then again, as the novel tells it, Lidian’s faith doesn’t really comfort her much either when the Emersons’ oldest son, Wallie, dies of scarlet fever.

Thoreau is an interesting character in this novel. He seems to able to experience the most horrendous events–the death of his beloved brother, the fire that burned down acres of woods near Concord, and adulterous assignation with Lidian—mourn and grieve deeply, and then block those same events from his memory almost as if they had never occurred. Can a person do that?

I already had an image of Emerson as something of a cold fish. The language he uses in his essays is so formal, almost pretentious, or at least it sounds that way to modern ears. Now, after reading Mr. Emerson’s Wife, I’m not sure I’ll be able to read the essays without probing them for references to Emerson’s personal life. I can’t imagine that I would have survived emotionally or spiritually in the rarified atmosphere of nineteenth century Concord and its transcendentalists, no matter how intellectually stimulating the conversation or how high the moral aspirations. From the perspective of this novel at least, the foundation looks a little too sandy.