A Journey quiz

Questions and answers

1. 1

   Question 1. Which literary movement best describes "A Journey"?

   • Romanticism
   • Gothic
   • Correct answer: Realism
   • Naturalism
   • Transcendentalism

   Realism fits best: an ordinary couple, a real train route, believable passengers, and a close psychological study of how a wife thinks and feels under pressure.

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2. 2

   Question 2. Where are the wife and husband traveling from, and where are they going?

   • From Chicago home to Boston
   • From New York out to California
   • Correct answer: From Colorado home to New York
   • From Buffalo back to Philadelphia

   The doctors sent the husband to a dry climate, so the couple went to Colorado. Now they are riding the train home to New York, passing through Buffalo and the Harlem tunnel on the way.

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3. 3

   Question 3. What do both husband and wife understand the doctors' permission to go home really means?

   • Correct answer: That he is expected to die soon
   • That the dry air has cured him
   • That he must see an Eastern surgeon
   • That he needs one more mild winter

   Wharton writes: "It meant that he was to die; but they dressed the truth in hopeful euphuisms". They both know, but they talk about the future as if he will recover.

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4. 4

   Question 4. The couple are "Like two faces looking at one another through a sheet of glass". What does this simile show about their marriage?

   • They argue constantly about returning home
   • They share a secret no one else can know
   • They look alike after years of marriage
   • Correct answer: They are close but can no longer truly reach each other

   The two are "close together, almost touching, but they could not hear or feel each other: the conductivity between them was broken." His illness has quietly made them strangers.

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5. 5

   Question 5. Before the trip, the wife catches herself watching her husband "as she might have watched a strange animal." What does this reveal?

   • She has always been afraid of him
   • Correct answer: Illness has made him a stranger to her
   • She suspects he is faking his illness
   • He has become violent and dangerous

   His illness has changed him so much that "his sunken expressionless face seemed that of a stranger." It frightens her to feel that this is the man she loves, and she feels guilty for it.

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6. 6

   Question 6. What was the wife's work before she married?

   • Hospital nurse
   • Dressmaker
   • Telegraph operator
   • Correct answer: Schoolteacher

   Her days had been "as bare as the whitewashed school-room where she forced innutritious facts upon reluctant children." Marriage seemed to open up her life, until his illness narrowed it again.

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7. 7

   Question 7. What does the line "Life had a grudge against her: she was never to be allowed to spread her wings" reveal?

   • Correct answer: Her hopes keep being cut short by circumstance
   • She wants to leave her husband for a new life
   • She blames the doctors for every one of her troubles
   • She regrets giving up her work as a teacher

   Marriage had promised to widen her small world, but "imperceptibly the horizon narrowed." Her healthy, hopeful nature keeps getting pulled back by forces she cannot control, first illness, then duty and fear.

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8. 8

   Question 8. Why does the wife decide to hide her husband's death?

   • She fears the porter will blame her for it
   • Correct answer: She fears they will be put off the train
   • She wants to spare the passengers any grief
   • She believes he is only in a very deep sleep

   Her first thought is: "If it were known that he was dead they would be put off the train at the next station". She remembers a couple whose child died on a train and "the dazed look with which they followed the receding train." Panic, not planning, drives her.

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9. 9

   Question 9. How does the wife keep her husband's berth curtains from parting?

   • She ties them shut with a ribbon
   • She asks the porter to lock them
   • Correct answer: She fastens them with a pin from her dress
   • She props her travelling-bag against them

   The curtains "still parted slightly with the motion of the car, and finding a pin in her dress she fastened them together. Now she was safe."

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10. 10

    Question 10. The narrator says the husband's petulance expressed "their imperceptible estrangement." What does estrangement mean?

    • A sudden, bitter quarrel that ends a friendship
    • A deep and steady loyalty between two people
    • A fear of strangers and of unfamiliar places
    • Correct answer: A drifting apart of people who were once close

    Estrangement means drifting apart from someone who was once close. "Imperceptible" adds that it happened so gradually that no one could see it happening.

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11. 11

    Question 11. When the porter brings her husband's milk, what does the wife finally do with it?

    • Correct answer: She drinks it herself
    • She pours it out the window
    • She gives it to the freckled child
    • She hides it behind the curtains

    She thinks of throwing it out the window, but she would have to lean across his body and bring her face close to his. "She decided to drink the milk."

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12. 12

    Question 12. What makes the visit from the fat man in black broadcloth so darkly ironic?

    • Correct answer: He preaches that death is unreal to a new widow
    • He is a doctor who fails to notice anything wrong
    • He offers to help carry the husband off the train
    • He accuses the wife of neglecting her husband

    He tells her "Death itself is but a deloosion of our grosser senses" and urges her to give her husband a pamphlet. Wharton later calls him "the Christian Scientist". He preaches that death is unreal to a woman sitting near her husband's body.

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13. 13

    Question 13. In her dream, what does the rushing train come to stand for?

    • Her family waiting in New York
    • Correct answer: Life itself sweeping her on
    • The doctors' failed promises
    • Her escape from a dull marriage

    In her sleep "It seemed to be life itself that was sweeping her on with headlong inexorable force". She can no more stop the train than stop what has happened to her.

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14. 14

    Question 14. Wharton calls the passing scenery "meaningless hieroglyphs of an endlessly unrolled papyrus." What does this image suggest?

    • She is excited to be almost home
    • She is studying the country's history
    • Correct answer: The world has stopped making sense to her
    • She is trying to memorize the route

    This metaphor turns the trees and houses into writing she cannot read. Along with images like "bell-buoys droning through a fog", it shows a mind so strained that the outside world has lost its meaning.

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15. 15

    Question 15. Why might Wharton leave the wife, husband and passengers unnamed?

    • To hide that the story was based on real neighbors
    • Correct answer: To keep attention on the wife's inner experience
    • Because names were not allowed in 1890s fiction
    • Because the wife forgets who the others are

    Without names, the story stays inside the wife's mind, and she can stand for many women whose lives were bound to a husband's fate. The passengers become types, like "the freckled child" and the motherly lady, which is how she sees them.

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16. 16

    Question 16. What happens in the story's final moment?

    • The porter finds the body and calls the conductor
    • Her family meets her and she confesses everything
    • She screams on cue, just as she had planned
    • Correct answer: She collapses, striking her head on his berth

    The porter asks, "We'd better get him up now, hadn't we?" while brushing her husband's hat. The car grows dark and she "fell face downward, striking her head against the dead man's berth."

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17. 17

    Question 17. What does the story tell readers about the wife's fate after she falls?

    • Correct answer: Nothing: the story ends as she falls
    • She dies of shock on the train
    • She recovers and lives with her family
    • She is arrested for hiding the death

    Wharton stops the story at the moment she falls. The text never says whether she recovers, what her family learns, or what happens next. Readers have to decide for themselves.

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18. 18

    Question 18. In which 1899 collection, Wharton's first book of short stories, did this story appear?

    • Crucial Instances
    • The Hermit and the Wild Woman
    • Correct answer: The Greater Inclination
    • The Descent of Man

    "A Journey" appeared in The Greater Inclination (1899), Edith Wharton's first collection of short stories, published by Charles Scribner's Sons.

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19. 19

    Question 19. Which of these events actually happened in the story?

    • The couple gave up their house and spent a winter in Colorado for his health.

      Happened

      They stored the wedding presents and new furniture and went to Colorado for the dry climate.

    • The wife was sad to say goodbye to her friends in Colorado.

      Didn't happen

      She waved "unregretful farewells to the acquaintances she had really never liked till then."

    • A freckled child stares at the sick husband and won't be coaxed away.

      Happened

      Offers of candy and picture-books fail; the child "watched him imperturbably."

    • The wife tells the porter right away that her husband has died.

      Didn't happen

      She tells the porter he is asleep and then that he is very ill, and she keeps the secret all day.

    • She tells the porter the doctor wants her husband to lie down as much as possible.

      Happened

      She says: "The doctor wants him to lie down as much as possible."

    • The motherly woman is allowed to take a look at the husband.

      Didn't happen

      The wife refuses: "He mustn't be disturbed."

    • She plans to act surprised and scream when the curtains are opened.

      Happened

      She keeps repeating "I must pretend I don't know," and thinks she should go up to him naturally "and then I must scream."

    • She throws her husband's flask out of the window.

      Didn't happen

      She finds the flask in her bag and later swallows a little brandy from it, which helps her fall asleep.

    • She dreams that she, too, is dead and lying beside him.

      Happened

      In her dream "She was dead in her turn, and lay beside him with smooth upstaring face."

    • Her family greets her on the platform in the final scene.

      Didn't happen

      The story ends inside the train as she faints. Her family never appears.

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