The Glimpses of the Moon

The Glimpses of the Moon is a romantic novel written by Edith Wharton in 1922.

Set in 1920s New York City, Nick Lansing and Susy Branch are well-connected and hobnobbing with the American high society of the time. However, they have no money of their own.

They try to live and appear in this elite world, but they have no means to support themselves financially and live thanks to the help of their rich friends. They reach an agreement: they will get married and spend their honeymoon in the mansions of their rich friends so that they can live, at least for a year, without worrying about money. Their rich friends give them luxurious gifts and leave them their villas for free.

It is a kind of pact, a mutual aid, to help each other. Besides, they both know that if the other person meets someone to help him or her move up the social ladder, he or she might break up the marriage. Will they find the prosperity they long for? Or will they live an empty life amidst luxury and wealth?

"It rose for them—their honey-moon—over the waters of a lake so famed as the scene of romantic raptures that they were rather proud of not having been afraid to choose it as the setting of their own. "It required a total lack of humour, or as great a gift for it as ours, to risk the experiment," Susy Lansing opined, as they hung over the inevitable marble balustrade and watched their tutelary orb roll its magic carpet across the waters to their feet."