Enter the Jazz Age and the lives of the Manfords of New York. A family caught in the rush to enjoy life, regardless of reality. Only Nona Manford can see through the veil of the feigned joie de vivre that everyone around her cloaks themselves in.
Twilight sleep was actually a medical procedure used in the early 20th Century in which pregnant women would be given a mixture of drugs to simultaneously reduce the pain of childbirth and allow the mother to forget the experience altogether.
Edith Wharton uses twilight sleep as a metaphor for the way Americans in the 1920s seemed to do everything in their power to avoid pain and seek quick fixes to their problems.
The Manfords' avoidance can't last forever, though. Or can it?
