I'm John Bachelors with Barbara Weisberg, her new book is strong passions, a scandalous divorce in old New York.

We're not telling the ending on purpose because you can't guess it, but we are going to go to the next generation.

Edith Warden is a Stevens, is that correct, Barbara?

That is correct. is a

Stevens is that correct barber that is correct

uh she she is a cousin

uh... mary is but let me say, she is, Edith Wharton's mother is a cousin of Mary's.

So they know this story in Old New York, the Stevens, the Astors, the Strongs,

the Joneses keeping up with the Joneses.

Edith Wortons and Jones as well. Everybody knows this story and everybody knows that it became impossible for the two to stay together and they separate apart.

And Barbara guides me to a short story that Edith Wharton

wrote about Mrs Lidcoat coming home from Europe to attend or to bless or in some way to visit her daughter Lila who has

divorced her husband and is now carrying on or remarried a new man.

And what is striking about the revelations in this book to me, Barbara, is that this is the period

in the Gilded Age in which divorce became commonplace. It had been extremely rare and difficult beforehand,

before the war and afterwards it explodes in New York. I think you said it went up 80% in 10 years. Do I remember that correctly?

Yes.

Between 1870 and 1880 by some accounts it went up by some 80%.

Still small number because it started out so small, but it was a

noticeable impact increase. Now there are a lot impact increase.

Now there are a lot of outrageous about the way women have been treated in this country.

I understand that.

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