When you take a step back into everyday life to evaluate friendships throughout life, you can't help but notice how little you actually know even about closest friends. In Edith Wharton's story "Roman Fever", written in 1934, we discover how true this statement is. Over the course of this tale, the reader learns that no matter how long a friendship lasts, it is possible that one's true identity or one's deepest identity secrets are often kept hidden. In “Roman Fever,” Wharton effectively uses symbolism, foreshadowing, and irony to describe a life of deception between two close friends. This story is set in Rome, which symbolizes. something different for each of the main characters: Grace Ansley and Alida Slade In their youth, both spent time in the city of Rome. Both women grew up living across the street from each other, and continued to do so throughout their youth, as well as throughout their married lives. Now later in life, they met again in Rome at a hotel while traveling with their daughters: Barbara Ansley and Jenny Slade While their daughters are out on afternoon dates, the two moms enjoy lunch at a restaurant that it overlooks the Colosseum. Mrs. Slade explains to Mrs. Ansley during lunch “What are the differences that Rome represents for each generation of travellers. To our grandmothers, Roman fever; to our mothers, sentimental dangers – how we were watched! – for our daughters, there is no greater danger than downtown Main Street. They don't know, but how much they're missing out on!” (123). For Mrs. Ansley, Rome represents something entirely different: a battlefield where the two women fought for the man they both loved, Delphin Slade. He dares not share… half the paper… to you, I suppose. At the end of all these years. After all, I had everything; I've had it for twenty-five years. And you had nothing but that letter that he wrote not" (128). Whorton ends this story on an even more ironic note when he has Grace proclaim in the last line "I had Barbara" (129). Through the use of symbolism, foreshadowing and irony Edith Wharton is able to demonstrate that sometimes it takes a lifetime of deception to discover the truth about who your friends really are. only truth that will change the friendship between Mrs. Slade and Mrs. Ansley forever: Barbara is in fact Delphin's love daughter Works Cited Wharton, Edith "Roman Fever" The Norton Introduction to Literature 11th ed. Kelly J. Mays. New York: Norton, 2013, pp.118-128.