Wharton was very strict about which rooms were for public consumption and which were private. This boudoir, across the hall from her bedroom, was a way station: a third-floor sitting room where she received her most intimate visitors. The decorative molding and painted panels reflect its status as a public space; in comparison, her bedroom is shockingly plain. In an early short story, "The Fullness of Life," she wrote:

I have sometimes thought that a woman's nature is like a great house full of rooms: there is the hall, through which everyone passes in going in and out; the drawing room, where one receives formal visits; the sitting room, where members of the family come and go as they list; but beyond that, far beyond, are other rooms, the handle of whose doors perhaps are never turned, no one knows the way to them, no one knows whither they lead; and in the innermost room, the holy of holies, the soul sits alone and waits for a footstep that never comes.