Edith Wharton

Author

• Born: January 24, 1862
• Birthplace: New York, New York
• Died: August 11, 1937
• Place of death: St.-Brice-sous-Forêt, France

American novelist

Wharton was a novelist who was noted for her portrayal of the decline of New York aristocracy and for her characters’ trapped sensibilities.

Area of achievement Literature

Early Life

Edith Wharton (WAWR-tuhn), born Edith Newbold Jones, was the daughter of George Frederic Jones and Lucretia Stevens Rhinelender Jones. Wharton was born into a society of aristocrats who led a leisured, proper life and disdained business and politics. Wharton’s family was a prime example of “old” New York: moneyed, cultivated, and rigidly conventional.

According to custom, young Wharton was educated by tutors and governesses. She also spent much of her childhood abroad with her family. Wharton was forbidden to read literary “rubbish,” so she fell back on the classics on her father’s bookshelves. Despite her culture and education, Wharton was expected to excel primarily in society, which involved rigid adherence to proper manners, dress, and lifestyle.

In 1885, Wharton was married to another American socialite, Edward Wharton, an easygoing and unintellectual man. The Whartons led an affluent, social life in the United States and in Europe, uninterrupted by children or financial concerns.

Although Wharton performed her social tasks well, her duties were not enough for her hungry mind. She began writing poems, stories, books on interior decorating, and travel pieces. Her husband was embarrassed by his wife’s writing, and her friends also did not approve. Fortunately, Wharton made the acquaintance of writer Henry James. James not only supported her writing but also served as her confidant throughout periods of emotional turmoil. Although Wharton claimed that she wrote for distraction, her diary notes that only by creating another imaginary world through writing could she endure the “moral solitude” of her marriage. Despite obvious incompatibilities, Edith and Edward lived together for twenty-eight years. That they did not divorce until 1913 is probably because of conservative class traditions.

Wharton’s divorce plus other personal tensions spurred her to do some of her best work. She converted her anguish into writing about the corrosive effects of social class on a woman’s identity. Young Wharton found her society’s indifference to anything but forms stultifying. Much of her writing examines the superfluous details of a refined class frozen in convention. Wharton also portrayed struggling characters trapped by larger social forces and, sometimes, by morally inferior individuals. Nevertheless, when Wharton grew old, she concluded that the “Age of Innocence” in which she was reared was preferable to the modern world, which valued nothing.

The declining aristocracy became Wharton’s principal subject matter. She most often depicted the society of “old” New York in conflict with nouveau riche capitalists of the Gilded Age, who respected only money.

Life’s Work

Wharton’s early literary output included poems, decorating books, short stories, and three novels. In 1899, a volume of short stories, The Greater Inclination, was published, followed by The Touchstone (1900). In 1901, Crucial Instances followed; these short books have a Jamesian influence. Wharton’s three poetry collections are overserious and overornamented. Her first novel, The Valley of Decision (1902), another form of George Eliot’s Romola, is notable because its descriptions capture the spirit of eighteenth century Italy. Wharton’s novel Sanctuary (1903) and her short stories in The Descent of Man (1904) are still experimental. Nevertheless, in these early works appear two of Wharton’s basic themes: the aristocratic, cold, egoistic male and the strong female, who eventually dominates the male.

The House of Mirth (1905) marked the beginning of Wharton’s mature artistic period. Wharton had discovered her medium and subject: the novel of manners and the invasion of old New York society by the millionaire “nouveau riche.” Wharton indicated her realization that Knickerbocker society would eventually make peace with the “invaders.” Her story concerned those who were trampled in this social clash. The novel’s Lily Bart is similar to a Dreiser heroine in that she is doomed by heredity and a materialistic environment. Lily struggles to improve herself but is defeated by her embrace of a heartless social ideal and by scruples that prevent her from marrying only for money.

Despite the success of The House of Mirth, Wharton delayed for years before returning to the subject of society’s clash with the invaders. Madame de Treymes (1907) is an innocents-abroad story with a Jamesian influence. The Fruit of the Tree (1907), a reform novel, considers labor reform and the morality of euthanasia, but it fails because of lack of unity. The Hermit and the Wild Woman (1908) is made up of slender stories of artists, but Tales of Men and Ghosts (1910) contains chilling ghost stories.

The novella Ethan Frome (1911) made Wharton famous. Although Ethan Frome involves a poor New England farm family, Wharton’s familiar themes predominate: a man under female domination and a human being crushed by circumstances and his own scruples. Ethan Frome is noted for its spare style, masterly details, tragic ending, and symbolism. Although Wharton used details, she did not often use symbolism. Ethan Frome’s theme is enhanced by landscape symbols that reflect Ethan’s spiritual desolation. Suffocating snow symbolizes Ethan’s financial and social trap, and withered apple trees on a slate hillside symbolize Ethan’s emotional starvation.

The Reef (1912), although praised as a “Racinian” novel, puzzles readers because of its moral tone. The story involves a widow named Anna Leath, who is at last to marry an old bachelor admirer, and her stepson, who is to marry the family governess, Sophy Viner. When Leath discovers that her fiancé and Viner have been lovers, she breaks her engagement. When Leath goes to the governess’s sister’s home to tell Viner that she has given up her fiancé, she learns that Viner has left for India in disreputable company. This departure leaves Leath free to return to her fiancé. The novel’s problem is its implicit sense that social class determines justice. The governess’s fate is near-prostitution precisely because she is a governess, but the bachelor’s betrayal is forgivable because he is a gentleman.

In The Custom of the Country (1913), Wharton returns to the theme of rich, old New York and the “invaders.” The heroine is not a delicate woman whom society crushes, but a predatory female invader who victimizes the society she crashes. Undine Spragg makes the same mistakes as Lily Bart, but unlike Lily, she uses street smarts and amorality to extricate herself. Some people consider The Custom of the Country to be Wharton’s masterpiece because of its taut depiction of the invaders’ takeover of New York society and the resulting social and moral emptiness.

In 1913, the year in which The Custom of the Country was published, the Whartons were divorced. Wharton, who had been spending most of her time in France, now settled there. The new francophile wrote books meant for tourists, for whom she had also written A Motor-Flight Through France (1908). Wharton also wrote about France’s involvement in World War I in Fighting France(1915), The Book of the Homeless (1915), The Marne (1918), and A Son at the Front (1923), works more noted for their support of France than for their literary merit.

Ironically, the war made Wharton long for the vanished, quiet world of her childhood. In “Autre Temps” (Xindu, 1916) and in Twilight Sleep (1927), Wharton expressed nostalgia for the once despised conventions, believing that these instilled fortitude and moral fiber.

In 1916 and 1917, Wharton published The Bunner Sisters and Summer. As in Ethan Frome, the characters are poor and working-class. The Bunner Sisters contains a sensitive person trapped within an inferior human being, while Summer depicts squalid lives and characters struggling in a battle destined for defeat. Again, as in Ethan Frome, symbols signify the characters’ fates, which are predetermined by forces beyond their comprehension.

Wharton’s nostalgia culminated in The Age of Innocence (1920), a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel portraying the genteel New York of the 1870’s and featuring characters trapped by their environment. No matter how much Newland Archer and Ellen Olenska are in love, society decrees that Archer shall marry May Welland, and so he does. Later, Archer even approves his dull marriage as part of good, traditional ways.

Wharton’s best literary period ended with The Age of Innocence, for her work declined after 1920. Wharton began publishing serial novels in American women’s magazines to earn money to sustain her expensive lifestyle. Glimpses of the Moon (1922) shows a severe lapse in style and character. The short stories in Old New York (1924) successfully evoke that period, but Wharton also wanted to depict her contemporary age. This ambition, coupled with her need for money, resulted in inferior works. The Mother’s Recompense (1925), Twilight Sleep (1927), and The Children (1928) unconvincingly lay the causes of the era’s ills at America’s door. Hudson River Bracketed (1929) and The Gods Arrive (1932), novels set in the Midwest, a region she had never visited, make similar implausible criticisms.

Wharton’s posthumously published books are Ghosts (1937) and The Buccaneers (1938). Ghosts contains two superbly frightening stories, whereas The Buccaneers turns back again to “old New York.” This unfinished work revives Wharton’s forceful style but lacks the bitterness of her earlier works. Some critics believe that this book would have been her best had she completed it.

Significance

Wharton’s place in literary history is secured by Ethan Frome. She will also be remembered for her depiction of the high society of old Knickerbocker New York. These works are almost historical novels because of their accurate rendering of an age. Through her exquisite use of detail, Wharton delineated not only the conventions of an unadventurous society but also its moral ambiguity. The stifling conventions of upper-class New York trap its members and often annihilate those who aspire to its society. This demanding social code also, however, produces people who have a strong moral fiber. Ironically, these strong characters whose values have been shaped by “high society” sometimes make unnoticed, and often needless, sacrifices. Although some readers find Wharton’s characters lifeless, she is considered a superb novelist of manners.

Wharton, though acclaimed in her lifetime, suffered from gender as well as class expectations. She began writing to escape her narrow social sphere as well as marital tensions. Wharton endured artistic isolation partially because of her class. That class distrusted literature, particularly that written by women, because of the new and disquieting ideas that literature often advocated. That Wharton’s health improved and her publications increased after her divorce suggests that divorce separated her not only from a man but also from limiting gender roles. Wharton triumphed over formidable obstacles of social position, wealth, and gender expectations. In this respect, she serves as role model for aspiring women with traditional familial and social obligations.

Further Reading

Auchincloss, Louis. Edith Wharton. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1961. This pamphlet covers Wharton’s biography and critically examines Wharton’s plots, characters, themes, and style.

Bell, Millicent. Edith Wharton and Henry James. New York: George Braziller, 1965. This scholarly account of the friendship between Wharton and Henry James includes many of their letters.

Benstock, Shari. No Gifts from Chance: A Biography of Edith Wharton. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1994. As the first substantial biography of Wharton to appear in nearly two decades, Benstock’s study is informed by her investigation of a variety of primary sources that have become available in recent years.

Howe, Irving, ed. Edith Wharton: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1962. This anthology contains articles dealing with Wharton’s overall achievement and others centering on specific works or aspects of her writing.

Jessup, Josephine Lurie. The Faith of Our Feminists. New York: Richard R. Smith, 1950. A section on Wharton demonstrates how feminism is illustrated in Wharton’s subtle portrayal of women’s domination of men.

Lee, Hermione. Edith Wharton. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007. Meticulously detailed biography describing how Wharton’s life was reflected in her work. Lee provides extensive analysis of Wharton’s writings, including work that has been forgotten or ignored.

Lewis, R. W. B. Edith Wharton. 2 vols. New York: Harper & Row, 1975. This Pulitzer Prize-winning work is essential reading for those interested in Wharton’s life and how it informed her work.

Lubbock, Percy. Portrait of Edith Wharton. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1947. This is an informal biography written by Wharton’s friend at the request of her literary executor. The biography portrays Edith Wharton through the perspectives of her friends as well as through the eyes of Percy Lubbock, with a nostalgic, sometimes gossipy tone.

Nevius, Blake. Edith Wharton. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1953. An excellent critical analysis of Wharton’s works, plots, style, and themes particularly the chapter “The Trapped Sensibility.” The book follows Wharton’s career chronologically, noting her artistic decline in the 1920’s and her subsequent “tired writing.”

Peel, Robin. Apart from Modernism: Edith Wharton, Politics, and Fiction Before World War I. Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005. Peel analyzes the work Wharton created from 1900 to 1915 to explore the political and social influences that shaped it, including Wharton’s political opinions, ideas of the good society, and relation to bohemianism.