Realizing that it had vanished, she began to reflect on the New York of her childhood. In 1921 she was divorced and living in France, financially secure, respected, with a thriving social life. The House of Mirth reflects her rage and desperation: This New York is cold and vapid, greedy and heartless.Īfter World War I Wharton’s view changed. Wharton knew that divorce was social suicide, and saw no escape for herself. She wrote The House of Mirth in 1905, when she was trapped in a degrading marriage to a husband who was mentally unstable, intellectually limited, and emotionally duplicitous. She wrote them at different times, and they show her changing views. That tension is most beautifully and powerfully expressed in her two greatest novels about New York, The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence. The conflict between the mannered, mandarin world, and the passionate, uncontrollable one would provide the central dynamic of her work.
This one held emotions and ideas, and it seethed around her like an invisible mist. But she also felt the presence of another, unacknowledged one. (She was also a bit of a snob.) She understood the formalized world. Wharton knew the rules-how long a widow’s veil should be, which fork should go on the outside at a place setting-and she followed them. Her mother said coldly, “Why didn’t you tell him?” She explained that her new coachman hadn’t recognized her mother’s coach. That was a nearly unforgivable insult, and Edith had to hurry to her mother’s house to apologize. When Edith was a young matron, unwittingly she let her new coachman pass her mother’s coach, as they both drove along the main street in Newport. She was dedicated to the rules of decorum. Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander Jones was well born, impecunious, and savagely snobbish. To grow up in that society-and many of us here today did-was to know the enormous social forces implicit in the command, “ Don’t make a scene.”Įdith learned the rules most particularly from her mother. Self-control was essential emotional display was anathema.
#Wharton writing challenge code
The code was Puritanical, driven by moral rectitude, self-reliance, and stoicism. This world was tribal and insular, with a rigid caste system and a strict code of behavior. Hers was a small, privileged world, in which family was more important than wealth. So we’re grateful to her.Įdith Newbold Jones was born-right here-in 1862. I’m glad to be here today, because Wharton was a huge influence on my own work, and I think on that of most American fiction writers today.
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