This work explores Edith Wharton's career-long concern with a 19th-century visual culture that limited female artistic agency and expression. Wharton repeatedly invoked the visual arts as a medium for revealing the ways that women's bodies have been represented (as passive, sexualized, infantalized, sickly, dead). Well-versed in the Italian masters, Wharton made special use of the art of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, particularly its penchant for producing not portraits of individual women but instead icons onto whose bodies male desire is superimposed.

Bringing together leading voices from across the globe, The Bloomsbury Handbook to Edith Wharton represents state-of-the-art scholarship on the American writer Edith Wharton, once primarily known as a New York novelist. Focusing on Wharton's extensive body of work and renaissance across 21st-century popular culture, chapters consider: - Wharton in the context of queer studies, race studies, whiteness studies, age studies, disability studies, anthropological studies, and economics; - Wharton's achievements in genres for which she deserves to be better known: poetry, drama, the short story, and non-fiction prose; - Comparative studies with Christina Rossetti, Henry James, and Willa Cather; -The places and cultures Wharton documented in her writing, including France, Greece, Italy, and Morocco; - Wharton's work as a reader and writer and her intersections with film and the digital humanities. Book-ended by Dale Bauer and Elaine Showalter, and with a foreword by the Director and senior staff at The Mount, Wharton's historic Massachusetts home, the Handbook underscores Wharton's lasting impact for our new Gilded Age. It is an indispensable resource for readers interested in Wharton and 19th- and 20th-century literature and culture.

The original CliffsNotes study guides offer expert commentary on major themes, plots, characters, literary devices, and historical background. The latest generation of titles in this series also feature glossaries and visual elements that complement the classic, familiar format. CliffsNotes on The House of Mirth takes you into the waning years of the Gilded Age and the moral bankruptcy of New York City's elite class. Edith Wharton's story of a woman—whose beauty causes men to desire to possess her and women to be jealous of her—reflects the complicated struggle of the individual against the social strictures of a powerful, and triumphant, moneyed class. This concise supplement to the satirically critical The House of Mirth, helps you understand the overall structure of the novel, actions and motivations of the characters, and the social and cultural perspectives of the author. Features that help you study include Chapter-by-chapter summaries and commentaries A character map that outline key characteristics and relationships Insightful character analyses A critical essay about the opulence and emptiness of the Gilded Age A review section that tests your knowledge Classic literature or modern-day treasure—you'll understand it all with expert information and insight from CliffsNotes study guides.

The interplay between solitude and society was a particularly persistent theme in nineteenth-century American literature, though writers approached this theme in different ways. Poe explored the metaphysical significance of isolation and held solitude in high esteem; Hawthorne viewed the theme in moral terms and examined the obligation of each individual to the larger community; and Emerson maintained that the contradictory states of self-reliance and solidarity are fundamental to human happiness. Herman Melville emerged with an ontological response to this issue. Questioning the nature of being, he argued that humans are essentially isolated creatures. While he grants that we are free to choose how we conduct our lives, whether in solitude or in society, we cannot escape the essential condition of our alienation. Thus in Moby-Dick, he coins the term Isolato to signify the inherent separateness of all individuals. Writing some fifty years later, Edith Wharton reached the same conclusion. This book argues that Wharton's views on solitude and society were strongly parallel to those of Melville. Scholars have generally held that Wharton was primarily influenced by the great English, French, and Russian writers of the nineteenth century; and that with the exception of Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry James, she neglected the influence of American literature almost entirely. This study demonstrates that Wharton read a significant portion of Melville's writings, that she reflected on the nature and achievement of his works, and that her consideration of his importance emerged during very significant moments in her life, when she was forced to grapple with her own place as an individual in relation to a larger community. Though Melville and Wharton initially seem disparate, this book shows that they had much in common. By studying the two authors side by side, this volume reveals that they shared a similar way of seeing the world, particularly with respect to their considerations of solitude and society. Through their solitary characters, Melville and Wharton question the relationship of self and society and thus engage a universal problem of special interest to the nineteenth century.

Starting with the tensions in the early family constellation, Gloria C. Erlich traces Edith Wharton's erotic evolution—from her early repression of sexuality and her celibate marriage to her discovery of passion in a rapturous midlife love affair with the bisexual Morton Fullerton. Analyzing the novelist's life, letters, and fiction, Erlich reveals several interrelated identity systems—the filial, the sexual, and the creative—that evolved together over the course of Wharton's lifetime.

An investigation into Wharton’s extensive use and adaptation of the Gothic in her fiction. Gender and the Gothic in the Fiction of Edith Wharton is an innovative study that provides fresh insights into Wharton’s male characters while at the same time showing how Wharton’s imagining of a fe/male self evolves throughout her career. Using feminist archetypal theory and theory of the female Gothic, Kathy A. Fedorko shows how Wharton, in sixteen short stories and six major novels written during four distinct periods of her life, adopts and adapts Gothic elements as a way to explore the nature of feminine and masculine ways of knowing and being and to dramatize the tension between them Edith Wharton’s contradictory views of women and men—her attitudes toward the feminine and the masculine—reflect a complicated interweaving of family and social environment, historical time, and individual psychology. Studies of Wharton have exhibited this same kind of contradiction, with some seeing her as disparaging men and the masculine and others depicting her as disparaging women and the feminine. The use of Gothic elements in her fiction provided Wharton, who was often considered the consummate realist, with a way to dramatize the conflict between feminine and masculine selves as she experienced them and to evolve and alternative to the dualism. Fedorko’s work is unique in its careful consideration of Whartons’s sixteen Gothic works which are seldom discussed. Further, the revelation of how these Gothic stories are reflected in her major realistic novels. In the novels with Gothic texts, Wharton draws multiple parallels between male and female protagonists, indicating the commonalities between women and men and the potential for a female self. Eventually, in her last completed novel and her last short story, Wharton imagines human beings who are comfortable with both gender selves.

In 1900, Edith Wharton burst into the settled summer colony of Lenox. An aspiring novelist in her thirties, she was already a ferocious aesthete and intellect. She and her husband, Teddy, planned a defiantly classical villa, and she became a bestselling author with The House of Mirth in 1905. As a hostess, designer, gardener and writer, Wharton set high standards that delighted many, including Ambassador Joseph Choate and sculptor Daniel Chester French. But her perceptive and sometimes indiscreet pen also alienated potent figures like Emily Vanderbilt Sloane and Georgiana Welles Sargent. Author Cornelia Brooke Gilder gives an insider's glimpse of the community's reaction to this disruptive star during her tumultuous Lenox decade.

First published in 1992, this volume of essays celebrates the revival of Edith Wharton’s critical reputation. It offers a variety of approaches to the work of Wharton and examines largely neglected texts. It differs from many other collections of Wharton criticism in its insistence that the entire body of Wharton’s work deserves attention. This book will be of interest in those studying nineteenth century and American literature.

Book 1: Immerse yourself in the social intricacies of the Gilded Age with “The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton.” Wharton's novel follows the tragic fate of Lily Bart as she navigates the high-society landscape of New York. Through Lily's story, Wharton provides a poignant commentary on the pressures and limitations imposed on women in the early 20th century. Book 2: Explore the constraints of societal expectations in “The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton.” Wharton's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel paints a vivid portrait of New York's upper crust during the Gilded Age, examining the conflicts between passion and propriety. This classic work delves into the complexities of love and duty against a backdrop of rigid societal norms. Book 3: Enter the world of tragic romance with “Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton.” Wharton's novella explores the doomed love affair between Ethan Frome and his wife's cousin, Mattie Silver, against the bleak backdrop of a harsh New England winter. This poignant tale captures the emotional complexities and societal constraints that define Wharton's exploration of human relationships.

Original Scholarly Monograph