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EDITH WHARTON (1862-1937)
Life and Literary Career
She was called ‘The Lady Novelist’, she was a rich woman and a talented writer. She wrote short stories, novels, poetry and non-fiction, which included travelling, architecture, interior design, gardening… She has been considered an imitator of her friend Henry James. She’s one of the most important American writers and the first woman as a writer to have won the Pulitzer Prize for The Age of Innocence and honorary doctorate of letters (Yale University). Her writing career lasted 4 decades, starting in the 1890s until the 1930s. She lived in the US, but travelled very often to Europe, and her experience there is seen in her novels. She became an American expatriate in France. Although she lived a long part of her life in Europe, her writings are focusing on American life. She was a witness of the great changes of the society and politics of the USA. She is not a Modernist writer, she wrote about repressive society and traditions that represented a believable and contemporary reality in the USA (19th-20th c.). She continued with the tradition of the Novels of manners, about social interactions of individuals in a particular place and time (Mostly NY and Massachusetts, late 19th c., beginning 20th c.). She writes about what she knows and sees, the upper classes of the NY society. A world of exclusivity, wealthy life, privileges, but no freedom. Very often the novels are about conflicts between personal aspiration of the individual and social expectations and pressures. Very often she uses female characters as protagonists and psychological realism as she penetrates their minds. She denounced the position of women in the patriarchal society of the USA. She criticized the marriage institution, women were dissatisfied with gender roles but unable to escape from social conventions. She married a wealthy man because of social and family pressures. Even though divorce was legal, it was socially unacceptable. The female characters in her novels are incapable of escaping and achieving freedom; like Wharton, they’d rather choose wealth. In the endings the females are defeated, because the American society of capitalism is stronger than the ethical and moral values of the individual characters of her novels. However, she was able to escape from that. She’s a self-made woman because although she belonged to a NY high class, she became a professional writer. She was criticized by the literary establishment as they considered that a rich lady could not become a writer. She was born as ‘Née Edith Wharton’ in one of the most distinguished families of NY, with English and Dutch ancestors. She was home-schooled with private tutors and governesses in the USA and Europe. In Europe she learnt foreign languages and started appreciating art, literature and architecture. In 1879 she made her debut, she was presented to society in Newport (Rhode Island), where she would look for a husband. In 1885 she married Edward Wharton, from a wealthy family of Boston. Soon after she became a very close friend of Henry James. Main works: manual of interior design The Decoration of Houses (1897); the first collection of short stories The Greater Inclination (1899). Her acclaimed second novel The House of Mirth (1905). Both she and her husband loved travelling. She moved to France in 1907, where she had an affair with US journalist Morton Fullerton, with whom she discovered sexual pleasure. She divorced in 1913, before the WWI due to his depression and mutual infidelities. When WWI started she remained in France where she organized humanitarian activities. She helped in the war against Germany distributing medical supplies. She established work rooms for unemployed women, seamstresses, convalescent people with tuberculosis, homes for refugees, schools for children escaping from Belgium. She was rewarded with the French Legion of Honor. In the last years of her life she moved to the countryside of Paris. She continued to travel to the US and write. Until her death she developed friendships with Americans and European artists. Some of her novels are about rural New England: Summer (1917) and Ethan Frome (1911), about the unhappy marriage of a farmer because of poverty and guilt of infidelity. She also wrote novels about NY upper-classes: The Custom of the Country (1913), Twilight Sleep (1927) and The Age of Innocence (1920). The last novel was published after WWI, after she experienced the horrors of what she saw. The protagonist is Newland Archer, a lawyer who loves two women and is forced to marry one of them, May Helland. He’ll be seduced by Countess Ellen Oleska, a woman in an unhappy marriage who ran to America.
THE HOUSE OF MIRTH (1905)
It’s a novel about NY society. Henry James advised her “Do it New York [...] the first-hand account is precious”, to write about what she knows and sees. She writes about contemporary times (Gilded Age), the social environment she knows and belongs to. It can be considered both a novel of manners and a social satire about the high class society of NY at the end of 19th c. and beginning of 20th c. The Gilded Age is a time of capitalism, entrepreneurship, economic prosperity , so the outside is beautiful. It’s a novel about the importance of money , so we see the capitalism of the Gilded Age. Also, about losing money and how it can easily go. The upper-classes, those who have money, are the powerful. In NY the poor are very poor, the immigrants landed in the USA, but there is a concentration of large amounts of money in few families, who have the political power. They became the symbolic American aristocracy (industrialists and leisure class of millionaires) → Astor IV, Livingston and Vanderbilt. The NY aristocracy is divided into:
The old money: heirs of English and Dutch middle class merchants who made fortunes. These fortunes came
from railway, banking, clothing, real estate and publishing. They set the standards for other members of the social club. High social status and leisure class: travelling + country houses in Long Island or Newport (Rhode Island). The Dorsets, the Trenors, the Gryces in The House of Mirth (behind the name of Astor, Livingston and Vanderbilt).
The new rich: Competitors of the old money. They don’t have a prestigious family history. ‘Arrivistes’ → recently
made fortunes by themselves, sometimes even larger than the old money. They are considered social climbers, they were born poor or middle-class, speculated with money and became rich. The old money considered that they showed off. Extravagance and ostentation of wealth, rivalry... However, they needed each other and their union was solidified by marriages of convenience, because the new rich had money but no social prestige like the old money. On the other hand, the old money married the new rich for money. Norma Hatch, Rosedale, the Gormers in The House of Mirth , needed Lily Bart because she had the social connections for them to enter the high social circles of the old money. Thanks to The House of Mirth, we see the hypocrisy, cruelty and selfishness of the NY high classes.
The novel’s title comes from the Bible , the Book of Ecclesiastes → “the heart of the wise is in the house of mourning , but the house of the fools is in the house of mirth ”. It’s telling us that God is testing humans and rewards those who are wise. If you live in the House of Mirth you enjoy material wealth, vanity, greed and evil, a foolish place to live. Wharton wants readers to distinguish between the real (house of mourning) and the artificial (house of mirth). If you are from a high class society you live in the house of mirth, a world of prejudices, superficiality, gossips, appearances. This idea makes the novel universal. The literary genre of the novel is US Realism but also Naturalism : pessimism about human mankind and fatalism; Lily Bart is a victim of heredity, environment (parents and friends of the high class of NY) and social determinism. Third-person narrator (Wharton herself) with mostly no access to Lily’s mind, only at the end of the novel. She shows a panoramic view of NY upper-class society.
Lily Bart
The novel is about the Woman of Thirty. It covers the last 17 months in the life of Lily Bart, a socialite woman of NY. Thirty is a critical age, you’re running out of time to find a wealthy husband, you’re getting old even though you’re at the climax of your beauty. What defines the identity of a woman is if she’s single or married. She was the sexual object for 5 men : Lawrence Selden, Percy Gryce, Gus Trenor, George Dorset and Simon Rosedale. The novel is about Lily’s downfall from the House of Mirth at the beginning as an upper-class girl, to the House of Mourning at the end. She is simply an entertainer for the men of the upper-classes. She must please men as she needs a wealthy husband. Her wealthy friends eventually find her irritating and get tired of her. At the end of the novel she’s defeated and destroyed by the American upper-classes of NY. She dies of an overdose of chloral, intentional or not?
A Flower in the Marriage Market
She’s a Marriageable Girl , part of a female group in which marriage is their only career, with no independence. Capitalism also rules US human relations: men use women for sex and exhibition, women use men for money. The social value resides in your usefulness for others. Lily understands marriage as a business (US capitalism). To marry you need three things: beauty, youth and social connections. She uses her beauty to attract male ‘investors’, that’s her capital. She has social connections, but there’s one danger: ageing, so she’s losing value. She needs a wealthy man, someone who pays a high price for her as an artwork in an auction from the marriage market. She’s 29 years old and a veteran of 11 years in the marriage market. She sees how her friends, Bertha Droset and Judy Trenor are financially exploiting her husbands, so she has to imitate them. She confuses sex, money and marriage, for her they come together. This is rooted in her family. Mrs. Bart’s only interest in her husband as provider of financial stability until his financial ruin. For Mrs. Bart, ordinary people “live like pigs”. When Mr. Bart dies, Lily’s beauty is “the last asset in their fortunes” for Mrs. Bart. At the age of 20, Lily is an orphan. There are two alternatives for Lily: social decline (living “like a pig”) but loving a husband, or loveless marriage with a wealthy man → GET RICH or DIE! For Lily marriage is a business , however, it is a failure for her as she self-sabotages. Every time she has the possibility to marry a rich man, she does something wrong, maybe on purpose. Innerly, she doesn’t want to marry for money, all the pressures for her to marry a wealthy husband are external. Lily is a motherless woman and doesn’t have the protection of her aunt, Mrs. Peniston. She realizes that as being motherless she doesn't have the protection or guidance when she faces the business/market of marriage. Lily’s addicted to luxury , but she’s poor. Also, she’s rootless and homeless. She’s a parasite depending on the charity of her aunt and her wealthy friends. She goes to their houses as a temporary sojourner because she’s the perfect guest, entertaining and amusing people at her friend’s parties. She has the need for a life of pleasure and luxury , she’s reluctant to abandon the House of Mirth. Lily to Selden: “I am horribly poor and very expensive. I must have a great deal of money”. She has been brought up to be the Perfect Lady: social arts (serve tea, receive and make social visits, be a helpful guest, perfect social secretary and guest). She plays bridge at her friends' parties because she needs money. She has a conflict of values , she’s weak, frivolous, a fortune hunter , but she idealizes love and is hungry for freedom. She refuses innerly to sell herself as a flower in the marriage market, even though she’s a fortune hunter she idealizes love. Carry Fisher is a matchmaker, a divorce woman and friend of Lily. She’ll prove that every time a good marriage opportunity for Lily comes, she’s careless and not attentive. Ten years before the novel starts an Italian prince wants to marry Lily, a very good opportunity, but she doesn’t marry him. Carry Fisher: “Just at the critical moment, a good-looking step-son…”. In the crucial moment when the Italian prince is going to arrange the marriage Lily flirts with another man with no money and in public. Lily’s flirtations scandalize potential husbands. Years later, still Lily’s misbehavior. She’ll be the object of rumors about her immorality. Another social mistake is visiting the flat of a single man (Selden) being her a single woman. Lily has a new prey, Percy Gryce , and expects to “hunt” him at Bellomont (Judy and Gus Trenor). Percy Gryce is shy and boring, a member of the old rich, dominated by his mother and collector of Americana. He thinks that Lily is a potential new possession for his collection, and Lily needs him to keep living her life of luxuries. Lily spends a lot of time at Bellomont to seduce him and he appreciates her beauty. She almost secures the marriage proposal for Gryce, but in the crucial moment she makes a mistake, going for a walk alone with Selden. He’s shocked by Lily’s misbehavior: smoking, gambling, no Church services. Why is Lily wasting her chances to marry a rich man? One option is that she’s looking for love, unconsciously she refuses to marry for money. Another option is that she’s careless about men and money. Lily compares herself to Gerty: “She likes being good, I like being happy” → careless. Wharton’s use of *foils (Lily Bart vs. Gerty Farish), which means that a character has a personality and behavior that contrast the behavior of another character. It seems that she’s postposing the most important decision of her life, getting married. Spendthrift Lily’s gambling debts (bridge) = Lily loves taking risks. She has debts to pay, for example to her dress maker. She thinks that she can get money for playing bridge and overcome the fact that she’s spendthrift with gambling. But instead of winning money, she loses her little income. She thinks that a friend of hers, Gus Trenor, can help her and she speculates with her own money in Wall Street thanks to her friend. She thinks that she’s winning money with the speculations, she doesn’t understand the operation of the stock market and that Gus is being her financial savior. But, apart from gambling debt she’s
At Mrs. Bry’s party Lily becomes a tableau vivant (a French theatrical performance in which people incarnate characters from paintings). Art imitates life, but here is the other way, and dehumanizes Lily, she becomes a work of art to be contemplated by others. Canvas: Joanna Leigh, Mrs. R.B. Lloyd by Sir Joshua Reynolds (dryad (nymph) carving name of future husband on a tree). Men understand by contemplating her at the tableau vivant that she is available, she’s looking for a man. It’s a pornographic spectacle of the female body on display for men’s erotic gaze : Lily can potentially be possessed by any man. Lily's success as a tableau vivant : power of her beauty; and danger as a tableau vivant : promiscuity and sexual availability, men will think that she’s sexually available for them. The negative consequences of being a tableau vivant : Lily flirts with her friends’ husbands, one of them Gus Trenor. However, she thinks they’re only friends and that it is normal to flirt. Lily’s naivety and Gus Trenor’s capitalism. She asks him to invest her money, but he’s investing his own money and tricks her into thinking that he’s speculating with her money so later he can ask her for sexual favors. Lily is ignorant about money. Exchange of favors : his financial help in exchange for Lily’s sexual body. Gus Trenor after her tableau vivant thinks he has the right to have sex with her as she’s available and he’s helping her to invest money. Gus’s predatory sexual economy and voracious appetite for sex: “The man who pays for the dinner is allowed to have a seat at the table”. Lily finally understands that Gus is not a friend trying to help her, but wants something back. Gus invites her to his house, making her think that his wife wants to see her, but Judy is not there, he wants her to be his mistress. Gus attemps to rape her (“his hand that grew formidable” = metaphor of penis erection) and Lily escapes. Lily feels guilt and shame, she blames herself and goes to Gerty's house. But she doesn’t tell her what’s happened, she internalizes that she is a ‘bad girl’ worse than prostitutes: “I’ve taken what they take (=prostitutes) and not paid as they pay” (=client).
American Womanhood: Ladies & Working-classes
Sisterhood about women, celebrating women friendship in literature, but Wharton destroys this idea and criticizes American ladies. Relationships among US ladies: formality, coldness, competitiveness, hostility, evil. Lack of female solidarity with Lily → Family: When her mother was alive was materialistic and selfish, and she considered Lily's beauty the most valuable asset for the family. Mrs. Julia Peniston (aunt) → Lily as her presumable heiress. Peniston considers that her duty as a wealthy family member is to help Lily financially. But Grace Stepney (cousin) is her competitor and to become the heiress she has to take Lily down. Grace tells their aunt that Lily is gambling and that there are rumours about Lily having an affair with Gus Trenor, and Peniston believes them. Lily asks her aunt for help to pay her debt to Gus Trenor but she desinherist her because of the rumours of Lily having an affair with George Dorset. Socialite friends of Lily → Lily loves flirting with her friends’ husbands. Because of the rumours she is disinherited and has to leave the house of mirth. Bertha and Judy treat Lily as a rival , though Lily is not attracted to their husbands. Who has the power in high class marriage? the official wives. Bertha Dorset invites Lily to a trip to Mediterranean Sea : Lily as a travel companion. Lily’s luxurious holiday on yacht Sabrina: Sicily and Monte Carlo. This is an economic transaction because she wants to take her to distract her husband while she’s having an affair with Ned Silverton ( capitalism , nothing comes for free, her reputation is ruined). George Dorset and Lily are waiting at the train station for Bertha, but she never comes and what people see is a single woman alone with a married man. George and Lily return to the yacht and he realises that his wife is being unfaithful and decides to hire a lawyer to divorce, Selden (irony → Selden’s the past lover of his wife). Bertha humiliates Lily in front of other people and tells her to leave, she shifts the blame on her. Bertha suggests that Lily’s having an affair with George to hide her own affair (Bertha’s good bargain - negocio). Bertha Dorset as revision of Bertha Mason from Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. The difference is that Bertha Dorset does not destroy herself, but only Lily. Bertha betrays Lily (she accuses Lily of seducing her husband, but Lily does not betray Bertha → Lily has Bertha’s love letters to Selden). Social diagnosis: Lily’s promiscuity → ‘Fallen Woman’. Lily accepts her social downfall + resistance to storytelling. The consequence is the devaluation of her beauty in the marriage market. Lily eventually understands that reputation in the Gilded Age has nothing to do with moral integrity but power and money. She still has one friend, Carry Fisher, until Bertha tells her not to help Lily anymore. Lily has to find employment and keeps the friendship of Gerty Farish and new friendship of Nettie Struther, both middle and working class women. Gerty’s a spinster and middle class working woman, doesn’t need to marry a husband and helps Lily to find a job in a millinery shop. We can trust her, but not fully as she’s in love with Selden. Gerty works at the New York Working Girl’s Club : a charity organization for middle class women to help, train and empower working class women like Nettie Struther. They would help poor working class women through evening meetings, entertainment (reading), be self-sufficient and have a place to rest. While Lily was at the house of mirth and had money, she became the benefactress of Nettie Struther. For Nettie, Lily becomes a heroine, she was able to survive thanks to her. The problem for Nettie is that she had an affair with a higher social class man, who abandoned her, sunking Nettie into poverty. She finally finds a man who’s willing to marry her despite her sexual past, unlike Selden does with Lily. Nettie recovered physical/emotional health thanks to the Working Girls’ Club → now happy mother and wife. When Lily lives in the house of mourning, there’d be an accidental meeting between her and Nettie, who followed a career in the newspaper, and welcomes her to her home (sisterhood) as she idolizes Lily. Lily opens up to her and confesses her unhappiness and admiration for Nettie as a survivor. Lily holds Nettie’s baby: need to touch and to be touched → real Lily! She has always been just a visual object of male erotic pleasure, she could be contemplated but not touched.
The sleeping beauty
Lily must leave the House of Mirth: her aunt’s disinheritance + Bertha’s betrayal. Lily must live in the House of Mourning: social degradation as a poor worker. Carry Fisher helps her. She’ll be the social secretary of the New Rich: the Gormers and Norma Hatch. Carry Fisher will also encourage her to marry George Dorset, and he’s going to ask Lily to prove that Bertha was adulterous, but Lily refuses. She quits her job and goes to live in a boarding house in a working-class neighborhood and to work as a hatmaker’s shop of Mrs. Regina. In that moment she definitely enters the House of Mourning. But Lily is unsuitable for work and incompetent as a seamstress: she loses her job.
Symbol of her name: Lily, as the lilies of the field (Matthew, Bible), is not supposed to work, she’s an object of decoration. Mother’s prophecy: “What’s the use of living if one had to live like a pig?” → poverty, house of mourning, misery. Lily’s a flower cultivated to enjoy glamorous places. Darwinism (survival of the fittest): a flower cannot survive in winter of poverty. Lily: “I have tried hard but life is difficult and I am a very useless person” → destined to die. Decaying beauty and ageing → she’s also losing the only asset she had. Rosedale visits Lily and feels pity for her. Lily’s loneliness & psychological introspection: Wharton’s final access to Lily’s mind against exaggerated image of outward femininity. The real Lily has been hidden because Wharton didn’t want to expose her to the curious readers and give them that key information to understand Lily. In the House of Mourning there’s wisdom, you’re not a fool like in the House of Mirth, that’s why the psychological introspection happens there. She discovers she’s rootless and not connected to life nor to other people. Desynchronization of Lily’s love for Selden. In the last encounter Lily wants to be alone with him in his apartment to show him the real Lily, but he’s unable to see the real her even though he tries. She implicitly asks him to love and help her, but he doesn’t understand her and it’s never the right timing. Lily’s social degradation and self-destruction is accentuated by her growing dependence on substances against insomnia: tea’s caffeine to keep awake during the day + chloral to treat anxiety and sleeplessness at night. She cannot sleep because of poverty. Warning at the chemist’s: “A drop or two more, and off you go”. Lily has an addiction to chloral and dies of and overdose → ambiguity → accidental suicide? or deliberate? She knows the danger of dying, she remembers what the chemist said. Her last thoughts are Nettie's baby, what she wanted was love, touch. It is her choice to remain in the House of Mourning and die. The night she dies she receives the money of her aunt and uses it to pay her debt to Gus Trenor. Nettie is the last one to see her alive and Gerty the first one to see her dead, both working class women → arrival of modernity of 20th century : survival of middle-class & working-class women (Gerty & Nettie), but the lady (Lily) must die → future of America. Lily is kissed by Death, not by Prince Charming (Selden). Selden arrives too late to declare his love and rescue Lily. He had finally found the courage to tell her he loves her and wants to marry her. Her dead body is like a work of art to be exhibited, she doesn’t move nor talk. However, she’s found in a dirty, poor place, not in a beautiful room. Romanticism and naturalism: Wharton’s attack against Edgar A. Poe misogyny : “the death of a beautiful woman [...] is the most poetical topic in the world”. Lily’s macabre victory as a tableau vivant : Sleeping Beauty → Lily’s beautiful corpse as an artwork on display for Selden in ugly room. She received pleasure when she was contemplated by men. To a certain extent Selden is to blame for Lily’s death. She made a business error, falling in love with Selden, while her only objective was finding a rich husband. In the conclusion of the novel Selden doesn’t know that Lily had Bertha’s love letter and she burnt them to protect him → act of love unnoticed and self-sacrifice. Who is the real Lily Bart? → INNER BEAUTY & NOBILITY OF HEART (when you sacrifice yourself to help the person that you love without expecting anything in return). Edith Wharton on her novel: “A frivolous society can only acquire dramatic significance through what its frivolity destroys” → LILY! is what is destroyed. “Souls Belated” (1899) by Edith Wharton
19th century literary conventions:
o Marriage as women’s only destiny and novel’s ending with happy marriage. Ex.: Jane Austen’s Pride and
Prejudice , Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
o The Fallen Woman = Adulterous wife , novels written by men: Tolstoi’s Anna Karenina ; Flaubert’s Madame
Bovary ; Harthorne’s The Scarlet Letter ; Alas Clarín’s La Regenta. Social decadence or suicide → adulterous wives. Wharton’s “Soul Belated” about the aftermath of divorce and survival of the adulteress. Lydia Tillotson abandons her husband in the USA and flees to Europe with her lover Ralph Ganner. Wharton’s definition of marriage and Lydia’s revolutionary views: she loves Ralph, that is why she does not want to marry him. Unresolved ending: will she marry Ralph or convince him not to marry? Two transitory settings: mobility of train (they’re happy); prison of Hotel Bellosguardo in Italy run by Lady Conditt and with guests: Mr. and Mrs. Linton (doppelgängers) → upper class decent American and British tourists, there can only be couples of husband and wife → repressive environment again, what Lydia was escaping from, they have to spend less time together unlike in the train. But Ganner likes the Hotel, to be with the other husbands. Mr. and Mrs. Linton are not married and suffer social exclusion. No solidarity among women: Mrs. Linton blackmails Lydia with her secret. Lydia’s divided consciousness and duplicitous role-playing: fictitious public life (=a wife) vs. secret private life (=independent divorcée). Lydia lacks of communication: she doesn’t tell Ralph about the divorce papers. They don’t talk on the train because if she tells him that she asked for the divorce papers he’s going to ask her to marry him, and she doesn’t want to. Traditional relationship between male artist (writer’s block: Ralph) and female muse (Lydia), but Lydia wants to create herself, not to inspire Ralph. He’s no longer blocked when they pretend to be married. The idea that man is the artist and needs a muse → Lydia as his wife, but she doesn’t want to be a muse. Wharton’s pessimism: the ‘New Woman’ cannot find a ‘New Man’. Lydia (New Woman) is the woman who chooses love and independence, and Ganner choses all the conventions and traditions of marriage (not a New Man).
