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Making Up
Born as Edith Newbold Jones on the 24th of January in 1862, Edith Wharton was an American novelist who began writing at an early age. At around age 6, “making up” is what Wharton called the stories that she created and then would recite to her family while pretending to read from a book. At 15, she made her print debut with a translated poem “What the Stones Tell” under an alternate name. Since writing was an improper occupation for a woman of her era and social standing, her family did not want her name in print. Her mother, Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander, even forbade her from reading novels until she married, and Edith seemingly obeyed. During her years of “making up,” Edith Wharton wrote a novella in 1877 in secret called Fast and Loose. Her mother disapproved of this, openly criticizing Wharton’s work. Wharton then resorted solely to writing poetry, which her father, George Frederic Jones, arranged and privately published in the 1878 collection of poems named Verses. In 1880, the Atlantic Monthly published five of Wharton’s poems anonymously, a major accomplishment.
Despite her obvious talent and initial achievements, her family and friends were not encouraging of her inclination toward writing. Raised in the well-off elite, Edith Wharton grew up in New York’s upper-class, often utilizing her intimate knowledge of her affluent upbringing in her later works. Her parents’ prominent standing within society allotted for her moneyed childhood, contrasting her rebellious book reading in her father’s library instead of focusing on the etiquette that was meant to prime her for marriage. At age 17, Edith Wharton was allowed to make her first debutante appearance and temporarily set aside her writing for her potential suitors. Later at age 23 in 1885, Edith Newbold Jones married Edward “Teddy” Wharton. By all accounts, this was an unhappy union and incongruent coupling. Though they both shared a similar fondness for traveling, Teddy was plagued with depression and largely depended on Wharton’s income even though he regarded her literary work as frightening. With her husband’s increasing mental instability, and the mutual dissatisfaction of the coupling, Wharton often felt trapped within the confines of her marriage.
Unsuitable Suitors
THE HOUSE OF MIRTH: Four years after her mother’s passing in 1901, Edith Wharton published her second novel at the age of 43. The 1905 novel The House of Mirth was both financially and critically successful, earning Wharton’s place among other major novelists. Concerning Lily Bart, a young woman at the age of marriage, Wharton’s novel was momentous in its popularity. A poster in Scribner’s Magazine declared that, “Everybody is talking of ‘The House of Mirth,’ by Edith Wharton in Scribner’s Are you reading it?” The protagonist of the story, Lily Bart, slowly declines into the status of an outcast in spite of her privileged upbringing that was expected to bring a proper marriage to fruition. This specific aspect of the story parallels the author’s life. Edith Wharton, though courted by a few men whom she liked, was unable to secure an engagement from one suitor, and suddenly ended an engagement with another. A few years later, Wharton marries Teddy while the two have but little in common. Lily Bart in The House of Mirth struggles with the bleak options presented for a suitable husband, since the man that she admires lacks the wealth to support the luxurious lifestyle that she desires.
Although said to be Edith Wharton’s intricately constructed masterpiece, critics argued that The House of Mirth was an unsuitable representation of the socially elite, besmirching their reputation, while admirers of the work declared that it was an accurate depiction of New York City’s high society. Main character Lily Bart pursues wealth and a powerful social status by means of marriage. Because the protagonist does not follow her true feelings of admiration for the man that she deemed too poor and therefore unsuitable for marriage, the result is her continual battle against becoming impoverished. Slowly, as Wharton describes Lily Bart’s casting further away from the moneyed inner circle, The House of Mirth allows readers to glimpse the truth beneath the pleasing facade of the rich. As she fights to find a position in the society, Bart is exposed to and begins to recognize the questionable morals, superficiality, and schemes of the upper crust. Edith Wharton’s portrait of high society’s cold reality stems from her background in the upper-class scene. Wharton’s intense portrayal of the callousness in upper class social circles described inThe House of Mirth is attributed as the cause of the adverse reaction her work garnered from those she wrote to edify.
Imprisonment in Marriage
ETHAN FROME: Edith Wharton’s 1911 pessimistic novella, Ethan Frome, was received and reviewed positively by The New York Times. She began composing the novella concerning a failed marriage and thwarted romance after plenty of time to steep in her own dissatisfaction in her marriage to Teddy Wharton. From the time they were wed in 1885, Edith Wharton’s marriage was riddled with disappointment in every aspect. Wharton transmutes her own feelings into the theme of melancholy in her novella Ethan Frome. Wharton begins the story with an unnamed narrator who hires the main character, Ethan Frome, who has a limp. Set in the dreary winter of Starkfield, New England, Ethan recounts his story to the narrator, going back twenty-four years and includes the incident in which he acquired his faltering walk. Ethan falls in love with his wife’s cousin Mattie. Despite being married to the ailed and bitter Zeena, during Mattie’s visit to the couple to help care for Zeena in her failing health, Mattie ignites a passion in Ethan that he is forbidden to express. Ethan feels imprisoned in his marriage to Zeena after acknowledging his feelings for another woman. When considering Wharton’s husband Teddy and the way that his mental ailments further constrained their marriage, readers can gather that she drew from her own sentiments regarding espousal due to the manner in which her character Ethan becomes trapped within his marriage to one who is ill.
Recognizing Ethan’s attraction to Mattie, Zeena arranges to send her back home. Ethan comes up with a plan to run away with Mattie but is unable to acquire the money he would need to do so. While on the way to the train station to drop off Mattie, the two stop and attempt to prolong the bitter goodbye by sledding on one of the rural hills. During this stop, Mattie proposes a suicide pact in which they would both sled downhill into a tree occupying the base of the hill. They wished to be together and share their last moments side by side. The romantic relationship that exists between characters Ethan and Mattie in Ethan Frome is related to Wharton’s personal life. Although she had not been officially divorced from her husband Teddy Wharton, their loveless relationship was long over. Edith Wharton meets a dashing scamp of a man through her friend Henry James and has an affair with journalist Morton Fullerton in 1908. During the time of their affair, Wharton kept a secret journal cataloging the brief yet intense relationship that allowed her to release some of her stifled fervor. Though Fullerton left Wharton with a broken heart, she was ultimately left strengthened by the experience. Unfortunately for characters Ethan and Mattie in Ethan Frome, the aftermath of their suicide pact leaves Ethan with his perpetual limp and paralyzes Mattie, neither dying in their profound romantic gesture as they had intended. In the end, Mattie and Ethan both realize their hope to live with each other, but Wharton portrays the ending in irony. With Ethan’s wife Zeena now acting as caregiver to the incapable Mattie, both lovers remain in a state of physical pain due to their injuries and emotional misery with Zeena as their pervasive attendant. Two years following the publishing of the book, Wharton and her husband Teddy were officially divorced in 1913.
New and Old Money
THE AGE OF INNOCENCE: Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, published in 1920 was her eighth novel. This novel earned her the status of being the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1921. She composed the novel at the age of within a matter of seven months, and this was the hit she needed in order to maintain her costly thirty-five-room mansion that she was renovating at the time. The impact that World War I, which occurred from 1914 to 1918, had on the economy slashed Wharton’s income by nearly 60%. Her country house mansion, Pavillon Colombe in France, in combination with the rent she was paying on her lavish Paris apartment caused an accumulation of expenses. The constrained time span for the novel The Age of Innocence stemmed from her need for an increase of her already substantial income to support her household endeavors since she was accustomed to living in excess. As an author who had published a book on The Decoration of Houses, Edith Wharton was a designer, with a specific vision and high standards for the place in which she resided.
Wharton’s The Age of Innocence is set in New York’s high society during the 1870’s and concerns marriage issues which mirror her personal experience within the institution. After her tumultuous marriage to Teddy for 28 years, the couple divorced in 1913. The Age of Innocence allows readers to absorb a story of difficult moments within a lifetime rather than a marriage that is the happy ending. The novel is about an impending marriage of an upper-class partnership that is cast into disarray at the arrival of the bride’s cousin. Wharton derived the novel from a desire to escape from her current situation in an America that had changed due to the rise of the Gilded Age and return to her childhood reminiscences. The Gilded Age was a period of materialistic greed and tainted politics. Although her family was respected due to their long-standing position among high society, Edith Wharton drew upon her insider knowledge of the exclusionary syndicates to allow her readers insight to the restrictive New Money families of the upper class. She wrote critically of the separation evident between the rich, and The Age of Innocence is primarily a novelized elucidation of old vs. new; representative of the battle between the old ways of generational wealth and the new industrialization of America. Because the novel was widely read in the aftermath of the first World War, readers connected with the theme of loss within the story. After the abrasive reception of The House of Mirth, this novel was Wharton’s way of accurately depicting the questionable morals of high society while treading lightly.
Universal and Personal
More than eighty-six years after her death, Edith Wharton remains one of the most well-known American women authors. The principal rationalization of her inveterate legacy exists as a result of Wharton’s empirical ability to observe and understand the way of life. Not only did Wharton make an effort to ponder the world that she lived in, she did so with an element of personability. Much advice can be collected throughout study of Wharton’s writing style. The author carefully manages a balance between the vague and the specific, appealing to readers through both aspects: First is a sense of genuine emotion due to the individual nature in which Wharton draws upon her own struggles and intimate knowledge of her reality. Second is that her narratives are open-ended to a universal degree in her depiction of themes and elements that any person may find relevance within. A 1918 silent French film and a 2000’s movie of The House of Mirth are two of three films among other stage and radio adaptations of Wharton’s novel. Three film adaptations of Wharton’s The Age of Innocence have been released beginning with a silent-film from 1924, then one that did poorly in the box-office later in 1934, and most recently a critically acclaimed and Academy Award winning film in 1993. Also released in 1993 was the British-American adaptation of Ethan Frome. In an age where not only film but society has drastically changed since the previous limitations of the early 1920’s, Edith Wharton’s literature still remains relevant because of her ability to artfully convey the universal human experience.
Discussion Questions
Edith Wharton drew from the insider knowledge that her privileged upbringing allotted her. What are some topics that you possess an insight of? Consider how your readers would benefit from your unique perspective.
Ethan Frome likely derived from the true story of a sledding accident Wharton had heard of and later became acquainted with one of the victims. Which true events have occurred in your surrounding area that urge a retelling?
Wharton’s long-lasting literary legend is partially accredited to her ability to comprehend the world around her. As a writing exercise, write about your surroundings from a purely observational perspective.
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