IN OUR TIME Edith Wharton PDF

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Notes on Edith Wharton taken from BBC podcast In Our Time....

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IN OUR TIME: EDITH WHARTON Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the works of Wharton (1862-1937) such as The Age of Innocence for which she won the Pulitzer Prize and was the first woman to do so, The House of Mirth, and The Custom of the Country. Her novels explore the world of privileged New Yorkers in the Gilded Age of the late C19th, of which she was part, drawing on her own experiences and written from the perspective of the new century, either side of WW1 . Among her themes, she examined the choices available to women and the extent to which they could ever really be free, even if rich. Wrote of high society in America’s Gilded Age; for the women of her novels, more a gilded cage. A woman’s reputation was her fortune; any blemish would ruin her chances of a financially strong marriage. She settled in France, keeping a clear perspective of America from across the Atlantic. Born into the New York leisured classes; her family were wealthy, great social routines. Born in midst of Civil War, Depression followed CW and thus she grew up in Europe [‘a wretched exotic’]. It was a gentile, parochial society; she came to think about/ write about it as sexually restrictive. For a young girl of that era she was evidently intended to be a debutante, mother, socialite. However, she wanted to write. Considered a changeling, didn’t serve her in social round of women in marriage market [married 23, fairly late, disastrous]. New York society: European upper middle class, lower aristocracy, tribal, rich, interested in decorating their houses and hosting dinners etc; thought themselves the apex of society. The 400, the first families. Between 1860s-80s as she grows up = little society changing, self—protective of conventions and rituals. New money enters i.e. industrialists, people they consider vulgar, big money-making tycoons entering and nature of the society changing. Novels focus on gilded, static nature of the society; others are about moments of change as it disintegrates. Works in variety of genres from early on; huge range i.e. poetry, plays. Book of interior design before she becomes a novelist. Throughout career, working on variety of projects simultaneously. Settling in France = represents escape/ civilisation/ the intellectual life. Important in terms of finding a life; images of imprisonment and women who can’t get free = heavily feature in her writing.In childhood she had to seek permission to read novels from her mother; often her mother would say no. When she does read, she reads voraciously/ widely. Evolutionary material, The Theory of the Leisured Classes etc.; instead of seeing lives through statistics, we should analyse how they act. The leisured class [the people she anatomises] are group which have taken over from feudal society, practising form of non-pecuniary work, show their wealth through ‘conspicuous consumption’ and conspicuous leisure i.e. going to the opera. House of Mirth, 1905: Great success. Opens with fantastic sequence in New York railway station. 29-yearold female protagonist unmarried [old]. She can’t quite bring herself to marry the boring figures she ought to i.e. Percy Gryce; she doesn’t want to become one of his collectables. Ends in poverty/ despair. In a fantasy she imagines she is holding onto the baby of the working class woman whom she idealises; somewhat mawkish moment for Wharton, whose lives she surely cannot truly understand. Established her in a big way. Paradox that these women are wealthy and yet not free. They are powerful, but don’t have much effect. Wharton considers social anthropology; with characters like Lily Bart, she is very much involved, examining them as members of species in determinist universe, seeing them as not having ultimately freechoice, despite their ambitions/ desires, good or ill. They may be greedy, ruthless, poignant and vulnerable, but they are creature bound within social system. Lily slides down slippery slope. The idea of the marriage market being like form of prostitution. They can, however, make things happen. Power always through subterfuge, negotiation etc.; isn’t the freedom of speaking out. Tribalism Wharton understands and dissects = allows her to unpick those things which don’t have to be said i.e. a look can communicate a whole host of things. Looks = understanding what precise social nuances are. Frightening. Lots of her women have power through not saying but knowing. A Wharton reviewer said all of her men are ‘ladies with moustaches’; great with women, not so great with the men. They don’t seem to get the same narrative attention. Laurence Seldon = talks of republic of the

spirit etc., Not just the women who aren’t free, often the men aren’t free. A system which doesn’t seem to work for anyone i.e. when Lily Bart’s father loses the ability to earn and he becomes, to his wife, ‘extinct’. He is wiped out; a ruthless society. Lovely settings and fancy dinners, narrative voice undercuts the aesthetic. Wharton exposes double standards; if men have a disgrace, they can get back. If a woman steps outside the line i.e. seen to be visiting a bachelor flat in the afternoon, she can revisit the New York society in 30 years and still be known for her blunder. She doesn’t, however, propagandise against double standards. She doesn’t like the idea of fiction as polemic; wouldn’t have described herself as feminist. In some ways oldskool. Clearly sees damage society does, however. Ruthless and strong in matters which fiction of the time did not write about. Horrendous damage of captive marriages/ double standards confronted. She wasn’t a suffragist, she didn’t believe in women’s rights. She doesn’t believe in women scholars. She was a woman of her time, tainted by prejudices of her age. She did, however, belief women mattered as much as male counterparts. Hints of racism and anti-Semitism in her writing i.e. Rosedale [however, perhaps she only exposes the anti-Semitism of the age i.e. Lily’s prejudices]. Product of class and time, though surely no excuse. However, despite caricature features, Rosedale is one of the most intelligent and compassionate/ sympathetic characters in the novel. Age of Innocence = loaded term. Associated with young girls; in this sense, perhaps neutral. However, associated with the ways in which young girls deliberately kept from knowledge of things which may make them independent and dynamic i.e. sexual knowledge, imaginative knowledge. A term for ignorance. Slightly nostalgic element. A novel written retrospectively from Wharton, looking back on the 1870s from outside New York. Many elements of that world were things she hated and had to move from. There’s a loss; its no longer the world she knows. There is a stability/ set of forms which have gone. A slight lament for the old version of the US. Some of Wharton’s novels neglect that there is a world absolutely supported by working class i.e. servants, whole array of people. Different races invisible to her. However, acute and emphatic sense of what it is extremely poor, uneducated, underprivileged i.e. the novella Ethan Frome, set in poor New England rural countryside. Charwoman in House of Mirth etc. perhaps not as insensitive. Sense of community/ bonding between working women at the end. Ethan Frome: a novel of poverty/ lack of opportunities. WWI: Phenomenal contribution, industrial-scale fundraising etc. furious at American reluctance to enter war/ neutrality. Sees very much a battle between civilisation and brutality, feels shamed by America’s position in those first years. Do women have similar spaces both real and metaphorical in her works? i.e. men have their offices. There’s little space for privacy. Total acceptance of hierarchy in this society. Social snobbery; paradox = Wharton accused of being terrible snob. She accused Proust of being snob. She was snobbish about travel/ good furniture/ good friends and conversation etc., though not total snob. In the novels, she exposes the kind of snobbery which says ‘we only belong to each other, no one else can enter’; however, her novels dramatize the fact people do come in. there’s no way of keeping hierarchies absolutely fixed. The unreality of the real world. ‘Like children playing in a graveyard’; postwar sense of haunted landscape. Often compared with Henry James; a great friend of hers. This comparison frustrated her. She is seen as novelist of manners, as interested in questions of innocence and knowledge like him. She doesn’t like selfconfession, a woman’s nature is like a great house full of rooms. She disguises herself. Extraordinarily forma/ objective. However, there is great passion in these books; autobiographical at times i.e. wrote Ethan Frome while her own marriage was disintegrating. Legacy = admired as stylist i.e. sentence construction; a novelist of New York. Ought to be part of the canon. A bolder/ braver/ riskier writer than she’s given credit for. Approaches taboos whilst being commercially successful; ‘I was once considered a revolutionary writer’ i.e. provoked Catholic Church, called it blasphemous, denounced her as evil....