In order to establish her novel in Darwinian terms, Wharton dehumanizes her characters to portray them as creatures that rely on money for survival. Specifically, this applies to the symbolic biome of the upper class. While Selden, a friend and spectator of the wealthy, talks with Lily he comments, “And so it is with [the] rich people-they may not be thinking of money but they’re breathing it all the while: take them into another element and see how they squirm and gasp” (Wharton 75). Wharton’s diction characterizes the wealthy as animals, rather than people, so she can relate the classes to biomes, or environments that are based on wealth. Instead of climate changing between the different environments, it is one 's income changing between …show more content…
Specific characters in which their names act as their genes are Bertha and Lily. Very few female characters’ names are not in the diminutive, and one is Bertha, a preeminent figure in the upper class. When Lily is about to reveal Bertha’s affair her “words died under the impenetrable insolence of Bertha’s smile…then without a word, she rose and went down to her cabin” (Wharton 221). Bertha’s superiority is evident in Wharton’s’ diction and Lily’s symbolic positioning. Because Lily’s words die under Bertha and she goes downstairs, or below Bertha, it signifies her subservience. Lily’s name is even in the diminutive, since it ends in “y”, which further represents her subordination. This enables Wharton to use Bertha’s name to foreshadow, or predestine, her eventual dominance over Lily. Like Bertha, Lily’s name denotes her fate, particularly her alienation. Her name represents nature, but, since a flower cannot survive in this metropolitan environment, it symbolizes why Lily cannot conform and will not prosper. A lily further allows Wharton to comment on Lily’s personality. If she were to succumb to the values of her class she would “…sacrifice [the] fineness of spirit that sets her apart” (Barnett). This fineness relates to Lily’s innate morality, such as a lily’s white coloring. Since she is characterized as virtuous, she will fail …show more content…
When Nettie first introduces her newborn child to Lily, she tells her “Marry Anto’nette-that’s what we call her: after the French queen in the play” (Wharton 334). The significance of the baby’s name is because it is an allusion to Marie Antoinette. Her lavish lifestyle is similar to the aristocrats of New York, but she was soon murdered during the French Revolution. Her murder represents an imminent downfall, as Lily experienced. However, Wharton changes the spelling in order to signify that Marry will not belong among the wealthy, such as Lily did not. Therefore, Wharton creates a connection between Lily and Marry, because both will obtain wealth, but diverge from society causing their decline and untimely death. When Lily dies, Wharton continues to highlight Lily’s connection to Marry. After she has overdosed, Lily begins to hallucinate that she is holding Marry, in which “…the baby more likely symbolizes [Lily’s] desire to born again” (Dixon). From this wish, Wharton is able to symbolize that Marry will embody Lily, and then is doomed. But Marry is a child, who cannot control her life, and according to Social Darwinism, is forced to endure her unsuccessful future. By making Marry a futile and naive baby, Wharton employs a sense of pathos, so she can censure Social Darwinism for harming a child and
For this literary analysis I am working with Edith Wharton’s short story “Roman Fever”. From the beginning of the story it is easy to see that Wharton uses gender stereotypes, from the time that the story is set in, to expose perennial antagonism of true human nature. The story’s two main charters, Grace Ansley and Alida Slide, early on in the story already have some past tension that continues to develop into a heated exchange until the shocking twist towards the end of the story. Gender stereotypes in Roman fever play an important role in creating tension between Mrs. Slade and Mrs. Ansley that ultimately leads to reason of why there is an underlying conflict between the two.
In the beginning years of Janie’s life, there were two people who she is dependent on. Her grandmother is Nanny, and her first husband is named Logan Killicks. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, “Janie, an attractive woman with long hair, born without benefit of clergy, is her heroine” (Forrest). Janie’s grandmother felt that Janie needs someone to depend on before she dies and Janie could no longer depend on her. In the beginning, Janie is very against the marriage. Nanny replied with, “’Tain’t Logan Killicks Ah wants you to have, baby, its protection. ...He done spared me...a few days longer till Ah see you safe in life” (Hurston 18). Nanny is sure to remind Janie that she needs a man in her life for safety, thus making Janie go through life with that thought process.
Lily’s idea of home is having loving parent/mother figures who can help guide her in life. Because of this desire, she leaves T. Ray and begins to search for her true identity. This quest for acceptance leads her to meet the Calendar Sisters. This “home” that she finds brightly displays the ideas of identity and feminine society. Though Lily could not find these attributes with T. Ray at the peach house, she eventually learns the truth behind her identity at the pink house, where she discovers the locus of identity that resides within herself and among the feminine community there. Just like in any coming-of-age story, Lily uncovers the true meaning of womanhood and her true self, allowing her to blossom among the feminine influence that surrounds her at the pink house. Lily finds acceptance among the Daughters of Mary, highlighting the larger meaning of acceptance and identity in the novel.
Throughout “Ethan Frome,” Edith Wharton renders the idea that freedom is just out of reach from the protagonist, Ethan Frome. The presence of a doomed love affair and an unforgiving love triangle forces Ethan to choose between his duty and his personal desire. Wharton’s use of archetypes in the novella emphasizes how Ethan will make choices that will ultimately lead to his downfall. In Edith Wharton’s, “Ethan Frome.” Ethan is wedged between his duty as a husband and his desire for happiness; however, rather than choosing one or the other, Ethan’s indecisiveness makes not only himself, but Mattie and Zeena miserable.
Ethan Frome is the main character of Edith Wharton’s tragic novel. Ethan lives the bitterness of his youth’s lost opportunities, and dissatisfaction with his joyless life and empty marriage. Throughout the story Ethan is trapped by social limits and obligations to his wife. He lives an unhappy life with many responsibilities and little freedom. Ethan Frome studied science in college for a year and probably would have succeeded as an engineer or physicist had he not been summoned home to run the family farm and mill. Ethan quickly ended his schooling and went to run the family farm and mill because he feels it is his responsibility. He marries Zeena after the death of his mother, in an unsuccessful attempt to escape silence, isolation, and loneliness. Ethan also feels the responsibility to marry Zeena as a way to compensate her for giving up part of her life to nurse his mother. After marring Zeena he forgets his hope of every continuing his education and he is now forced to remain married to someone he does not truly love.
The Coquette; or, The History of Eliza Wharton narrates the tribulations of an unmarried woman in post-revolutionary America. The author Hannah Webster Foster uses the story of Miss Wharton as an allegory of female moral decay. The highly patriarchal demands that women be submissive, domestic, and married. However, the protagonist Eliza Wharton has conflicting ideas of her expectations within the society. She is highly intelligent and yearns for self-determination. Though the novel is about seduction, Foster significantly altered the basic structure of novels at the time by relating it from the female perspective. The result is a novel that explores several significant themes in post-revolutionary America among them, the existence, and the need for female education.
Edith Wharton, originally named “Edith Newbold Jones”(Cliff Notes), was born on “January 24, 1862 in New York City to George Frederic Jones and Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander Jones and died on August 11, 1937”(Cliff Notes). She was born into a wealthy family and was a “designer, short story writer and American novelist”(Cliff Notes). Wharton descended from the English and Dutch cultures. She had two siblings, one known as “Frederic Rhinelander Jones” (Cliff Notes) who was sixteen years older than her, and “Henry Edward Jones eleven years older”(Cliff Notes). While her brothers attended boarding school, Wharton became “raised as an only child in a brownstone mansion on West Twenty-third Street in New York City”(Cliff
Newland loathes the monotonous conversations with May and repetitiveness of his job. Newland respects and loves May with all his heart, but when she begins to call him original, Newland realizes she was always “going to say the right thing” (Age of Innocence 22) because she was simply giving the replies “instinct and tradition” have taught her (Age of Innocence 72). Cynthia Griffin Wolff, in her article entitled “Edith Wharton”, declares that the small world of New York was “suffocating” and “stifled spontaneous expressions of emotion” (3). Also, Newland lived in a kind of “hieroglyphic world” where what someone actually wanted to say was never said or thought, but just “represented by a set of arbitrary signs” (Age of Innocence 40).
Dorothea Brooke is a very bright and beautiful young lady that does not much care for frills or getting ahead in society. She wants more than anything to help those around her, starting with the tenants of her uncle. She desires to redesign their cottages, but Arthur Brooke, her elderly uncle with whom she and her younger sister Celia Brooke lives with, does not want to spend the money required. So Dorothea shares her dream with Sir James Chettam, who finds her fascinating, and encourages her to use the plans she has drawn up for the tenants on his land instead. He falls in love with her, but does not share his feelings for her quickly enough. Edward Casaubon, an older scholarly clergyman asks Dorothea to marry him, she does not accept until she finds out Sir James means to seriously court her, then turns around and tells Casaubon yes. What she does not te...
In her lifetime, Edith Wharton experienced the restraining nature of societal expectations against her attempts to establish her individual identity, in both her sexuality and publication of her written works. Wharton specifically has an excellent opportunity to criticize the expectations placed on American women during the Realist era because she emigrated to France and experienced a radically different system to that of America’s. This enabled her to more clearly contemplate how society limited and impacted the personal development of women without Wharton being restricted by her knowledge of solely the American social system. The struggle with societal expectations establishes itself in her novella Summer, in which Charity Royall faces the
This is supported by Bertha’s violent and indiscriminate tendencies, age during manifestation, and her Creole background, which is extremely susceptible to cases of schizophrenia. Bronte uses Bertha’s character and schizophrenia in order to subtly depict the disparities and discrimination between the colonists and the Creoles in terms of treatment, and branches out in order to address themes such as class roles in Victorian society, evident in Jane Eyre’s biased and outright derogatory narrative toward Bertha Mason’s character. While many read Bertha as an antagonistic being, some will see her as a tragic character who lost her character due to her genetics and the society she was
Wealth also influences the way the characters’ peers view them. Wealth plays a main role in the lives of the characters despite the differences that exist. Even though the novels take place in very opposite places, the superficial longing for wealth and the existence of wealth impacts the characters in similar ways.
Set in New York City in the 1800’s, Wharton’s The House of Mirth is about the protagonist, Lily Bart’s struggle to enter the upper-class society through marriage, which ultimately leads to the downfall of her fortunes. In the end, Lily is forced to act upon a compromising social situation and is rejected from society. At Bryant Park, Lily meets Nettie, a girl Lily saved when she was participating in a Gerty charity organization. It turns out that Lily saved Nettie, who is now successfully married. Lily holds Nettie’s baby for a little bit and for that single moment, she felt happier and stronger. Then at home, Lily receives a check of ten thousand dollars from Mrs. P...
In Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome, there is a prevalent conflict of class struggles. Ethan Frome, his wife Zeena, and their maid Mattie all live in extreme poverty. Wharton portrays them as miserable beings, seemingly always encompassed in misfortune. Wharton herself, however, lived a near opposite life compared to that of her characters. She was born into fortune; money was rarely a concern for her (Lee). Through a Marxist lens, one could argue that Edith Wharton, a woman of extreme wealth and privilege, would characterize lower, working class people such as the ones in Ethan Frome in an inaccurately dismal light. The consistent image of winter and coldness, typically associated with misery, in Ethan Frome foreshadows an unhappy ending for the
The plot of the novel follows traditional plot guidelines; although there are many small conflicts, there is one central conflict that sets the scene for the novel. The novel is about an embarrassing mismatched couple and their five daughters. The novel begins with Mrs. Bennet, telling her daughters of the importance of marrying well. During this time a wealthy man, Charles Bingley, moves close to Netherfield, where the Bennets’ reside. The Bennet girls struggle to capture his attention, and Jane, who judges no one, is the daughter who manages to win his heart, until Mr. Bingley abruptly leaves town.