Essay On Wharton's Gilded Age

The continuity of reform and resistance to established norms before, during, and after the First World War -- displayed through the manifestation of the New Woman -- coincides with the publication of Wharton’s 1905 The House of Mirth, 1917 Summer, and 1920 The Age of Innocence. As a descendant of an aristocratic New York family, Wharton herself belonged to the exclusive faction of society that perpetrated the elitism and wealth disparity of the late 1800s Gilded Age. In the subsequent turn of the twentieth century, Wharton’s authorship aligned with a drastically evolved America whose primary concern surrounded questioning the essence of elite society and the restrictions forced on individuals through traditional expectations. Wharton’s novels

Wharton’s insider knowledge of elite New York and her personal disdain for its “complex set of prescriptions and prohibitions” allows her to critique the limitations placed upon individuality—a struggle she experienced firsthand (Evron 46). The tangible similarities between the characters she writes and Wharton’s personal upbringing further the logic that her novels represent a commentary on her youth during the Gilded Age. In addition to her past experiences, a push in the early 1900s for reassessing traditional ideals, exemplified by the emergence of the New Woman, influences the stifled individuality and critique of social norms that Wharton accentuates throughout her fiction. Amongst two of her most prominent New York works, The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence, Wharton repeatedly portrays the consequences of existing under dominant societal norms as her characters must sacrifice individual desires to conform to the

As with The House of Mirth, The Age of Innocence resembles Wharton’s own family, as the principal characters of both novels belong to an exclusive clan of prominent New Yorkers who hold unofficial yet uncontested social authority over their city. Nevertheless, critics’ meditations on Wharton’s objective with The Age of Innocence vary. While some argue that the novel represents a “nostalgic recreation of a lost social order” considering the aftermath of World War One, others, including Professor of Literature at Colby College Mary Ellis Gibson, oppose this stance (Gibson 67). Gibson’s insight concludes that Wharton offers an “indictment of old New York,” painting it as “impossibly stifling; its very virtues cause [the protagonist] to miss the ‘flower of life'” (67). Although it is impossible to entirely discredit that Wharton held some nostalgia for the elite New York in which she came of age, The Age of Innocence is centered around the restrictions placed upon her characters regardless of their