The Business-marriage Proposal in Edith Wharton's New York Novels

Edith Wharton;gender roles;literary criticism;American literature;College of Arts and Sciences: Liberal Studies

Butzu, Ava Y.Flint ;

University of Michigan

关键词: Edith Wharton;    gender roles;    literary criticism;    American literature;    College of Arts and Sciences: Liberal Studies;   

Others  :  https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/117683/Butzu.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

Of all of these male and female writers who wrote fiction between 1880 and 1920 in an effort to reflect their personal agendas, one writer stands out among her peers because she was unable to resign herself to a character type. Blending a feminine and masculine perspective, Edith Wharton combined the feminine characters of Jewett and Cather, the political personalities in Gilman’s work, and the reckless females of modernist male writers in many of her novels, but especially in her New York trilogy. The novels The House of Mirth. The Custom of the Country, and The Age of Innocence presented something of a paradox because the female characters were complex and could not be typecast. Wharton’s writing combined the attributes of many male and female writers of the time, yet it neither indisputably confirmed nor condemned female characters. In essence, Wharton examined gender roles and their inherent social conventions of the time with disgust, but she concurrently viewed social innovations with an equivalent distaste.