ipl-logo

Naturalism In The House Of Mirth

1008 Words5 Pages

Edith Wharton’s novel The House of Mirth is predominantly examined by critics in terms of literary Naturalism. The purpose of this analysis is to compare two critical approaches to Naturalism in The House of Mirth by literary critics Carol Singley and Walter Benn Michaels. Carol Singley analyses the theme of Naturalism within the concept of religion and science in her book Edith Wharton: Matters of Mind and Spirit, while Walter Benn Michaels assesses the Naturalism of the novel from an aspect of economics, power and speculation in his critical review The Gold Standard and the Logic of Naturalism: American Literature at the Turn of the Century.

The deterministic framework in naturalistic texts generally presents the characters as …show more content…

According to Singley, Lily dies not only because of her failed escape from fate but mainly because she refuses ‘the shallow, materialistic values of her society’ (Singley, 1998, pg.69). Singley’s reading of the novel also recognizes Christian allegories ‘about the fragility of spiritual values in a materialistic culture’ by asserting that Lily’s search ‘for marriage based on trust and love rather than greed’, as well as her ‘homelessness and eighteen-month wanderings’, could be read as a condemned spiritual pilgrimage (Singley, 1998, pg.69). Lily’s refusal to exploit Bertha’s letters in order to defend her own reputation resembles the Christ’s sacrifice. Singley states that Wharton contrasts Darwinian theories with the Christian belief leading to salvation by God after conforming to a divine pattern of existence. She explains that although Wharton concludes her novel sceptically, with Lily’s failure to surpass the society ending in her pointless death, Wharton’s urge to demonstrate the crucial need for such transcendence is present throughout the …show more content…

According to Singley, the persistent theme of morality conflicting with romantic accomplishment is associated with Wharton’s enduring concern for moral authenticity and gender-imposed constraints. Even though her heroine is audacious and independent, she is unable to attain her wishes for romance and a higher truth without self-sacrificing and renouncing her passion. Singley blames the author for Lily’s existential failure because of Wharton’s oppressing Calvinist belief that kept her subjugated under the acceptance of guilt and moral payment for sexual pleasure in her

Show More
Related

  • Isolation In Edith Wharton's Age Of Innocence

    154 Words  | 1 Pages

    Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence offers a distinctive close examination of the Gilded Age's New York high society where critics have the opportunity to study and analyze several aspects of this exclusive American milieu, and as a result, the novel offers a glimpse of this society's social institutions of the time. In Age of Innocence, the elite of New York reside solely in their own sphere; they all live very close to one another, save for the van der Luydens, in a predetermined area, effectively shutting themselves from those outside their social circles. This isolation is shown with the uproar Ellen Olenska caused when she chose to place her home among artisans instead of other well-respected families, and it is further emphasized during

    Read More

  • Theme Of Confinement In Ethan Frome

    361 Words  | 2 Pages

    In a final scene from Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton draws a timeline leading up to the main character, Ethan Frome, and his love interest, Mattie Silver deciding to take their lives rather than letting the rules implied by the society of Starkfield force them to part, their decision in turn contributing to the theme that confinement from pressure from society can drive citizens to their torment. Contributing to the novel as a whole, this scene also highlights Ethan’s built up misery by displaying his willingness to die in order to escape his unwanted marriage to his ailing wife, Zeena. To begin with, as a resident in Starkfield, a town whose residents, obviously unadjusted divorce, consider seven year of marriage as “not so long”, Ethan feels

    Read More

  • The Coquette The History Of Eliza Garnette Sparknotes

    790 Words  | 4 Pages

    That insistence upon her own happiness at the cost of the disapproval of her friends is not seen as simply wanting to have a nice time in her life. It is seen as Wharton wanting to flirt and waste her time with parties. Lucy Freeman, Wharton’s best friend, describes her in The Coquette; or, the History of Eliza Wharton as “[meaning] to exhibit a few more girlish airs” before she gets married (Foster 595). Freemen very strongly disapproves of this inclination, particularly when she has her own opinions about who and when Wharton should marry. Wharton only pleases Freeman when she gives in and gets engaged to the man her friend

    Read More

  • Morality In Ann Radcliffe's The Romance Of The Forest

    1755 Words  | 8 Pages

    Of course, one almost intuitively understands that the novel’s leading women adhere rather closely to socio-gender norms; both Adeline and Clara, the two women who most represent Radcliffe’s idealized morality, are traditionally beautiful, focus on emotional intelligence via poetry and music rather than on scientific pursuits, and represent the appealing innocence of ingénues. In the same manner that Adeline’s unconsciousness contributes to her integrity, it also appears that her extensive physical beauty results in part from her inherent saintliness, her beautiful eyes linked to some intrinsic purity (7). Further highlighting this ethical preference for femininity, Adeline exhibits fear related directly to the presence of men; in the Marquis’s chateau, her terror specifically abates when she realizes that “elegant” and “beautiful” women surround her, and later the inverse occurs as she balks in fear at “the voices of men” (158, 299). On some level, Adeline seems to recognize that masculinity poses a significant threat to her, and instinctively shies away from its

    Read More

  • The Secret Life Of Bees Theme Essay

    1401 Words  | 6 Pages

    In the story, Kidd’s use of characterization successfully reveals the theme that people's lives are more complex than they appear. Kidd demonstrates this theme using the characterization of Lily, T. Ray, May, and Deborah. One character that Sue Monk Kidd uses to portray the theme, is the main character Lily. In the beginning of the story, the author shows that Lily can be both mature and immature at times. An example of her maturity in the text is when she says, “People who think dying is the worst thing don’t know a thing about life” (Kidd 2).

    Read More

  • The Portrayal Of Women In Ethan Frome By Edith Wharton

    1127 Words  | 5 Pages

    In many works of literature, women are portrayed as either dependent and madly in love with a man, whether he is a good man or a bad one, or they are seen as devious and only using men in order to gain something or succeed. This idea appears in society as well, even in the early 1900’s. In Edith Wharton’s novel Ethan Frome, the audience is acquainted with a woman who can be portrayed as the loving, innocent and infatuated stereotype, but when looked at closely can be seen as the real antagonist of the novel. In the novel Zeena, Ethan’s wife, can be quickly judged and seen as the woman culpable for Ethan’s demise. The audience perceives her as nasty and miserable.

    Read More

  • How Is Diction Used In The Secret Life Of Bees

    764 Words  | 4 Pages

    When Lily lost her mother and has T. Ray taking care of her, she starts questioning her mother of why she left them. “Your sorry mother ran off and left you. The day she died, she’d come back to get her things, that’s all,” (Kidd, 40). When Lily heard T. Ray say this to her, she was shocked with depression and thinking that T. Ray might of lied to her about what he said about her mother. The lesson is that Lily is depressed and questioning herself on why her mother decided to leave her.

    Read More

  • The Secret Life Of Bees Character Analysis

    798 Words  | 4 Pages

    Love is an involuntary factor that many people have come across in life. In the novel The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, the main character Lily, has an internal conflict with her mother which affects how open she is to love. Lily grew up with her father and the culpability of her mother's death.(more info) She was raised with a harsh understanding of love due to the lack of love given to her all throughout her life, for she was more open to love because she hasn't doted as a child. However, Lily found love through the Daughter of Mary, the Boatwright sisters, and Rosaleen, who later taught her how to love herself.

    Read More

  • Theme Of Jealousy In Roman Fever

    864 Words  | 4 Pages

    Alida Slade, one of the main characters in “Roman Fever” by Edith Wharton, has been envious of her so-called friend Grace Ansley for years. Her deep-rooted jealousy continued to actively sprout over the years of their friendship;

    Read More

  • Suicide In Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome

    834 Words  | 4 Pages

    Edith Wharton focused her novel Ethan Frome, around the tragic story of the man himself. Ethan lived with his sherd wife, Zeena, and discovered early on in there marriage that happiness was not in the card for him, as he gave up his dreams for fear of being alone. Years into their marriage Zeena's cousin, Mattie, comes to stay with the Fromes. Ethan soon finds himself entranced by the girl, longing to be with her over the women he was married to. The two find themselves falling in love and are devastated when they hear that Zeena has arranged for a new aid to come.

    Read More

  • Morality In Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome

    642 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Edith Wharton’s most remarkable novel, Ethan Frome, the main character, Ethan Frome, is in love with a prohibited woman… his wife's cousin. His wife, Zeena, is a sick woman who has a villainous essence to her and an irrevocable hold on Ethan. Mattie Silver is Zeena’s cousin and the woman Ethan is infatuated with. Through Ethan’s eyes, Mattie is described as youthful, attractive, and graceful basically everything Zeena isn’t.

    Read More

  • Adeline Mowbray: An Analysis

    1101 Words  | 5 Pages

    As a matter of fact most frequently critics have looked at how prejudicial her mother’s philosophies have been for our character, and attributed to Editha Mowbray the “fallness” of her daughter. In her essay “The return of the prodigal daughter” Joanne Tong contemplates how “Mrs. Mowbray pays too little rather than too much attention to her daughter” (2004: 475) the outcome of which is a misunderstanding of her position in society with regards to the strict laws of etiquette and feminine ideology in eighteenth century England. Cecily E. Hill also blames Editha for Adeline and Glenmurray’s extramarital affair and their inevitable moral condemnation, and instead of accusing the lovers she sees Editha as the soul villain of the novel. Contrary to the typical concept of a mother who provides a safe education to Adeline, she experiments with dubious theories that ultimately foreground her daughter’s tragic

    Read More

  • House Of Mirth Reflection

    775 Words  | 4 Pages

    Nettie is a woman from the lower level of society and is married. She takes Lily in one day and when Lily is with her family she sees a happy marriage and the good life that Nettie has achieved. “The poor little working-girl who had found strength to gather up the fragments of her life, and build herself a shelter with them, seemed to Lily to have reached the central truth of existence.. The poor little working-girl who had found strength to gather up the fragments of her life, and build herself a shelter with them, seemed to Lily to have reached the central truth of existence” (book two, chapter thirteen). When comparing the marriages in the circle Lily wants to belong to and Nettie’s marriage, I think we see Wharton trying to tell the reader that you don’t need a lot of money or fancy things to build a happy life with

    Read More

  • The Valley Of Childish Things Literary Analysis

    2131 Words  | 9 Pages

    Edith Wharton is an important, though neglected novelist in the history of American literature. Her novels study the status of the women and explore their relationship with men in a male dominated society. Again and again she presents the state of exceptional, rising, ‘New Woman’ of the turn of the century to break out of her compressible role and attempting a venture rebellion. The Age of Innocence is on the theme that deals ironically with the affluent social world of New York. The novel has a theme of entrapment and the struggle of the intruder, both to maintain an adult sense of self in a childish society and to rescue a trapped male from that society.

    Read More

  • The Chrysanthemums Literary Analysis

    1217 Words  | 5 Pages

    Masculine and Feminine Roles in Steinbeck’s “Chrysanthemums” In the story “The Chrysanthemums”, by John Steinbeck, Elisa Allen lives an unsatisfactory life as she desires more than what is bestowed upon her. The reader learns Elisa’s husband is culpable for not seeing the beauty of his wife, leaving an open door for the antagonist, a traveler, to prey upon Elisa’s. Steinbeck uses Masculine and Feminine roles of the early 20th century, Internal Conflict, and an antagonist, to show Elisa’s struggle for Identity. Steinbeck illustrates Masculine and feminine roles of the 20th century in the “Chrysanthemums” to show Elisa’s struggle with identity.

    Read More

More about Naturalism In The House Of Mirth

Open Document