Volume XXVIII, No. 2 Fall2012 INSIDE THIS ISSUE: T be Next 150 Years: of the other essays, the tone of "What the The Next 150 Years: Wharton Goes Digital Hermits Saw" is dreamy and W harton Goes Digital. Donna Campbell contemplative, situated in an unspecific Donna Campbell, Washington State University middle ground composed of the Washingon State University backgrounds of paintings. The stories it l In thjnk:ing about the digital future tells are not simply allusions to an Tile Decoration of Houses and of Wharton studies, I want to turn impressive array of past legends, as in the the Role of Space in the backward to llalian Backgrounds (L905), a other essays, but a full-scale evocation of Construction of Edith series of travel essays, mostly previously the past. It conjures up the legends of Wharton's Au thorial Self. published, that came out six months before saints' and hermits' retreat from "the Betsy Currier Beacom, Independent Scholar The House of Mirth ( J 905). Drawn from incredible vices and treacher ies of Wharton's travels over the previous civilized life" (66) to live instead "the life 9 decade, the essays follow Wharton as she apart," a phrase that Wharton would later Travelling through Forbidden makes her way from Switzerland to use in her diary of her relationship with Zones: Comparing Edith Syracuse by train and carriage (for these Morton Fullerton (68). Witrun this " life Wharton and Mary Rober ts Rinehart's Experiences in the were pre-"motor flight" days), seeking out apart" exists a lost space of contemplation Great War. rare sights and attempting at every turn to, when pagan and Christian elements did not Sara Prieto, as she put it, "circumvent the compiler of war with one another but existed in "a University of Alicante [her] guide-book" (Italian Backgrounds tangle of classic and medieval traditions, 16 85). The most celebrated piece in the book Greek, Etruscan, and Germani" (74-75) in George Frederic Jones's is the previously published "A Tuscan whkh all through the Middle Ages "the Borrowing Ledger, New York Shrine," whic h describes Wharton's marvellous did not fail from the earth" Society Library, 1855-1880. discovery that the terra cotta figures at Sao (78). "The gentle furred creature of the Alan Behler, New York Society Library. Vivaldo were not from "the mid­ Death of Procris might have been the very seventeenth century" ( I 00) but were faun who showed St. Anthony the way" 24 modeled by the hand of "an artist of the (80-81), Wharton muses, in a tone very BOOK REVIEW: school of the Robbias" ( 105 ) a century different from the brisk, forceful, and My Dear Govem ess: earlier. "A Tuscan Shrine" displays some scientific voice of the rest. The Letters of E tlitll Wharton of the characteristic features of Wharton's Yet this magical space comes at a to A 1111a Balrlma11n. travel writing, including its quest for out­ price, for it exists, Wharton argues, only in Ed. Irene Goldman-Price. New Haven: Yale UP, 2012. of-the-way experiences, and further the works of the lesser painters, who, by Review by: Kathy Fedorko, provides logically argued art criticism and painting the Jesser gods and staying Middlesex Community College narrative elements of suspense and "nearer the soil and closer to the past by (Emerita) detection. the very limitations of their geruus" (81 ), 29 But another piece newly written preserved an intimacy with the past that for the same volume, "What the Hermits modern experience can only approximate. The Edith Wharton Review Is the refereed publication of The Edith Saw," takes a different approach. Instead of In other words, only by ignoring change, Wharton Society. II Is published the restless movement, place-specific remaining in place, and staying within, at Urslnus College, Collegeville, description, and suspenseful narrative that rather than going beyond, the "limitations PA 19426· 1000. characterize "A Tuscan Shrine" and most of [one's] genius" is it possible to avoid the (Continued on page 2) Edith Wharton Review Fall. 2012 Page 2 (Continued from page I) she describes enthusiastically to Anna Bahlmann trials of modernity a:nd the extinction of the magical middle (Goldman-Price 150), just as her irritation that Stocks, the ground that the past provides. The unspoken question that English house she rented from Mrs. Humphry Ward, had no Wharton poses here and elsewhere in the volume, however, telephone indicates that she regarded it as essential (Lee is this: without the distanced perspective that modernity 467). brings to this middle ground, is it possible to appreciate or Wharton's fiction, too, is filled with references to even recognize the beauties of the past? cables, letters, telephone calls, newspapers, and magazines, Readers of Wharton will recognize the terms of especially in relation to future-oriented characters; Undine this dilemma as part of the balancing act with the past that Spragg constructs her sense of self in The Custom of rhe features in all her works. In novel after novel, she asks how Country (1913), for example, primarily through Mrs. we can preserve the best of the past without permitting it to Heeny's clippings, much as Pauline Mansford creates a strangle the present, placing tradition in a delicate balance modern identity in '!Wilight Sleep ( 1927) through the lens with innovation. It is this quandary that stymies Newland of the daily paper calendar she keeps. Although Wharton Archer and traps Ethan Frome, and it's a lack of this was not necessarily a tech user herself- for example, balancing sensibility that marks Wharton's most Emlyn Washburn claimed that Wharton refused to practice memorably intransigent characters, from hidebound, typing enough to become proficient at it when both girls tradition-loving figures like Madame de Chantelle of The learned to type in their adolescence- she obviously Reef (1912) to fut urists like Undine Spragg and Pauline appreciated its benefits in business and in the preparation Manford, who ride roughshod over tradition without of manuscripts. In short, she valued the technologies recognizing its value. Wharton revered the authenticity of available to her for two primary reasons: first, they allowed the past but refused to sentimentalize it or to reconstruct its her to do her work more swiftly and efficiently; and second, ruins. As Sarah Bird Wright claims, key themes in her they brought her literally or f iguratively to a place where travel writings include a disdain for architectural she could see the world in a different light. Working restorations and an insistence on observing objects through efficiently and seeing differently: these are two areas where fresh eyes unmediated by-or even in opposition to-the digital humanities can contribute to Wharton studies. standard tropes of the guidebooks. "What the Hermits With these ideas in mind, we can look briefly at the Saw" is revealing because it strikes a balance between past field of digital humanities from the perspective of a recent and future that Wba:rton 's characters cannot always achieve. MLA panel and think about addressing three questions for Like the "backgrounds" of religious paintings that are the the future: subject of the chapter, the "middle ground" of the hermit What's here? What current resources exist for comprises a "way in" to the life of the past, in which the Wharton studies? "real picture" of life in the past is found not in the portraits • What's needed? What might we think about as of the saints but in the "middle distance" (174). In writing important projects for the immediate future? about it, however, Wharton suggests that although we What's next? What kinds of digital projects cannot live in the world of the past or see what the berm its might prove useful in the longer term? saw, we can train our eyes to see differently, to look beyond the surface and into a middle distance that reveals its truths W hat is the digitaJ humanities, and why is it important to us only if we understand how to look. for th e study of Edith Wharton? Seeing the past from the perspective of the future is What is (or are) the digital hwnanities? The term "digital the subject of my discussion of Wharton and the digital hLLmanities" has been around for less than a decade; before humanities. As Italian Backgrounds and the rest of her that, the field was called "humanities computing," and even work shows, Wharton respected, even revered, the past. Yet now the question of what exactly comprises "digital as all of her biographers attest, Wharton was an early humanities" is the subject of debate. I want to offer three adopter of technologies that would make her life or the lives definitions, each of which gets at a different component of of those around her more comfortable and efficient. this term. Accounts of her life abound with examples of this interest: The first is the widely-cited definition offered by the "hydraulic elevator for moving luggage" that she had Kathleen Fitzpatrick, author of the blog (and now book) installed at The Mount, her commanding notes about train Planned Obsolescence. Fitzpatrick defines digital schedules, and her insistence on stopping only at hotels humanities as "a nexus of fields within which scholars use with a private bath (Lee 149). This interest manifests itself computing technologies to investigate the kinds of particularly in transportation and communications questions that are traditional to the humanities .... [Digital technologies: her delight in the speed of her "motor­ humanities projects] "focus on computing methods fli ghts" attests to this, as do the 20-mile bicycle rides that applicable to textual materials .