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GLASGOW tJNrvERsrrvl ï Y JLIBRARY <# A bstract #

Johnny Finnigan, M.A.

The New York Hieroglyphs Urban Ekphrases in the New York Novels of Edith WJiurton

Supervised by Professor Susan Castillo (Department of English Literature, University of Glasgow)

h is t h e s is c r it ic a l l y a p p l ie s the principles of classical T rhetorical ekphrasis to Edith W harton’s three major N ew York texts — The House of M irth, The Custom of the Countiy and The Age of

Innocence. The opening chapter of this thesis analyses several basic concepts: the classical genesis of ekphrasis (a vivid verbal description in its simplest sense); the role of the city in literature; W harton’s own Icnowledge of New York City; the cognitive mechanics of understanding images in literature; and of vital importance, W harton’s own formal aesthetic strategies which underpin the entire thesis, and which connect with the former strategies mentioned above. Each of these elements are invoked and developed to illustrate the idea that the New York backdrop of W harton’s major New York texts can be ekphrastically decoded in order to generate a micronarrative which in turn refracts‘ the master narrative.

In the following chapter, I analyse The Age of Innocence and its introduction of topographical sites which, singularly, have a refractive

' As a prism refracts light; changes simple white light into its component parts wliilst changing the direction of the light, the ekphrastic analysis of a master narrative both changes its ‘direction’ and opens up a view of its component parts.

iFtP 1 quality on the master narrative, and, collectively, serve to colour the entire text. The ekphrastic model is likened to Bak luin’s chronotopic model and the city is at first viewed in terms of individual topographical sites. I then view these sites collectively as a cipher which when decoded, comments on the changing nature of the New

York social hierarchy at the time the novel is set, and establishes the initial element in what — in looking at the three novels studied — is a narrative of change. This metamorphosis, the genesis of w hich is illuminated in The Age of Innocence, would eventually result in the social, commercial and geographical peripheralisation of its traditional patriarchs, whilst being replaced by an insurgent nouveaux riches. The House of Mirth is discussed in Chapter Three, where a different hieroglyph of the city is constructed by Wharton. This hieroglyph, once decoded, illuminates the peripheralisation of Lily Bart through her lack of a 'place of her own’. This chapter analyses the naturalist impulse which characterises W harton’s writing, and serves to substantiate the narrative of change which is apparent in The Age of

Innocence, by showing a city in a state of flux, with Lily Bart’s journey being a journey of discovery for the reader, as they observe the difficulties, and possibilities, of social movement in de siècle N ew York.

Chapter Four completes the individual analyses of W h arto n ’s New York novels by looldng at The Custom of the Countiy. It also

provides the final component of the narrative of change. The catoptric structure of the text is investigated, once again highlighting the

emergence of a different hieroglyph which serves to enhance the central thematic concerns which revolve around the palimpsestic sublimation of the patriarchs by the nouveaux riches. Individual

n topographie sites are analysed ekphrastically and subsequently thematic exponents of the text are explored. Finally, the New York hieroglyphs, as defined in each of the novels, are seen as offering a view of a notional narrative of change which charts the evolution of the social fabric of New York City over a 30 year period. W harton’s naturalist credentials are then established with an overview of the entire thesis.

111 A cknowledgements #

n d e a v o u r s o n t h is s c a l e a r e s e l d o m com pleted w ithin a Evacuum. I have been very fortunate to have support through every aspect of my life over the years that it has taken to travel on this particular road. Family, friends, colleagues and a whole selection of academic minds have all contributed to this research, and I would like to offer my thanks to all those not mentioned by name in this acknowledgement. In the first instance I would like to thank Susan Castillo for taking me on pretty much sight unseen. Moreover, I would like to thank her for allowing me the room to explore my ideas, offering direction when required, and letting my research develop as organically as possible while still respecting the need to channel it toward completion. As supervisors go, I feel that had my perfect m atch. I will always be eternally grateful to the Department of English of the University of Glasgow as a whole. This is th e environment in which I have been immersed for over a decade, and each member of the department through their teaching, their words of support and through their intellectual insights have inspired me in all my work. In particular, Professor Andrew Hook offered words of encouragement to me when needed, and it was those words in particular which opened the door to where I am now: for those words, I am thanlTul. Also, thanks must go to the librarians of the University of Glasgow, the New York Public Library, New-York Historical Society and the

Beinecke Library at Yale University.

IV To my good friends I also owe the very warmest of thanks: Todd & Angela Garner, Adrian McMurchie, Denis Donoghue, Colin Sutherland, Graham Yarr, David Young, Kieran Kearney and Eddie &

Linda White: my closest friends, were a constant source of support in many ways throughout my whole academic life — cheers. Special thanks also go to my mother, mother-in-law and father-in-law for their support in many ways: needless to say, sustaining vigorous research without the help of family would make a challenging task more difficult. Finally, my devoted thanks go to the two people who have sustained me with their constant love and support — m y wife Christine and my son Sammy. W ithout them I may have finished this project sooner, but with them my happiness and love Icnows no bounds as they have both made my life richer and complete in all the important ways.

JMP V A bbreviations

D H — The Decoration of Houses E d ith W h a r to n & O g d e n C o d m a n , Jr. The Decoration of Houses [1897], New York; W.W. Norton & Company, 1997.

HM — The House of Miith Edith W harton. The House of Mirth [ 1905], edited by Elizabeth Ammons, New York: W .W . Norton &_ Co., 1990.

CC — The Custom of the Countiy Edith W harton. Nooels, New York: Library of America, 1985.

NRB — Hudson River Bracketed Edith W harton. Huiison River Bracketed, London: Virago, 1986.

TS— Twilight Sleep Edith W harton. Tivilight Skcp, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997.

AI — The Age of Innocence Editli W harton. Novels, New York; Library of America, 1985.

BG — A Backward Glance Edith W harton. Novellas and Other Writings, New York: Library of America, 1990.

WF — The Wri ting of Fiction Editlr W harton. The W riting of Fiction [1925], New York: Touchstone, 1997.

IVG — Italian Villas and their Gardens E d ith W harton. Italian Villas and Titcir Gardens [ 1904], with pictures by Maxfield P.arrisli, New York: De Capo Press, 1988.

EWB — Edith Wharton: A Biography R.W.B. Lewis. Edith Wharton; A Biography, London: Constable, 1975.

iOP VI Table of Contents

Abstract i Acloiowledgements iv Abbreviations vi

Introduction 1

Chapter i Imaging' New York 15

Chapter 2 Still Moments in a Turning World 41

Chapter s ‘Beyond!’: The Bart Milieu 99

Chapter 4 “Til never tiy anything again till I try New York” 157

C h a p ter 5 Conclusion: The Three City Trilogy 199

Bibliography 2 19

iOP v i l P m U rbîs Am om ‘Spatidl images are the dreams of society. Wherever the hieroglyphics of any spatial image are deciphered, there the basis of social reality presents itself. ’

Siegfried ICracauer'

‘Every man’s house is in some sort an effigy of hhnself It is not the snails and shell-fsh alone that excrete their tenements, but man as well. ’

John Burroughs^

N E d i t h W harton’s T h e W r i t i n g o f F i c t i o n , her m uch underrated foray into the mechanics of modern fiction, she

made clear not only her admiration for Honoré de Balzac’s work, but also her awareness of his importance in the development of the modern novel. Balzac was, W harton writes, one of the first to view ‘each character first of all as a product of particular material and social conditions’.^ Wharton builds upon this statem ent further when she writes that Balzac was also the first

to see his people, physically and morally, in their habit as they lived, [...] to draw his characters to their houses, streets, towns, professions, inherited habits and opinions, as from their fortuitous contacts witli each other. {WF, 8)

‘ Cited In David Frisby. Fragments of Modernity: Theories of Modernity in the Work of Simmel, Kracnner and Benfamin (Cambridge, MA: Polity Press, 1985), 109

^ John Burroughs. Signs and Seasons, Boston: Houghton Mifflin & Co., 1886, as cited in Lewis Mumford, ed. Roots of Contemporary American Architecture (New York: Reinhold Publishing Co., 1952), 292

’ Editlt W harton. The W riting of Fiction [1925] (New York: Touchstone, 1997), 9 (hereafter cited in text as WF)

»C=1 Introduction

Thus Wharton aclotowledges the importance of one of the cornerstones of literary naturalism: the impact of social environment on the characterisations within a text. We also begin to see Wharton herself as defining her own literary attitudes through her own writings; not only those writings focussed upon literature alone, but all her non-fiction writings concerning decoration, architecture and travel. From the early years in her professional writing career, Edith Wharton would consistently use environment and architecture as literal and figurative touchstones providing vital colour for her fiction. As early as 1893, Wharton used the elaborate analogy of a house to define the emotional anatomy of a woman’s view of her marriage in the short story ‘The Fulness of Life’: I have sometimes thought that a woman’s nature is like a great house full of rooms: there is the hall, through which everyone passes in going in and out; the drawing-room, where one receives formal visits; the sitting-room, where the members of the family come and go as they list; but beyond that, far beyond, are other rooms, the handles whose doors perhaps are never turned; no one Icnows the way to them, no one Icnows whither they lead; and in the innermost room, the holy of holies, the soul sits alone and waits for a footstep that never comes.

Moreover, Wharton saw the construction of the novel itself as being aldn to the construction of a building: ‘that slowly built-up monument in which every stone has its particular weight and thrust to carry and of which the foundations must be laid with a view to the proportions of the highest tower.’ {WF, 30) Three of Wharton’s earliest published books — The Decoration of House (1897), Italian Villas and Their Gardens (1904) and Italian Backgrounds (1905) — establish Wharton’s credentials in understanding and appreciating architecture and the contiguous

■' Edith Wharton. ‘The Fulness of Life' In: Collected Stories 1891-1910, N ew York: Library of America, 2001. This story was first published in Scribner's Magazine in December 1893. *^2 bitroduction landscapes which surround edifices. Wharton’s interest in landscape and architecture is not only a vital element of her fiction, but also a central element of her travel writing: The Cruise of the Vanadis [Wharton’s diary of her cruise on the Vanadis during 1888] (1992), A Motor-flight through France (1908), Fighting France, From Dunkerque to Belfon (1915), and In Morocco (1920). All of these texts attest to Wharton’s lifelong fascination with matters architectural — an interest which was not limited to her writings alone but also to practice as can be seen by her work on her various homes through her life: Pencraig, Park Avenue, rue de Varenne in Paris, Land’s End, The Mount, the Pavilion Colombe outside Paris and Ste. Claire Château near Hyères in the south of France — but they also serve to focus the attention of her readership on the paramount importance of the architecture which inevitably permeates her fiction. Much of Wharton’s non-fiction writing — The Writing of Fiction, The Decoration of Houses, A Backward Glance and Italian Villas and their Gardens — provides valuable insights into a vital component in all her literature, namely the social fabric (rooms, buildings, streets, and monuments) which simultaneously informs and is informed by the characters which inhabit her fiction. Although I will investigate a series of theoretical elements throughout this thesis such as classical rhetoric, Balditin’s chronotopes and spatial theory, there is no doubt that the thesis is always being driven by Wharton’s own theories contained within her non-fiction works, and are referred to throughout. As Wharton’s own personal and familial antecedents were tightly woven into the upper echelons of New York society, it is unsurprising that Wharton’s insight into the relationship between Introduction environment and the individual was at its most acute when dealing with this particular society, the society of old New York. As a result of Wharton’s own circumstances, New York City would have the strongest imprint in her fiction of her understanding of the symbiotic nature of the character/environment dichotomy.

N RETURNING FROM EUROPE in July 1877, Edith Wharton Owould recall in her autobiographical work A Backward Glance, her ‘depressing impressions ... of the intolerable ugliness of New York,’ a city of ‘mean monotonous streets, without architecture, great churches or palaces, or any visible memorials of an historic past.’^ Her attitude towards her ‘home’ was one of disgust with the architecture and the aesthetic qualities of the city as a whole, yet throughout her life she could not stay away from her roots for long. Edith Wharton sold her New York home in 1910, and this act was one which would cement her physical separation from the United States. Wharton would visit the United States on two more occasions in her lifetime after 1910; once in 1913 for her niece Beatrix Jones’ wedding, and her final visit would then be a decade later as she received an honorary degree from Yale University. The Age of Innocence was published in 1920 and would be an escape back to her teenage New York of the 1870s. Indeed, it was to be her place of solace at a terrible time in Europe’s history after the First World War when she would return — in spirit if not in person — to the city of her childhood through The Age of Innocence.

' Edith Wharton. A Bnctvard Glance [1934], In; Novellas ami Other Writings. (New York: Library o f America, 1990), 824 (hereafter cited as BG) Introduction

W harton’s urbane insights into the city of her own past and her family’s past lie at the heart of her success at portraying the city through her literature. Her renderings of New York are full of life, complexity and relevance, not only to Wharton alone but also to the readers of her fiction. The fabric which she created for the backdrops of her New York fiction were of such intensity that it transcended mere quotidian baclcfill. It had few of the qualities of static descriptive elements prevalent in much late nineteenth century fiction. Wharton rendered the social fabric of New York to such a specific and detailed degree that it could itself be read as a narrative in its own right. When coupled to the characterisations and master narratives of the works themselves, the vivified social fabric of New York City would ultimately augment the master narrative in a way that was closely associated to ekphrasis: an exercise classical rhetoricians would use to enhance their verbal communication by creating verbal descriptions of such visual vividness that they would be narratives in their own right. Viewing Wharton’s construction of the New York social fabric as ekphrastic has many advantages. Firstly, it enhances our awareness of W harton’s own keen visual sensibility’ (BG, 805) as an active element in her fiction. Also, it offers an efficiency of expression and narrative which can rarely be found outside of the pure pictorial idiom of the plastic arts. As I have touched upon previously, ekphrasis and the associated vividness which lies at the heart of any ekphrastic discourse, serves to act as a narrative prism through which master narratives are refracted. It is this particular refraction which not only reinforces the major themes and patterns in Wharton’s major New York texts, but also to some degree

*îp5 Introduction establishes W harton’s fiction strongly within the Naturalist literary tradition, a tradition which often places W harton on the periphery of the Naturalist canon due the pre-eminence of the upper classes in her fiction, as opposed to the worldng classes in the works of the standard bearers of literary Naturalism such as Frank Norris and Émile Zola. It could also be argued that Wharton’s ‘construction’ of New York through her New York texts is, paradoxically, a proto­ modernist decvQELtion of the city and society she had Icnown. Edith Wharton’s geographical range within her fiction is substantial. From the eastern seaboard of the U nited States to mainland Europe, Wharton would write of the worlds she came into contact with and inhabited. Yet it is no coincidence that it has been her three major New York novels which have, rightly in my opinion, been given such critical and commercial prominence over the last few decades. Both TIte House of Mirth (1905) and The Custom of the Countiy (1913) were set in times contemporaneous to their publication whilst Wharton was still, to all intents and purposes, a ‘New Yorker.’ The Age of Innocence (1920), whilst written the best part of a decade after W harton had left the U nited States to live in Paris, is set within the 1870s in a New York which Wharton would have Icnown and comprehended as a young woman. Twilight Sleep (1927), Hudson River Bracketed (1929) and The Gods Arrive (1932) are set, in part or in whole, actively in the New York of the 1920s and 30s. This was a New York City which boasted a new Museum of Modern Art, a new Museum of the City of New York, nine new bridges connecting the city to Brooldyn, the Bronx and New Jersey, and a city which welcomed the groundbreaking modernity of the Chrysler Building, Empire State Building and the Rockefeller Centre — these iconic structures were Ijitroductioii structures not within the purview of Wharton’s experience of the city. In carrying out an ekphrastic analysis of New York City in Edith Wharton’s fiction, I had to determine which of her many writings set in New York I would consider as m ost appropriate for the purposes of a relevant and sustained ekphrastic analysis. For a sustained analysis I felt that The Age of Innocence, The House of Mirth, The Custom of the Countiy, Twilight Sleep and Hudson River Bracketed fulfilled this particular requirement. These five novels could at least offer the promise of a sustained analysis of New York, as New York was the primary backdrop to them all. I had then to look at the relevance of these texts. By relevance, I had to discern which novels had a true insight and understanding of the temporal, spatial and societal mechanics of New York City and its societies, a relevance which would instigate a full ekphrastic analysis. As I explained earlier in this chapter, The House of Mirth and Hie Custom of the Country were set contemporaneously with their publication dates and also with Wharton living in New York during these times; The Age of Innocence was set in a time when Wharton lived in New York, and these facts alone would give W harton a great understanding of the city as she wrote of the City. Although Hudson River Bracketed is set in New York City, it is importantly set in the New York of the 1920s, and as previously stated, this was a New York which, comparatively spealdng, Wharton had little Imowledge of in terms of the spatial and societal mechanics which were then at play. As we shall see throughout this thesis, Wharton’s understanding of New York City between the 1870s and the 1910s — in the three novels I will discuss — is succinct and insightful to such a degree that she

jwp7 Introduction discerns nuances which contribute to the aesthetic and thematic textures of the works of and about these times. In Hudson River Bracketed Wharton does not — indeed cannot — go beyond the general descriptions of Vance W eston's New York as being loud, busy and materialist; The noise and rush of traffic, the clamour of the signboards, the glitter of the innumerable shops distracted him from his purpose, and hours passed as he strayed on curiously from street to street. Some faculty separate from mind or heart, something detached and keen, was roused in him by this tumult of life and wealth and energy, this ceaseless outpour of more people, more noises, more motors, more shopfuls of tempting and expensive things.

[...]

the mere air of New York seemed to wake people up, make them sparlde like the light on this balmy day.^

Vance W eston’s alienation and lack of recognition of this particular version of New York mirrors Wharton’s own distance from this place when she writes of W eston’s visit to Trinity Church where he ‘had roamed about the graveyard, brooding over names and dates’ and had come across the ‘idea that there had been people so near his own day who had lived and died under the same roof, and worshipped every Sunday in the same church as their forebears’ that it ‘appealed in an undefinable way to his craving for continuity.’ {HRB, 191) This particular reference is the most precise geographical reference in the text; precise as it still had resonances from Wharton’s own life, yet a reference which offers no sustained and relevant possibilities of deciphering this new version of New York in the 1920s, indeed it is a reference which points to W eston’s own feelings of alienation in this city. Likewise with Twilight Sleep, Wharton makes next to no direct reference to the particular locations within New York City

’ Edith Wharton. Hudson River Bracketed [1929] (London: Virago, 1986), 153, 192 (iiereafter cited in text as HRB) taps Introduction which would enable an ekphrastic reading of the city. As Wharton had no direct comprehension of the changing face of the city, she had little to refer to in this novel other than to the actual ‘changing face' of New York City, specifically through Mrs. Landish’s ‘last fad’ which had been to establish herself on the banks of the East River, which she and a group of friends had adorned with a cluster of reinforced-ceinent bungalows, first christened El Patio, but altered to Viking Court after Mrs. Landish had read in an illustrated weeldy that the Vikings, who had discovered America ages before Columbus, had not, as previously supposed, effected their first landing at Vineyard Haven, but at a spot not far from the site of her dwelling. Cement, at an early stage, is malleable, and the Alhambra motifs had hastily given way to others from the prows of Nordic ships, from silver torques and Runic inscriptions, the latter easily contrived out of Arabic saurais from the Koran. Before these new ornaments were dry, Mrs. Landish and her friends were camping on the historic spot; and after four years of occupancy they were camping still.^

W harton here points to the eclecticism of fads driven by new wealth, and the fluid and insubstantial architecture mirrors the fluid and insubstantial relationships throughout this particular novel. Like Hudson River Bracketed, Twilight Sleep is a novel which is centred within a decade in New York’s history of which W harton had no real loiowledge, a fact that is subsequently mirrored in the texts themselves with the sparse reference to the New York City of the 1920s in terms of spatial hierarchies, or in terms of interior and exterior architectures. There is no doubt that Edith W harton’s shorter fiction set in New York provides some wonderfully picturesque views of the city which are moving toward the ekphrastic. ‘Mrs. Manstey’s View’ (1891),‘A Cup of Cold Water’ (1899), and‘Bunner Sisters’ (1916, yet written in 1892) in particular use New York as the backdrop. Essentially, the city is not fully integrated into the fictional fabric of these texts. This may well have as much to do with the fact that

' Edith Wharton, Twilight Sleep [ 1927] (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), 131 (iiereafter cited in te.xt as TS) *2=9 Intmluction these are early stories in Wharton’s career where her craft was still developing, as well as being too short to sustain a full-blown ekphrastic analysis on tliis level. The final group of texts considered for inclusion in this analysis were W harton’s quartet of novellas collectively titled Old New York (1924) and The Buccaneers (1938). In many ways, these texts were problematic in that they present insights which offer readings of the city to support the ideas developed in The Age of Innocence in particular. Although they provide insightful support and subtle development of the ideas which are established in The Age of Innocence, they do not in themselves offer a consistent view of the city to justify anything other than a supporting role, albeit an im portant one, in the overall ekphrastic analysis of the city. In Old New York we have four tales linked primarily through a chronology which has each story set in a decade between the 1840s and the 1870s.® ‘The Spark’ and ‘False Dawn’ have no discernable backdrop with which to develop an ekphrastic view of New York, and whilst ‘The Old M aid’ is permeated with a stronger sense of place, Wharton did not incorporate New York City into this text to a degree comparable to that of The Age of Innocence, The House of Mirth, and The Custom of the Countiy. Yet, in the final novella of this quartet, ‘New Year’s Day’, Wharton once again reaches back to her own personal past as she did in Tlte Age of Innocence, and offers some insight into the New York of the 1870s once again. N ot only are there links temporally and spatially with The Age of Innocence, but the characterisations of Henry van der Luyden and Sillerton Jackson connect the texts, a fact which allows ‘New Year’s Day’ to be viewed as an im portant addendum to The

Old New York comprises ‘False Dawn' {The ’Forties); 'The Old Maid' (The ’Fifties); 'The Spark’ (The ’Saties) and 'New Year's Day' (The ’Seventies). *elO Introduction

Age of Innocence in that it supports certain attitudes in The Age of Innocence. ‘New Year’s Day’, which does not have a great amount to discuss in terms of specific sites of ekphrastic interest, also offers comment on what is not included in The Age of Innocence: the attitude towards the ‘hotel’ in society which would be further developed and commented upon in The House of Mirth and The Custom of the Country. Also on the periphery of this analysis would be Tlte Buccaneers. Set contemporaneously with The Age of Innocence, it is, by and large, set outside New York City, and has little in the way of extended description of New York in terms of spatial hierarchies, exterior architecture or interior design. W hat it does comment on is the importance of the correct address in New York, the importance of the correct decoration in New York, and how difficult — even with money and beauty — it was to break through the solid bastions of New York society in the 1870s without breeding, and I will touch upon the insights offered by this novel later in the thesis. W harton, in A Backward Glance (1934), adm itted that the ‘low-studded rectangular New York’ of her adolescence would be in the 1920s ‘as much the vanished city as ... the lowest layer of Schliemann’s Troy’ {BG, 824). The ancient city of Troy was seen to have had nine different cities, built upon each other between

3000b c and 1200b c . There is no doubt that Wharton perceived New York City in this manner, albeit in a more compressed timescale. In many respects, the New York of her youth is certainly one New York that by the 1920s has been mostly eradicated with a new New York rebuilt on top of it. Like Troy, with its multiple existences through time, Twilight Sleep and Hudson River Bracketed were set in a New York which was not her own, and also a New

#el 1 Introditctian

York which she had not visited let alone lived in for two decades. Try as she would, the city in these two novels was not rendered with the detail, subtlety and relevance which she had applied to her three major New York novels. If the city and its geographies and architectures are a language in their own right, Wharton in the 1920s would have more difficulty in articulating the language of a city which she barely Imew.

h e t h e o r e t i c a l f r a m e w o r k which underpins this thesis is T one which, like W harton’s own Imowledge, is based on eclecticism. Building my ideas upon Wharton’s own non-fiction writings has been an invaluable starting point and a constant touchstone which drives this analysis forward throughout the thesis, yet I will also investigate in some depth ekphrastic theory based upon original classical rhetorical principles, the link to Bakhtin’s chronotope and spatial theory within the city. In a study of this nature, a great amount of thought has to be given to a range of spatial theories to discern the most relevant in terms of a study like this which is constructed upon a strong emphasis on the aesthetic and topographic. Any research in this area has as a starting point in both Bachelard’s Tlte Poetics of Space and Lefebvre’s The Production of Space.^ I would say that much of my analysis on the dwellings throughout this thesis can certainly be said to be viewed tacitly in the Bachelardian sense of the values of inhabited space. Yet linked to an ekphrastic analysis I focus on the

Gaston Bachelard. The Paeties of Space, [1958] translated from the French by Maria jolas with a new foreword by John R. Stilgoe, Boston: Beacon Press, 1964, &_ Henri Lefebvre. The Production of Space, translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991.

* ^ 1 2 Introduction concrete (even the notional concrete of fiction) in order to drive the analysis forward. The nature of an ekphrastic analysis is making the verbal visual, and the visual verbal (the very process of the author/reader compact.) As such, the link to visualisation is param ount in the thesis and therefore the primary focus falls upon design, topography and history. Also, with The Production of Space Lefebvre provides interesting theories on the reading of space, and interesting possibilities in terms of a unified theory on space, yet as with Bachelard's work, I do tacitly acloiowledge certain elements of his theories but concentrate on what I feel to be the more relevant aesthetic, historic and geographical decodings which to my mind render stronger ekphrastic readings of Wharton’s major New York fiction. Ultimately, New York City is not ‘a chaos of meaningless lines but rather a script that has to be d e c ip h e re d .E n c o d e d by W harton in each of the major New York texts, the New York hieroglyph in each text is delicately (and obviously) adapted to suit W harton’s thematic purpose. In decoding and understanding the particular New York hieroglyph in each text, Wharton delves into the evolutionary mechanics which would see the old society of the patriarchs transformed into the new society of the robber barons. W haiton the polymath would use the languages of architecture, anthropology and naturalism to delineate the city she laiew well, but in doing so she would create a narrative of its destruction, a narrative that would define the city as palimpsest, a city which Eric Homberger would define as a “m etaphor [...] for the destruction of

' This quote was Franz Lowitsch’s view of the network of streets permeating Berlin in 1931, but I think it is utterly pertinent in its application to New York City in this discussion. Quoted in David Frisby. 'Tlte metropolis as text: Otto Wagner and Vienna’s "Second Renaissance’”. In: Neil Leach, ed. The Hieroglyphics of Space: Reading and Experiencing the Modem Metropolis. (London: Routledge, 2002), 19. »t?I3 Introduction a whole series of past cultures” “ an idea that would gain greater resonance in the post World War One flux which Wharton found herself at the centre of.

Eric Homberger. ‘Chicago and New York: Two Versions of American Modernism.’ In: Malcolm Bradbury &. James McFarlane, eds. Modeniism: A Guide to European Literature 189 0 -1 930 [1976], Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991: 160 jriPid ‘To the thinking soul images serve as sense-perceptions... Hence the soul never thinks ivithout an image. ’ Aristotle'

‘...the city and its literature share textuality ...the ways of reading literary texts are analogous to the ways urban historians read the city. Shared are constructs built on assumptions about the mechanistic, the organic, the historical, the indeterminate, and the discontinuous. From Defoe to Pynchon, reading the text has been a form of reading the city. ’ Richard Lehan"

'HEN H e n r y Ja m e s w r o t e in The Bostonians th a t ‘a figure is nothing w ithout a setting’^ he was

stating an obvious literary commonplace. The tru th of such a statem ent w ould seem so obvious th a t we rarely ever give it m uch thought, as we often perceive ‘setting’ to be an inert elem ent w ithin th e text, a backdrop which has little to offer in term s of a detailed analysis of the structural and aesthetic elem ents w hich underpin a literary artefact. Yet we could not possibly have a

Aristotle. De Anim a (Books II and III, tvith certain passages front Book I), translated with an introduction and notes by D.W . Hamlyn (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1968), 63

Richard Lehan. The C ity in Literature (London: University of California Press, 1998), 8

Henry James. The Bostonians [1 8 8 6 ]. In: Novels 18 8 1 -1 8 8 6 (New York: Library of America, 1983), 971 Tiiiagillg’ Nciv York

Manhattan Transfer set anywhere except Manhattan, nor a Berlin Alexandeiylatz anywhere other than Berlin. W e could not have conceived of Joyce placing Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom in London, or Proust setting A la recherche du temps perdu in Chicago.^ Even though Wharton’s ‘English friends’ were to remark on reading Tie Age of Innocence that they ‘had no idea New York life in the ’seventies had been so like that of the English cathedral town, or the French “ville de province”, of the same date’ {EG, 915), we could not conceive of Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth, Tie Age of Innocence and The Custom of the Country being ‘set’ anywhere other than New York City. Although Wharton’s friends could see in New York of the 1870s similarities with the patriarchal societies in other parts of Europe, they may not have perceived the narratives of change which would be unlocked through ekphrasis in the three novels. ‘Place’ in fiction is much more than a backdrop to plot, characterization and narrative. It is in many respects the glue which binds these elements together. Eudora W elty has written that place ‘is the named, identified, concrete, exact and exacting, and therefore credible, gathering-spot of all that has been felt [and] is about to be experienced, in the novel’s progress.’^ ‘Place’ or ‘setting’ is a ‘gathering-spot’ for feeling and for history. In this sense ‘feeling’ pertains in many ways to the characterization constructed within a text, and ‘history’ is not only that montage of ‘factual’ matter which the author inscribes within the text, but also the subjective loiowledge that each individual brings to their reading of a text. Ellen Esrock describes this ‘subjective Icnowledge’

^ John Dos Passes. Manhattan Transfer (1925); Alfred Doblin. Berlin Alcxaiuleriilatz (1929); James Joyce. Ulysses (1922); and Marcel Proust. A la recherche ilii temps penlii (1913-27)

’ Eudora Welty. ‘Place in Fiction.' South Atlantic Quarterly, 55 (January 1956), 62 Tma^ing’ Nciv York as the ‘connotative information’^ which will bring a scene into sharper focus for a reader. In this perspective the meaning of a text is constructed by the interaction between authorial inscription and the subjective laiowledge of a reader. In Wharton’s ‘New York texts’, New York City is (obviously) the ‘setting’ or ‘place’. W ithin these particular texts the reader brings his/her own subjective experience to a text. This input has been constructed through the accumulation of references to any number of fictional and non-fictional, verbal and visual narratives concerning New York City, all of which contribute to an accumulated cultural Imowledge which need not be totally factual or accurate within the mind of the reader. The ‘cultural knowledge’ accumulated by any reader about any place need not be based solely on fact alone. Indeed, we all have preconceptions of many cities which we have not physically been to. These preconceptions are created from a collection of eclectic narratives which may be based in fiction or may well just be out of date. This is the ‘symbolic currency through which we recall, describe, and so negotiate the city.’^ This falls into line with Wharton’s own understanding of how literature should be read, in that she writes that if a text ‘enters the reader’s mind just as it left the writer’s — without any of the additions and modifications inevitably produced by contact with a new body of thought — it has been read to no purpose.’^ Hana W irth-Nesher supports this understanding and writes that

When authors import aspects of “real” cities into their fictive reconstructions, they do so by drawing on maps, street names, and existing buildings and landmarks, enabling a character to turn the

Ellen Esrock. The Reaikr's Eye: Visual Imaging as Reader Response {Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 192

' James Donald, ‘This, Here, Now: Imagining the Modern City’, In: Sallie Westwood &. John Williams, eds.. Imagining Cities: Scripts, Signs, Mcinoiy (London; Routledge, 1997), 187

" Edith Wharton. ‘The Viee of Reading.’ [1903]. In: The Uncollected Critical Writings, edited with an introduction, by Frederick Wegener (Princeton, NJ; Princeton University Press, 1996) 99 * e l7 'Imaging' Ncyv York

corner of a verifiable street on the map, to place him in a “realistic” setting. These urban elements signify to the reader within a particular culture a whole repertoire of meanings.^

For Edith Wharton the reader must bring a ‘whole repertoire of meanings’ to the readings of her texts, and as W irth-Nesher indicates to us, visual markers such as ‘maps, street names, and existing buildings and landmarks’ play a very im portant part in creating the ‘picture’ of the city in a reader’s mind, as well as situating the text firmly within the realist mode. Indeed W harton depends on the reader decipheiing the ‘pictures’ of the city which she constructs within her texts, because through this process of deciphering Wharton’s New York hieroglyphs, the reader gains a more detailed understanding of the scene, which will in turn bring many im portant elements witliin the master narrative into sharper focus. Much of Wharton’s construction of the New York backdrop to her major novels can be discerned from her autobiographical texts, namely A Backward Glance, ‘A Little Girl’s New York’ (1938) and ‘Life and I\^° In looldng at the three New York novels being investigated in this thesis a notional trilogy is palpable, a trilogy which charts the narrative of change which defines the very nature of New York itself, and which charts the insurgency of the nouveaux riches into New York society. The three autobiographical texts above delineate the time of the first ‘premonitory trem or’ which was to foreshadow the ‘chasm’*‘ which was to divide W harton’s New York of the 1870s with the New York of the early twentieth century.

" Hana Wirth-Nesher. City Codes: Reading the Modem Urban Novel {Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996),

‘Life and I' is a 52 page unpublisiied holograph autobiography iteld in the Beinecke Library at Yale University. This holograph has at its core the events covered in the early chapters of A B a cb m d Glance.

" Edith W harton. ‘A Little Girl’s New York’ In: The Age of Innocence [1920], edited by Candace Waid (New York; W,W. Norton ficCo,, 2003), 232 (hereafter cited as LG NY) *trl8 Tmaging’ Nciv York

On one level, by reading these particular autobiographical texts, a reader is able to discern a vivid picture of the 1870s in W harton’s New York, but is also able to distinguish Wharton’s incisive metaphorical leanings toward the archaeological and the anthropological, as she nostalgically looks back over half a century and aclcnowledges that eveiything that used to form the fabric of our daily life has been torn in shreds, trampled on, destroyed; and hundreds of little incidents, habits, traditions which, when I began to record my past, seemed too insignificant to set down, have acquired the historical importance of fragments of dress and furniture dug up in a Babylonian tomb. (LGNY, 232)

This metaphorical tone is one which is consistent throughout her three New York novels, and is a tone which underpins the theme of a New York which is either lost or in the throes of being lost. It would be reasonable to say that in most fiction, place is perceived as inhabiting a subordinate position within the structural hierarchy of a text. A reader will analyse a text in terms of its obvious narrative structure, its political and aesthetic ideologies, the many im portant characterisations, and will follow many other obvious analytical pathways before focussing on the backdrop to the ‘action’ taldng place. The ‘setting’ of a text is comprehended as being the background upon which a fictional montage is projected by the author. This montage is a collection of characterisations, descriptions, voices, imaginative ‘facts’, and perceived ‘pure facts’ all woven within the narrative matrix. This common separation of the obvious structural elements of a text from the backdrop upon which it is set can truly be perceived as a blind spot within literary studies. The ‘setting’ or ‘place’ at the centre of many texts is an essential node into which all other structural elements of a text ‘connect’. This interconnectedness of the background (place) and the many recognized literary elements of a text can be illuminated *ip19 ‘Imaging’ Nciv York by looldng at a set of early cinematic experiments which look at the creation of a new and precise fictive space through editing and montage. In the early twentieth-century the Soviet film-maker and theorist Lev Kuleshov undertook a series of experiments in cinematic montage which would be Icnown as the ‘M ozhukhin Experiments.’ These experiments would involve a single close-up of the actor Ivan Mozhuldrin being superimposed upon three different backdrops: the body of a woman lying in a coffin, a bowl of hot soup, and a small girl playing with a teddy bear. An audience was then asked to reflect upon the emotional response on the actor’s face at the end of each sequence. ‘Sorrow,’ ‘hunger,’ and ‘fatherly pride’ were seen on the face of Mozhuldiin, yet the shot of the actor was in fact the same one used in each sequence. This experiment was primarily a demonstration of the power of film editing to alter the audience’s perception of the subject, but we can also see th at this has im portant implications in literary studies. An audience, in terms of the ‘M ozhuldiin Experiment’, are primarily drawn to the actor, yet their comprehension of the scene is vitally influenced by the background setting. Likewise in fiction, and in particular fiction with a highly descriptive element within it, the reader will primarily be drawn to the characters at the heart of the narrative, yet they too can be conditioned in their understanding of the semantic content of the scene in terms of the backdrop to the scene itself.*^

Lev Kuleshov. Kuleshov on Film, translated and edited with an introduction by Ronald Levaco (London: University of California Press, 1974), 200, and Nick Davis. ‘Narrative Composition and the Spatial Memory.' In: Jeremy Hawthorn, ed. Nwrativc: From Malory to Motion Pictures (London: Edward Arnold, 1985), 25. Although I have referred to film theory here I do believe that the interaction between the background and foreground is totally relevant in terms of narrative synergy.

*tr=20 ‘Imaging’ Nciv York

An author such as Charlotte Bronte, from a tradition of Victorian word-painting, like W harton, makes great use of her highly descriptive environments in order to drive both character and narrative forward. From this passage from Jane Eyre (1847) we can see the vividness of Bronte’s writing as Jane first comes upon St John Rivers’ cottage: Having crossed the marsh, I saw a trace of white over the moor. I approached it; it was a road or track: it led straight up to the light, which now beamed from a sort of leioll, amidst a clump of trees ... Entering the gate and passing the shrubs, the silhouette of a house rose to view; black, low, and rather long; but the guiding light shone nowhere. All was obscurity. Were the inmates retired to rest? ... In seeking the door, I turned an angle: there shot out the friendly gleam again, from the lozenged panes of a veiy small latticed window, within a foot of the ground; made still smaller by the growth of ivy or some other creeping plant, whose leaves clustered thick over the portion of the house wall in which it was set. The aperture was so screened and narrow, that curtain or shutter had been deemed unnecessary; and when I stooped down and put aside the spray of foliage shooting over it, I could see all within. I could see clearly a room with a sanded floor, clean scoured; a dresser of walnut, with pewter plates ranged in rows, reflecting the redness and radiance of a glowing peat-fire. I could see a clock, a white deal table, some chairs. The candle, whose ray had been my beacon, burnt on the table; and by its light an elderly woman, somewhat rough-looldng, but scrupulously clean, like all about her had been deemed unnecessary'^

Bronte, before the reader has m et St John Rivers, establishes the environment which mirrors him, an environment of order, purity and seeming spiritual enlightenment which is, importantly, opposite to that of Rochester. The extract above is typical of Bronte, and as we shall see, of W harton also. This static yet highly visual description of Bronte’s is at odds with an author like Ernest Hemingway. A fellow American in Paris of W harton’s after the First W orld War, Hemingway is an author whose visceral journalistic prose cuts through such description. He provides the facts but offers little in terms of the descriptive

"’Charlotte Bronte./(Ihc iyjic [1847] (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996), 371-72 *e21 ‘Imaging' Nciv York narrative drive that Bronte does as can be seen by this extract from Hemingway’s Fiesta (1927): The taxi went up the hill, passed the lighted square, then on into the dark, still climbing, then leveled out onto a dark street behind St Etienne du Mont, went smoothly down the asphalt, passed the trees and the standing bus at the Place de la Contrescarpe, then turned onto the cobbles of Rue Mouffetard. There were lighted bars and late open shops on each side of the street.’'*

Even aclmowledging the obvious stylistic differences between Bronte and Hemingway, Hemingway’s prose has a sense of life and dynamism which is common in much of his writing; his narrative has a clarity which moves almost in real time and is suffused with movement, and although the above extract is moving through Paris, the extract itself offers very little in terms of descriptive detail which may enhance the narrative drive of the text. Now, looldng at W harton’s treatm ent of Paris in her article ‘The Look of Paris’, we can see how she uses description to add another dimension to her writing: It was sunset when we reached the gates of Paris. Under the heights of St. Cloud and Suresnes the reaches of the Seine trembled with the blue-pink lustre of an early Monet. The Bois lay about us in the stillness of a holiday evening, and the lawns of Bagatelle were as fresh as June. Below the Arc de Triomphe, the Champs Elysees sloped downward in a sun-powdered haze to the mist of fountains and the ethereal obelisk; and the currents of summer life ebbed and flowed with a normal beat under the trees of the radiating avenues. The great city, so made for peace and art and all human est graces, seemed to lie by her river-side like a princess guarded by the watchful giant of the Eiffel Tower. W harton uses her descriptive prose to intensely evoke the picturesque beauty and serenity of Paris on the eve of the war. Her prose is not just evocative for the sake of being evocative; it also serves to amplify the shock that the war will make on this scene in the latter chapters oï Fighting France (1915). The master narrative is

Hemingway, Ernest. Fiesta [1927] (London; Arrow Books, 1993), 24

Taken from: Editli W harton. Fighting France, from Dunkerque to Belfort [1915],( N ew York: Scribners, 1918), 3 jrZ^22 Tiiiagiiig' New York being subtly, yet decisively, altered through the application of W harton’s stylistic use of description in her prose.

LACE IS AN INTEGRAL LITERARY element which is woven through Pthe fabric of all literary texts with varying degrees of usefulness. In Edith Wharton's major New York texts New York City is paramount to the structural and aesthetic integrity of her writing. New York City was im portant to Wharton in that it was where she was born, it was where she spent many of her early formative years, and it was where her family were themselves members of the social elite which she would write about in much of her fiction — Old New York. Wharton was not always consistent in her acceptance of Henry James’s advice that she should ‘Do New York!’,*^ and place the city and its structures at the centre of her fiction, yet there is no doubt that she seemed to be at her most comfortable, in many respects, when New York City was at the centre of her fiction. W hen Edith Wharton described her childhood New York of the 1870s as being akin to ‘the lowest layer of Schliemann’s Troy’(BG, 824), or when she also described the same time and place in The Age of Innocence as ‘a land of hieroglyphic world’ she was aclorowledging two im portant personal perceptions of this city: firstly, that the Old New York of her youth was now ‘buried’ under a new city (or cities) which operated within a different semantic

Letter from Henry James to Edith Wharton, 17 August 1902. In: Lyall H. Powers, ed. ITcniy James and Edith Wharton: Letters: 1900-1915 (NewYorJt; Scribner's, 1990), 34

" Edith Wharton. The Age of Innocence, In: Novels (New York: Library of America, 1985), 1050 (hereafter cited in text as A l)

a?p23 ‘limtgiiig’ New York

(and visual) register, and secondly, that like a hieroglyph — a ‘picture’ standing for a word or words — New York City itself could be read as a text, and as importantly, could be written as such. Edith Wharton’s sense of her own visual aesthetic was an im portant element in the overall philosophy of her fiction. Her book on interior decoration with Ogden Codman Jr., The Decoration of Houses (1897), and her work on landscape gardening, Italian Villas and Their Gardens{\90A) seem to have provided a solid grounding for her fiction, and there can be little doubt that Wharton had a more than firm grasp on the politics and aesthetics of space when The House of Mirth was published in 1905. Wharton would often refer quite specifically, and in great detail, to the exterior architecture of buildings, the interior decoration of rooms, and the general landscapes which surround the protagonists in her fiction. Harmony between the exterior landscape, the architectural artefact, the interior landscape and the ‘inmates” ® (W harton’s own term) is of vital importance in both The Decoration of Houses and Italian Villas and H eir Gardens, and Wharton would use these elements as ‘habitual sources of metaphor in her fiction.”^ The interconnectedness of the many elements of ‘personal landscape’ would play an equally im portant role in Edith W harton’s fiction as well as her books on design, and like the images in the background of Ivan Mozhukhin’s face in Kuleshov’s experiments, the settings within which her protagonists would be placed would undeniably influence the readings of her work. W harton herself wrote in ‘The W riting of Fiction’ that

[t]he impression produced by a landscape, a street or a house should always, to the novelist, be an event in the history of a soul, and the

Edith Wharton. Italian Villas and Their Cardens [1904], with pictures by Maxfield Parrish {New York: De Capo Press, 1988), 7 {hereafter cited in text as IVG)

R-W.B. Lewis. Edith Wharton: A Biography (London: Constable, 1975), 121 (hereafter cited in the text as EWB) *e24 Tiimgiiig' New York

use of a “descriptive passage,” and its style, should be determined by the fact that it must depict only what the intelligence concerned would have noticed, and always in terms within the register of that intelligence. {WF, 63)

This is more than a basic aclatowledgement of the importance of setting and description within Wharton’s fiction. Firstly, Wharton is aclcnowledging her use of the ‘descriptive passage’ as more than a simple static ornament in the overall strategy of her fiction; Wharton’s link between the ‘impression’ of a landscape with an ‘event in the history of a soul’ begins to suggest confluence between the spatial (the ‘impression’) and the temporal (the ‘event’). Secondly, she links her ‘descriptive passages’ directly to the ‘register of that intelligence’ of the protagonist who in his/her own words, or through his/her particular consciousness, describes the scene, thus further aclcnowledging the interconnectedness of the descriptive with the narrative. This recognition of the value of the ‘descriptive passage’ in terms of narrative is of vital importance to the understanding of the function of the ‘descriptive passage’ within Edith Wharton’s New York texts, and serves to highlight W harton’s active understanding of the power of description within her writing.

ILLIAM E m p s o n , in 1962, STATED THAT ‘Imagery,. .is a great W delusion.’^** By ‘imagery’ Empson means the evocation of visual images for readers of literature. Empson is being subjective. It is difficult to see this view as being anything more than his own opinion, as he offers no solid substantiation for such a claim.

’ William Empson. 'Rhythm and Imagery in English Poetry.' The British Journal of Aesthetics, 2 ( 1962); 45 *^25 ‘Iniiigiiig’ New York

Central to his statem ent is the thought that there is an overestimation of ‘the aesthetic merit of the visual imageiy formed by readers’^* when reading a text. Yet I feel that Empson misses the point in that the visual image which has been conjured by the author and realised by a reader may well have little intrinsic aesthetic merit, but it often holds the key to a greater understanding of the semantic content of a scene and thus contributes to the whole aesthetic matrix which underpins the text. W ork in the field of cognitive psychology over the last thirty years supports this position by outlining that readers who are defined as ‘high imagers’ — readers who during the act of reading a ‘descriptive or narrative’ text, produce a sequence of visual images that express the semantic content of the text’^^ — are those readers who create more detailed and complex images, and are more able to extract ‘figurai information’ from the image itself. This cognitive strategy would allow a detailed and complex image to be created in the reader’s mind, the decoding of which would give an increased understanding of the text through a greater understanding of the semantic content. Integral to Edith Wharton’s New York texts is her construction of ‘descriptive passages’ in which she pushes her reader towards ‘high imaging’ with a resultant increase in the ‘semantic content’ of the passages. These passages are hieroglyphs in that they are visual pictures — rendered verbally — which hold within themselves a decipherable micronarrative. This intersection of the spatial/static element involved in the visual object, and the

Esrock, The Reader's Eye, 1

Michel Denis. 'Imaging wiiile reading text: A study of individual differences.' Memoiy & Cognition, iO.6 (1982): 540-45. Tlte basic experiment is straight forward enough: a descriptive text is given to a sample of students, and tile time taken to read tiie text is recorded. Also, a questionnaire is answered after reading the text in order to gauge the amount of information taken from the text. The iiigh imagers are tiiose readers iviio take more time to read the extract, as well as iiaving a higiier mark in tiie questionnaire. *^26 'Imapiig' New York temporal/ dynamic narrative integral to verbal description, creates, in a basic sense, a Baldhtinian chronotope. Balditin describes these moments of spatial/temporal intersection or nodes within a literary text as being ‘organizing centers for the fundamental narrative events of the novel ... a place where the loiots of narrative are tied and untied,He goes on to reinforce the importance of the chronotope within fiction when he writes that within the chronotopic moment ‘[t]ime becomes,... palpable and visible’ malting ‘narrative events concrete ... [malting] them take on flesh, [causing] blood to flow in their veins.’ Balthtin’s work on the chronotope, on an elementary level, defines the chronotope as being ‘the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in literature’; a statem ent which points to a node within the literary text which has the spatial and temporal in a state of coexistence. He goes on to expand on this by saying that in ‘the literary artistic chronotope, spatial and temporal indicators are fused into one carefully though- out, concrete whole. Time, as it were, thickens, takes on flesh, becomes artistically visible, likewise, space becomes charged and responsive to the movements of time, plot and history.’^'* W hat is of further importance in Baldttin’s essay is that a chronotope ‘occurs within well-delineated spatial areas.Bakhtin’s chronotopes of the road, salon, threshold, and provincial town all fall within the spatial auspices of the urban. In particular reference to New York City in Edith Wharton’s works, we would expect these particular chronotopes to exist, and indeed they do.

M. M. Balduin. ‘Forms of Time and of tiie Chronotope in the Novel.' [1937-38], In: The Dialogic Imagmalion, edited by Michael Hoiquist, translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Hoiquist (Austin; University of Texas Press, 1981), 84.

Balditin. ‘Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel', 250

“ ibid. ‘Imaging’ New York

As we can now see, a seemingly straightforward ‘descriptive passage’ of New York City in W harton’s texts now takes on greater complexity. It is a m om ent of narrative density which not only brings together questions about description and narrative, but also brings the spatial/temporal loci of the chronotope to the fore, as well as introducing elements of urban theory into our understanding of these ‘nodes.’ Kevin Lynch writes th at the urban ‘node’ as defined in urban theory is the strategic foci into which the observer can enter, typically either junctions of paths, or concentrations of some characteristic....The junction, or place of break in transportation, has compelling importance for the city observer. Because decisions must be made at junctions, people heighten their attention at such places and perceive nearby elements with more than normal clarity.

Therefore we begin to see that through the very nature of the descriptive passage within a text we have a spatial/temporal locus which can be seen as a classical Baldttinian chronotope, which has also much in common with the urban node in Lynch’s work. More im portant to my analysis of Edith Wharton’s New York texts is th at the nature of the particular ‘descriptive passages’ can be defined through the use of a single term rather than a collection of terms focussing on a similar function. In looldng at description, narrative, temporality and spatiality, and the Bakhtinian chronotope, we can look at a type of description used in classical rhetoric which will bring together these individually complex elements into a simpler form; ekphrasis.

In Kevin Lynch’s The Image of the City (Cambridge, Mass.: The M.I.T. Press, 1960), 72-73.

* ïp2 8 'Imaging' New York

h e translation o f t h e t e r m ‘e k p h r a s is ’ is literally ‘bringing Tbefore the eyes what is to be showit’,^*' and this is achieved by maldng a description vivid. In particular, classical ekphrasis is highlighted by the use of enargeia, a ‘vividness’ brought to the descriptive passage. The word enargeia means literally “‘in work”; energizing or actualizing. It refers to the rhetor's goal of arousing the passions within the audience to move them to act. It is this vividness which brings the description “before the eyes”^® it is the enargeia which energises the text to create an ekphrastic moment. In dealing with this term in the twentieth century, we come up against a problem. The problem here lies with the appropriation of the term ‘ekphrasis’ by modern literary practitioners and critics, who apply it in their own limited way to fit their own particular aesthetic agendas. Indeed, the term could be said to have been ‘black boxed’ in the words of Bruno Latour^^: modern critics would seem to understand ekphrasis in terms of an input and an output, but fail to truly comprehend the internal mechanics of the ‘black box’ itself, the ekphrastic process. This lack of investigation by critics into the ekphrastic process itself does not negate or devalue the results gained by modern critics in their use of ekphrasis, but the lack of understanding of the term itself has limited its application in the field of literary studies. The modern definitions of ekphrasis are all a variation on the same theme in that they are primarily based on the notion that ekphrasis is limited to the poetic genre, and that the object at the centre of modern ekphrastic discourse is the ‘art object.’ Leo

" Donald Lemen Clark. Rhetoric in Greco-Roman Education (N ew York; Columbia University Press, 1957), 201

Edward P. J, Corbett. Classical Rhetoric for Modern Students, 2'"' edition (N ew York: Oxford University Press, 1971) 319

Bruno Latour, Science in Action (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 2-3: ‘The word black box is used by cyberneticians whenever a piece of machineiy or a set of commands Is too complex. In Its place they draw a little box about which they need to know nothing but Its input and output.' *0=29 Tiimgiiig’ N c i v York

Spitzer in 1945 begins by telling us that ekphrasis is ‘the poetic description of the pictorial or sculptural work of art ... the reproduction, through the medium of words, of sensuously perceptible objets Jean Hagstrum writes th at ekphrasis is ‘that special quality of giving voice and language to the otherwise mute art object’®*; and in the words of James Heffernan ‘ekphrasis is the verbal representation of visual representation.’®^ Heffernan goes on to explain that within his use of ekphrasis the Brooldyn Bridge as described in Hart Crane’s poem ‘The Bridge’ (1927), cannot be an ekphrastic object as it ‘was not created to represent anything.’ He does not seem to accept th at an object can accrue representational ‘weight’ after its initial creation. W ith this prescriptive understanding of ekphrasis, Heffernan would not allow a description of Auschwitz to be ekphrastic. Firstly it isn’t an art object, secondly, when built, it was built with a utilitarian use, and didn’t represent anything. I would suggest that over the last 60 years, Auschwitz has accrued a representational value, and therefore could be used as an ekphrasis within a text. These very critics, and many others besides, have all aclotowledged the classical roots of the term, yet they have chosen to ignore the full and complex narrative implications which lie at the heart of ekphrasis. Indeed Heffernan himself has more recently adcnowledged that in some respects he has appropriated the term to fit his own aesthetic and critical agenda.-33

Leo Spitzer. ‘The ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn,' or Content vs. Metagrainmar.’ 1945, In: Anna Hatcher, ed. Essays on English and American Literature (New York: Gordian Press, 1984), 72

*' Jean H. Hagstrum. The Sister Arts; The Tradition of Literary Pictorialisin and English Poetry from Diyden to Gray (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1958), 18.n.34

James A.W. Heffernan, Museum of Words: The Poetics of Ekphrasis from Homer to Ashhety (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1993), 3-4

" In my correspondence with Professor Heffernan he acknowledges that his use of the term ekphrasis has a ‘narrow’ definition, and that for him this narrowing of the definition makes ekphrasis ‘more useful as a distinctive critical term.’ This narrowing of the definition in turn narrows the nature o f the ekphrastic object Itself, hence its restriction to the ‘representational art object,' My aim is to open up the definition by referring to *tp30 Tniaging’ New York

This m odem definition is limited by its very nature. The New Critics’ and Formalists’ valorisation of ‘poetic discourse over that of fiction,’®'* has focussed discussion on poetry as opposed to drama and in particular the novel. Also, tlte fact th at ekphrasis for many years has been ‘rooted in the tradition of ut pictura poesis’^^ results in this tightly defined twentieth-century definition which conveniently ring-fences a precise poetic canon. This modern definition has significantly limited the nature of the ekphrastic object. The limited definitions of the twentieth century tiieorists in this field are valid ones, and I do aclcirowledge that within all literary criticism, there is some fluidity within each individual's comprehension of any given movement, text, or device. This fluidity allows the diversity of thought which surrounds a phenomenon such as ekphrasis. Yet over the years, there has undoubtedly been such a prescriptive use of the term th at the primary elements of ekphrasis have been overlooked (both intentionally and unintentionally). Ruth W ebb asks if it is at all possible to pin down this phenomenon called ekphrasis: [...] when one looks more closely at the range of definitions on offer, one is inevitably struck by a degree of divergence strangely at odds with the belief in a quasi-immanent meaning suggested both by the modern etymologies and the many assertions of what ‘ekphrasis is’ to be found in the burgeoning literature. The confidence of all these assertions is striking, too striking perhaps, for it masks some fundamental (but rarely stated) disagreements about the nature of ekphrasis. For some, ekphrasis includes descriptions of non- representational arts, for others it is the ‘verbal representation of visual representation.’ [Heffernan] On the one hand ekphrasis is a ‘classic genre’ with its roots deep in antiquity, on the other scholars do not agree about which works should be included in this genre: do descriptions of buildings count? Does ‘description’ include a catalogue entry? As each new study redefines the term to fit the critic’s selection of works and to accommodate a particular critical

the classical genesis of the term, where the term’s scope is indeed broader, and on many levels more complex.

Mack Smith. Literary Realism aiiil the Ekphrastic Tradition (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), 26

" Ibid.

*ip31 'Imaging' New York

Stance, one is tempted to ask whether there is in fact a single phenomenon that can usefully be called ‘ekphrasis.

I agree here with W ebb in that the term has been too easily moulded to fit a number of aesthetic agendas. Taldng a classical rhetorical term such as ekphrasis from antiquity and transplanting it within a sophisticated and varied canon of relatively modern texts makes the absolute translation of the classical application difficult if not impossible. Ekphrasis is classically based within the act of the spoken word and today is primarily established within the written word. This in itself offers a distorted perspective of the term’s function in modern literary analysis, but I do believe that the basic principle of using vivid verbal description within texts to enhance a reader’s/listener’s understanding is one which is absolutely viable in modern literary analysis. Ekphrasis is a term which also overlaps into iconography and pictorialism, and as such becomes difficult to pin down, but in M urray ICrieger’s article ‘Ekphrasis and the Still M ovement of Poetry; or, Laokoon Revisited’ (1967) we encounter a critic whose aim was to define ekphrasis as a general principle within literaiy studies. In doing so he was able to define ekphrasis in terms of ‘still movement’ and bring some much needed illumination to the true complexity of ekphrasis: I have been openly dependent upon the pun on the word still and the fusion in it of the opposed meanings, never and always, as applied to motion. Having, like Eliot, borrowed it from Keats, I have freely used it as adjective, adverb, and verb; as still movement, still moving, and more forcefully, the stilling of movement; so “still” movement as quiet, un moving movement; “still” moving as a forever-now movement, always in process, unending; and the union of these meanings at once twin and opposed in the “stilling” of movement, an

' Ruth Webb. 'Ekphrasis ancient and modem; tlte invention of a genre.’ Word & Image, 15.1 (January-Marcli 1999); 7. Webb’s work Is thorough and thought provoking, and her understanding of ekphrasis through the classicist’s eyes has allowed me to understand the narrative implications of ekphrasis all the more. jdP32 'Imaging' N av York

action that is at once the quieting of movement and the perpetuation of it, the maldng of it

Krieger’s im portant examination of ekphrasis focuses upon the seeming dichotomy between description and the static nature of description, and (subterranean) movement which has the temporality of narration at its core. Gérard Genette would define narration as the depiction of objects and people in movement, and description as the depiction of people and objects in stasis. This initially simple view of narration is, on the whole, a useful understanding of a basic narratological principle. However, with ekphrasis (and Baldatin's chronotope) we encounter a m om ent of great narrative complexity. Krieger’s view of ekphrasis as ‘still movement’ is immediately redolent of Bakhtin’s chronotope in respect to the seemingly paradoxical co­ existence of narrative (time) and space (description) within a single descriptive node of a text®®. One would initially feel th at ekphrasis falls into the confines of description as it is a verbal evocation of a visual episode, yet when we look much closer at the classical roots of ekphrasis we will see that narrative plays an integral part in our understanding of the descriptive episode within the text.

S THE DEFINITION OF EKPHRASIS lies at the very heart of this Athesis, I believe it is very im portant that we have a closer look at the classical genesis of the term. Ekphrasis was originally embedded within what is loiown as the progymnasmata. The

Murray ICrieger. 'Ekphrasis and the Still M ovement o f Poetry; or, Laokoon Revisited.' [1967]. In: Ekphrasis: The Illusion of the Natural Sign (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopldns University Press, 1992), 267-68

Gérard Genette. Figures of Literaiy Discourse, translated by Alan Sheridan, with an introduction by Marie-Rose Logan (Oxford: Basil Blaekwell, 1982), 134-136, *i«33 'Imaging' New York progymnasmata were a collection of graded exercises used by the early Sophists in order to teach students the rudiments of rhetoric. Ekphrasis in classical rhetoric ‘was defined as a descriptive digression allowing rhetoricians to support arguments with a relevant example.’®^ Yet we must not read ‘digression’ as a pejorative term. Digression it may be, and ornam ent it may be, but the ‘descriptive digression’ does contribute towards the understanding of the whole. Its place was to ‘support’ the arguments, and hence it is an active element within the discourse. The ekphrastic digression had a role to play in the overall scheme of the rhetor’s speech, and likewise, it has an im portant role in the overall plan of Edith Wharton’s New York texts. The ekphrastic exercise was one of the more complex exercises of the progymnasmata, and importantly was the only exercise which was described in terms of having an effect on its audience. The use of enargeia in the ekphrastic description is of vital importance; it indicates vividness of description and an emotional appeal to the audience. Quintillian explains that ‘distinctness, or, as some call it, representation, is something more than mere perspicuity... It is a great merit to set forth the objects of which we speak in lively colors, so that they may as it were be seen."*® Thus an audience which is being persuaded by verbal rhetoric also has its emotions heightened by a descriptive passage which, through its innate vividness, brings ‘before one’s eyes what is to be shown ... the style must through hearing operate to bring about seeing.’'*' It is this vividness of description which lies at the heart of the descriptions within Wharton’s novels. The descriptions are

Smith. Literaiy Realism ami the Ekphrastic Tradition, 115-16

Quintillian (from Institutio Oratoria), as quoted in Clark. Rhetoric in Greco-Roman Education, 202 " Ibid.

*ip 34 'Imaging' Nciv York such that there is an increased awareness of the visual element in the texts, and subsequently the semantic content of the descriptive elements within the texts themselves is increased. These descriptive elements are much more than ‘a simple window to visible phenom ena’ but must also include ‘the judgements and emotions of the describer.’'*^ 11 is this that makes ekphrasis in terms of narrative within fiction very im portant — we do not merely have an accurate but semantically weak visual description. Through these vivid descriptive elements within a text, the author brings his/her own ‘judgements and emotions’ to the text, as well as inviting the reader to bring his/her own connotative input to the text. I had earlier touched upon the problem of the nature of the ekphrastic object in ekphrasis, as well as the prescriptive nature of modern ekphrastic discourse in terms of its being limited to the poetic mode. In modern ekphrasis, we see that the object is almost singularly an art object, or some object of representation whether real or notional. Liz fames and Ruth W ebb do not support this particularly prescriptive definition of the ekphrastic object: The subjects suggested for such visual presentation [as ekphrasis] are persons, places, times and events (encompassing such diverse entities as battles, cities, festivals and crocodiles). The modern definition of ekphrasis as first and foremost ‘a description of a work of art’ therefore has no foundation in classical rhetorical theoiy and is not only inaccurate but misleading, In fact, works of art are not mentioned as a subject until Nikolaus Rhetor in the fifth century and even then they appear as an afterthought.

It would seem that the view of ekphrasis as centred around the art object is based in a later conception of the term based on the descriptions of the Shield of Achilles in Chapter 18 of The Iliad,

Andrew Sprague Becker. The Shield of Achilles and the Poetics of Ekphrasis, (Lanliani, MD; Rowinan &. Littlefield, 1995), 8,1 1

Liz James & Ruth Webb. ‘ To Understand Ultimate Things and Enter Secret Places’: Ekphrasis and Art in Byzantium'Art HAfcrg 14.1, (March 1991): 6 *e35 ‘Imaging' Nctv York

and of the probable notional ekphrasis of the paintings in the Imagines of Philostratus. Philostratus was a sophist, and although he guides us through this (most probably) imaginary gallery in his Imagines with descriptions of paintings of historical, mythological and idyllic scenes, he is primarily concerned with the ‘literary form in which he writes his descriptions.’ W hatever the painterly merits of the paintings themselves. Philostratus has as his ‘aim to emphasize and develop the sentim ent ... which he found in the paintings.’ The descriptions were in themselves primarily ‘lectures or rhetorical exercises to display the powers of the sophist.’ Much time has been spent on investigating the nature of the relationship between the temporal and the spatial in ekphrastic studies. Murray Krieger’s earlier quote on the ‘still movement’ encompasses what can at times be seen as the ekphrastic paradox: that the verbalisation within the ekphrastic act itself is a temporal act, but the object at its centre is static. This may be true in the modern understanding of the term, but in its classical sense, the ekphrastic object may or may not be static. Intrinsic to the Imagines of Philostratus we have a narrative held within the static object. Philostratus talks of a painting which is literally static, yet in describing the painting he employs a narrative to make the painting into a temporal moment, he describes a narrative which lies behind the static figures on the painting. W e can now see how this poses a challenge to G enette’s conception of narration as the depiction of people and objects in movement, and description as the depiction of objects and people in stasis. This ekphrastic description in Philostratus begins to bring the spatial and the temporal much closer together. Likewise, when Lessing talks of the statue of the

See Introduction to; Pliilostratus. Imagines, translated witii an introduction by Arthur Fairbanks, (Loeb Classical Library) (London; W illiam Heinemann/Nevv York; G.P, Putnam’s Sons, 1931), xxi-xxii. Jrip36 Tmaging' Nciv York

Laocoon,'*® we have a static art object, yet it has a latent narrative in its own right. Similarly, with most descriptions of a work of art, whether it be the Greek urn of Keats, John Ashbery’s description of Parmigianino’s ‘Self-Portrait in a Convex M irror’, or Auden’s meditations on Breughel’s painting of Icarus in his ‘Musée des Beaux Arts’ we have interior narratives within the static objects themselves. In mentioning three poems concerning art objects I am following the pervasive modern attitude on the restriction of genre to which ekphrasis has been applied. However, we may also look at Zola’s description of Géricault’s ‘Le Radeau de la M éduse’ in VAssommoir, and George Eliot’s description of the statue of Cleopatra in Middlemarch in order to bring the novel into the scope of ekphrastic discourse. Additionally, we can look to the classical genesis of ekphrasis in ancient rhetoric to see that we can have ekphrases of ‘war ... places, seasons, or persons.’'*^ Ruth W ebb explains in further detail that the ancient authors who have written of ekphrasis in the progymnasmata

go on to suggest the range of subject-matter proper to ekphrasis. The earliest of them, Theon, suggests persons {prosopa), places (topoi), times (chronoi), and events (pragmata). This list remains standard throughout, although it undergoes various emendations: Aphthonios adds plants and animals, while Nikolaos adds festivals'*^

There has been the feeling that the range of objects used within classical ekphrasis is arbitrary in some way,'*® as there is a flexibility in the range of phenomena described between the classical rhetoricians who write of the progymnasmata, though as Webb

■*’ Ephraim Gotthold Lessing. LaocoSii: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetiy [1766], translated with an introduction and notes by Edward Allen McCormick, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press 1984

""Charles Sears Baldwin. Medieval Rhetoric and Poetic (to 1400), 1928, (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1959), 35-36 W ebb. 'Ekphrasis ancient and modern', 11

Tamar Yacobi touches upon this in her article ‘Pictorial Models and Narrative Ekphrasis.’ Poetics Today 16 4 (1995): 599-649 idP37 'Imaging' New York points out ‘the list remains standard throughout.’ This list ‘formed a coherent set in the ancient rhetorical system,’ a set which represent[s] four of the six parts of narration (or peristaseis), corresponding to who? (the agent), what? (the act), and when and where? (time and place). Missing are the cause (why?), which is rarely amenable to being ‘placed before the eyes,’ and the manner in which the act was committed (how?). The last part of narration is included by Theon, and was the category in which he placed the Shield of Achilles, but is not found listed as a category elsewhere, although Nikolaos does explain how it might be included in an ekphrasis A

Ekphrasis appeals to the audience through description enhanced by enargeia, describing a set of ‘objects’ which are closely linked to the major elements of narrative, where ekphrastic description was more often than not an ‘evocation of a scene, often a scene unfolding in tim e.’^° This brings the nature of classical ekphrasis much closer to a narrative of an event or episode than to the modern perception of a poetic ekphrasis of a static work of art. Ruth W ebb strikes at the heart of the relationship between ekphrasis and narrative when she writes that

Ekphrasis was an evocation of a scene, often a scene unfolding in time like a battle, a murder or the sack of a city. The impact derived from the judicious choice of details that correspond to the audience’s prior knowledge and expectations, calling up the mental images already stocked in the store-house of memory. Such passages, far from constituting ‘narrative pauses’ (and consequently demanding interpretation) were often an intensification of the narrative, introducing a degree of detail which would involve the audience both imaginatively and emotionally. And far from being independent, detachable passages, ekphraseis could contribute to the persuasive effect of the whole.

This links directly to Wharton’s own use of descriptive passages which are ekphrastic, and also links in with the ‘judicious choice of details that correspond to the audience’s prior Imowledge and expectations, calling up the mental images already stocked in the

W ebb. ‘Ekphrasis ancient and modern’, 12

™ W ebb. 'Ekphrasis ancient and modern', 14

Ibid. *tP38 'Imaging’ New York store-house of memory.’ This understanding of ekphrasis is central to my use of the device within the New York texts of Edith Wharton. And although the descriptive passages within the New York texts of Wharton may well be detachable in some way, they are far from the ‘useless detail’ which Roland Barthes ascribes to descriptive passages within narrative.

N USING DESCRIPTIONS OF NEW YORIC CiTY or alluding to Iepisodes which have the patination of all that New York City is submerged in, Wharton appeals ‘to the audience’s prior Imowledge and expectations’ of the city. This induces an ‘intensification of the narrative, introducing a degree of detail which would involve the audience both imaginatively and emotionally.’ These ekphrastic passages are not merely ornamental, but involve themselves in controlling the direction and tenor of the master narrative within any given text. Also, the passage may be detachable in that the general sense of the text may be retained w ithout it, but the detailed sense of the whole text will definitely be eroded without it. W e can now see that ekphrasis has a validity which allows it to act as a descriptive episode within a novel, an episode which is made vivid by the author, an episode which can be seen as a subterranean narrative which acts as a ‘prism’ to refract the master narrative, and an element which holds meaning for the author and the reader, a narrative within a narrative — a metadiegesis.^® Keith Cohen writes that the metadiegesis is the ‘creation within the main

Roland Barthes. ‘The Reality Effect.’ [1968]. In: The Rustic of Language, [1984], translated by Richard Howard (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), 143

” Keith Cohen. ‘Unweaving Puig’s Spider Woman-. Ecphrasis and Narration.’ Narrative, 2.1 (1994); 19

*ip39 'Imaging' Nciv York narrative of a new story. A second level of narration ... [which] happens whenever a character in the main narrative begins to tell a story.’ W hilst I will not be looldng at the direct telling of another story by characters within the main narratives of W harton’s works, I do believe th at the ekphrastic passages within the texts do in themselves instigate ‘a second level of narration.’ Also, in relation to urban theoiy, we can also note that Wharton’s descriptive passages concerning New York City can be seen to be aldn to Kevin Lynch’s urban ‘node’ in that they are points of focus, intersection, crossover or meeting. The fact that individual episodes within a text can be imbued with such a selection of analyses can be confusing at times, but importantly we should understand that what all these analyses (chronotopic, ekphrastic, and urban theory) point to is a moment of density and meaning within a text, a moment which demands investigation and deciphering. These moments of density in the New York texts of Edith Wharton are highly descriptive. W hen the reader ‘imagines’ such an episode, the semantic content of the episode is increased in such a way that the micronarrative itself becomes an im portant textual element which will direct and colour the master narratives being discussed. 'A d iy m ay he likened to a house; its )vatenvays, bridges, railroads, and highivays are the entrances, vestibules and exits; its public buildings and draiving rooms, its streets and halls and corridors, the manufacturing districts the kitchens and workshops; tunnels and subways are its cellars, and its rookeries the attic; the parks and the recreation places arc its gardens, and its systems of communication, lighting and drainage arc the furniture. The city is a house of many chambers, and the first condition in forming its ideal plan is the shortest route fi'om each to each. ’

J.F. Harder'

nexpectedly, it is a conversation between two physicists which prompts this journey in search of the hieroglyphic nature of New York City in Edith Wharton’s fiction. Niels Bohr and W erner Heisenberg were visiting Kronberg Castle in D enm ark, when Bohr observed the following:

Isn’t it strange how this castle changes as soon as one imagines that Hamlet lived here? As scientists we believe that a castle consists only of stones, and admire the way the architect put them together. The stones, the green roof with its patina, the wood carvings in the church, constitute the whole castle. None of this should be changed by the fact that Hamlet lived here, and yet it is changed completely. Suddenly the walls and the ramparts speak a quite different language. The courtyard

Julius F, Harder. T he City’s Plan,’ Mwiiciiml Affairs, 2 (1898): 33 Still Moments in a Turning World

becomes an entire world, a dark corner reminds us of the darkness in the human soul, we hear H am let’s “To be or not to be.” Yet all we really know about Hamlet is th at his name appears in a thirteenth-century chronicle. No one can prove th at he really lived, let alone th at he lived here. But everyone Icnows the questions Shakespeare had him ask, the hum an depth he was made to reveal, and so he, too, had to be found a place on earth, here in Kronberg. And once we Icnow that, Kronberg becomes quite a different castle for us.^

Kronberg Castle works on a different sem antic register once Bohr

‘im agines’ th a t H am let m ay well have lived there. T he location of the castle coupled w ith the inform ation about Hamlet, has produced a new place in th e m ind of Bohr, a place w hich is now im bued w ith power and m eaning. This power contributes tow ard a new understanding of the place itself, and im portantly, of Hamlet the ‘m a n ’, and Hamlet the text. In a sim ilar way, by using N ew York C ity in her m ost im portant fiction, E dith W h arto n insists th a t the reader look beyond the basic physical and utilitarian aspects of a city, and asks th em to look deeper into the city called N ew York. T he resultant reading, constructed through the m arriage of W harton’s allusions and descriptions w ith the reader’s ow n subjective loiowledge of th e city, will produce new understandings of th e place itself, but also of th e protagonists who inhabit th e city and the text. In the first th ird of th e tw entieth-century w hen E dith W harton flourished as a writer. N ew York C ity was at the very least a Icnown image to her readership. H er readership would undoubtedly Icnow ^ N e w York and if not Imow th e city in term s of a

visit to the city or living in the city, w ould indeed understand its

reputation as the capital of the world in term s of its com m ercial pre-

Heiseiiberg, Werner. Physics and Beyond: Encounters and Conversations, translated by Arnold J, Poinerans (London: George Allen Sl Unwin, 1971), 51

*tP42 Still Moments in a Turning World em inence as well as its great population and its increasing profile as an urban icon. In E dith Wharton, we have an author who was visually as well as verbally literate, and it is through the vivid visual descriptions w ithin her N ew York texts th a t an ekphrastic m om ent is created. It is through this ekphrastic m om ent that a secondary narrative is instigated, a secondary narrative w hich makes a vital contribution to the overall understanding of the text through the subtle refraction of the m aster narrative. By and large, it is W h arto n ’s intim ate Icnowledge of N ew York C ity and its socio-topographic nuances w hich underpin the m aster narratives of all her m ajor N ew York texts. An appreciation of the spatial hierarchies, w hich exist w ithin urban space in general and N ew

York in particular, will be the starting p oint for my analyses of W h arto n ’s N ew York texts. Leonard Lutwack outlines a general understanding of the spatial hierarchies contained w ithin the urban m atrix w hen he writes that ‘[a] number of place attributes depend on the relative position of a place in relation to other places — w hether a place is high, low, central, or apart.Yi-Fu T uan, in Space and Place, further expands upon these spatial hierarchies and explains the pre­ em inence of specific spatial positionings beginning w ith the centre, w hereby we all perceive our ‘own hom eland as th e “m iddle place” or center of the w orld.’ T uan expands on this w hen he writes:

Among some people there is also the belief, quite unsupported by geography, that they live at the top of the world, or that their sacred place is at the earth’s summit. The nomadic tribes of Mongolia, for example, once held the idea th at they inhabit the top of a broad mound, the slopes of which are occupied by other races. A common belief in Rabbinical literature is th at the land of Israel stands higher above sea level than any other land, and that the Temple hill is the highest point

' Leonard Lutwack. The Role of Place in Literature (Syracuse NY: Syracuse University Press, 1984), 39 Still Moments in a Turning World

in Israel. Islamic tradition teaches th at the m ost sacred sanctuary, the Kaaba, is not only the center and the navel of the world but also its highest point. Kaaba’s spatial position corresponds to the polar star: “no place on earth is closer to heaven than M ecca.” This is why prayers said in its sanctuary are more clearly heard.

T he “centre” hierarchy is th en followed by the fiv n t, where ‘frontal space is prim arily visual and is ‘“illum inated” because it can be seen’^ — w ith the additional understanding th a t N ew York is the ‘frontal portal’ to th e U nited States and as such places th e city in a position of geographical sovereignty*^; and finally the right, w hich

in nearly all the cultures for which inform ation is available, ... is regarded as far superior to the left. ... In essence, the right is perceived to signify sacred power, the principle of all effective activity, and the source of everything th a t is good and legitimate. The left is its antithesis; it signifies the profane, the impure, the ambivalent and the feeble, which is maleficent and to be dreaded. In social space the right side of the host is the place of honor. In cosmological space “the right represents w hat is high, the upperworld, the sky; while the left is connected with the underworld and the earth.” Christ, in pictures of the Last Judgement, has his right hand raised toward the bright region of Heaven, and his left hand pointing downward to dark Hell.^

N o t only does N ew York’s relative geographical position support these ideas of spatial hierarchies in a global sense — w ith N ew York being located centrally betw een the old world of W estern Europe to the east, and the burgeoning new frontier of the A m erican W est —• but we also have these spatial hierarchies com ing to prom inence within N ew York C ity itself. T he location, aesthetics and construction of specific topographical sites w ithin W harton’s N ew York fiction illum inate the social, financial and moral values of those w ho inhabit these particular sites.

' Yi-Fu Tuan. Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (Minneafjolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1977), 38 -4 0 .

' Ibid. 40

Ibid, 42

' Ibid, 43

*=2=44 S till Moments in a Turning W orld

‘Topographical sites’ as defined in this thesis are specific locations w ithin W harton’s N ew York fiction w hich lend themselves to being deciphered in term s of: understanding th eir spatial hierarchies w ithin th e city itself (location); the aesthetic architectural qualities of th e exterior of th e location (building); and th e interior architecture and decoration of an architectural structure (decoration). All or one alone of these elem ents m ay exist w ithin one topographical site. Yet w ith Wharton, she is rather precise in her delineation of specific sites w ithin her N ew York fiction and for the m ost provides the reader w ith an indication of location and interior/exterior architecture and decoration.

In The Age of Innocence, there are m any topographical sites which will be discussed. M ost are th e hom es of th e m ajor protagonists, yet I will also look at the A cadem y of M usic on IT^' Street, therefore I d o n ’t lim it th e use of this term inology to dom estic residences.

Likewise, in The House of Mirth I will be looldng at Grand Central

Station, th e Em porium H otel, as well as the residences of some im portant characters w ithin th e text. In The Custom of the Countjy I will look at a more general understanding of the spatial hierarchies of N ew York C ity by looldng at th e relative hierarchies of W ashington Square, Fifth Avenue and th e U pper East Side as well as their European reflections. Wharton understands the geographical physiology of N ew York C ity in th e m ajor texts being investigated in this thesis, and as such her detailed descriptions instigate the secondary narratives w hich define th e episodes as ekphrastic in the true sense of the word. Wharton understands the geographical physiology only of the N ew Yorks w hich she has inhabited, and as such points to the reason th a t

*ip 45 Still Moments in a Turning World this analysis is not, and cannot, be applied to th e same degree in Twilight Sleep and Hudson River Bracketed.

THE N e w Y o r k o f E d i t h W h a r t o n in g e n e r a l , b u t in the N ew IYork of The Age of Innocence in particular, W harton creates a tightly delineated w orld w ithin th e city. From Washington Square to C entral

Park, a few readable cross-streets and squares, and Wall Street w ith its im m ediate hom ogenous environs, we have a m ilieu w hich contains the residential structures, streets, landmarks and monum ents w hich would define her own old N ew York society, a m ilieu in w hich ‘every detail

... was indelibly stam ped on my infant brain.Wharton’s whole ‘vision of A m erican life focuses on the politics of space’,^ the space w hich the city inhabits, the space w hich is inhabited by buildings, and the space w hich is th e inhabited space w ithin these buildings. W here

W harton outlines the northw ard expansion of her society’s environs through the series of ‘moving pictures’ constructed w ithin the four novellas of Old New York, w hich for obvious reasons can be viewed as a m oving picture of N ew York in its depiction of a subtle developm ent through tim e of th e social mores at w ork in the city betw een the 1840s to the 1870s, The Age of Innocence in m any respects provides a ‘snapshot’ of a particular m om ent in N ew York’s social and urban history during the 1870s.

" From a letter from Edith Wharton to Mary Cadwalader Jones, February 17, 1921 collected in The Letters of Edith Wharton, edited by R.W.B. Lewis and Nancy Lewis (London; Sim on &. Schuster, 1988), 439

Marilyn R. Chandler. ‘The Age of Innocence: Tribal Rites in the Urban Village.’ In: Dmiling in the Text: Houses in Americati Fiction (Oxford: University of California Press, 1991), 149

*e4 6 Still Moments in a Turning World

In The Age of Innocence Wharton does n o t w ish to look at the expansion of the city per se. W hat Wharton wants is for the reader to view w hat happens w ithin a precise moment in the history of N ew York, and by *deploy[ing] her protagonists in locations th a t give precision to the tim e and place’ the reader is b etter able to u nderstand the social structures w hich rule the actions of the protagonists. Also, by establishing th e precise spatial hierarchies of th e city at this particular m om ent in tim e, Edith Wharton further enhances th e reading of The

Age of Innocence w ith a view of the city as it enters an im portant phase of its evolution. Each pj^ecise location w ithin E dith W h arto n ’s N ew York texts has a distinctive function w ithin the text. It is im portant to understand the uniqueness of each topographical site in th a t it will, as

W illiam James observed, em ote a ‘peculiar shade of feeling, which it w ould not have in another place.’** It may seem th a t James is stating th e obvious, yet it is a statem ent which we rnust not take for granted.

O n the sim plest level, the author’s choice of location will affect the dem eanour of a character. As an example we can turn to N ew land

Archer and have no doubts that his ‘peculiar shade of feeling’ w hen he is at work at the law firm of ‘Letterblair, Lamson and Low’ will be entirely different to that when he has a private m om ent w ith his fiancée at St. Augustine, O n this basic level, an author may use place to enhance particular characterisations.

T he locations w hich Wharton chooses w ithin The Age of Innocence come to the fore due to the detail w hich is embedded within them , detail w hich too has a function, n o t m erely as aesthetic

Janet Beer. Edith Wharton, (Writers and Their Work Series) (Tavistock, Devon; Nonhcote House, 2002), 23

“ William James. The Principles of Psychology, volume 2 (London: Macmillan and Co, 1890), 155

*2=47 Still Moments in a Turning World ornam ent, or ‘realist badcfill’, but which serves to im bue the scene w ith an enargeia w hich will enhance the sem antic definition of the scene. In The Writing of Fiction W h arto n discusses the ‘need of selection’ and that an incident ‘cannot but be fringed w ith details m ore and m ore rem otely relevant, and beyond that w ith an outer mass

of irrelevant facts’ (WF, II). As would be expected with th e best

authors, detail is seldom extraneous ornam ent, b u t serves a purpose in maldng a scene m ore vivid. T he question th a t th e reader m ay then ask is w hy m ake th e episode m ore vivid, the answer being sim ply th a t the

author wishes to draw the reader’s atten tio n to th e particular scene, yet m ore complexly in W harton’s case, to instigate a m icronarrative

through such vivid depiction. This ‘detail’ m ay be consciously supplied by Wharton herself, yet often she relies on th e subjective Icnowledge — a loiowledge w hich need n o t be based upon incontrovertible fact, b u t m ay well be based upon common perceptions or m isconceptions,

or general perceptions of what th e city of N ew York m eans to people in general — w hich the reader brings to the text to make the

connections w hich enable a deciphering of these particular scenes. These scenes or episodes w ithin W harton’s N ew York fiction are w hat Wharton herself would call ‘illuminating incidents’. ‘Incidents’ w hich ‘reveal and em phasize the inner m eaning of each situation ...

the magic casem ents of fiction.’(WF, 78-79) These ‘illum inating incidents’, though having Wharton’s own aesthetic agenda at their heart, are redolent of Wordsworth’s ‘spots of tim e’, Joyce’s ‘epiphanies’ and Woolf’s ‘mom ents of being.’ As previously

m entioned, th e illum inating incidents are also redolent of the narrative intensities of Balchtin’s chronotopic m om ents. I see these

‘illuminating incidents’ as W harton’s acloiowledgem ent th a t there is

*2=48 Still Moments in a Tnniing World m ore to her fiction than that which exists on the surface, th a t there are ‘inner m eaning[s]’ in her fiction. The ‘inner m eaning[s]’ W harton w rites of are the secondary narratives of the ekphrastic m om ent. Here, Wharton tacitly acknowledges the mechanics of ekphrasis in her own definition of th e ‘illuminating incidents’ w hich play a central part in all her fiction. T he analysis of an ‘illum inating incident’ w ithin The Age of Innocence can be seen as viewing a photograph from a distance. As we draw closer to the photograph we m ay begin to notice a general location. M oving closer, a m ore specific location m ay be discerned, and along w ith th a t recognition, an understanding of th e location’s position relative to other im portant sites. Finally, we move close enough to the image to see the detail at its centre — a building and a protagonist associated w ith th a t building. T he viewer has brought together inform ation concerning landscape, exterior architecture, interior architecture, and the protagonist. T he analysis of the whole

leads to the deciphering of the ‘illum inating in cid en t’ or more precisely for this particular analysis, the ekphrastic m om ent. T he sym biotic relationship betw een protagonist and environm ent lies at the heart of m y interpretation of The Age of Innocence and Wharton’s other N ew York texts. As each individual

descriptive elem ent is deciphered and overlaid up o n each other we build up an overall image of the location and environm ent w hich exists w ithin th e ekphrastic m om ent. T he result is the accum ulation of visual signs w hich w hen deciphered, like a hieroglyph, often offer m ore th an a single w ord in their deciphering, and more often than not

are translated into a subterranean narrative w hich at sim plest adds to, and, m ore complexly, refracts the m aster narrative. T he ekphrastic

* 2=49 Still Momcuts hi a Tuniiiig World m om ent, or episode, w ithin any given text can be view ed as a narrative prism w hich refracts th e m aster narrative. Such refractions (for there

are usually many w ithin a text) instigate new readings of a text, and in

the case of W harton’s notional trilogy, offer a collection of narratives

w hich coalesce into a narrative of change.

h e A g e o f I n n o c e n c e , p u b l i s h e d in 1920, is the only novel of T E dith Wharton to delve into her distant past and her childhood m em ories of old N ew York. Although The House of M irth (1905) and

The Custom of the Countjy(1913) were w ritten earlier, they were set

contem poraneously w ith their publication. The Age of Innocence, being

set in th e 1870s, is the only full length novel situated w ithin the

tem poral and spatial location of her own childhood. E dith W h arto n spent 6 years in Europe w ith her fam ily from 1866 until 1872. At 10

years old, W harton and her family returned to N ew Y ork C ity to live at 14 W est T w enty-third Street. T he N ew Y ork C ity of The Age of Innocence is th e N ew York C ity w hich Wharton discovered at this tim e,

a N ew Y ork ‘w ith o u t architecture, w ithout great churches or palaces, or any visible m em orials of an historic p a st’ a N ew York of ‘intolerable

ugliness.’ Yet, by the tim e that Wharton came to w rite The Age of Innocence th a t N ew York would have an historic past in th a t it w ould be ‘as much a vanished city as Atlantis or th e lowest layer of

Schliem ann’s T roy.’ (BG, 824) Wharton had expressed the view th at

[bjefore the war you could write fiction w ithout indicating the period, the present being assumed. The war has put an end to that for a long time, and everything will soon have to be timed with reference to it. In

*2=50 Still Moments in a Turning World

Other words, the historical novel with all its vices will be the only possible form of fiction. {EWB, 423-24)'^

This insight into W harton’s view on how the novel would have to be positioned post-W o û d W ar I is coupled to the fact that she understood th a t ‘som ething crucially valuable h ad been lo st’ {EWB, 424) and that in particular her A m erica had gone, to be replaced by ‘nothing b u t vain-glory, crassness, and total ignorance.’*^ It is in response to this perception of post-war Am erica that W harton would go

in search, imaginatively, of the America that was gone. Looldng across the vast abyss of the war, she located the lost America in the New York of her girlhood: the New York she had come back to in 1872, after six years in E urope.,, a safe, narrow, unintellectual, and hidebound world, but from the trem endous distance of time and history, an endearing and an honorable one. {EWB, 424)

T here m ay well be the tem p tatio n to view W harton’s choice of period as being an am biguous retreat from the difficult tim es in post-war Europe, y et far from creating a purely nostalgically saccharine view of

old N ew York in The Age of Innocence, Wharton would create a world w hich was portrayed w ith her usual cynical clarity, and like Eliot and H aw thorne — th e great historical novelists before her — w ould ensure

th a t her account of th e past was also an comm itm ent w ith the present.

Like N ew land A rcher w ho ‘cherished his old N ew Y ork’ {AI, 1064) she

saw herself as being in a position not only to smile at N ew York, but to perform a post-mortem on a society w hich to all intents and purposes had now died.

The Age of Innocence is a novel of both dislocation and relocation. It is a story of th e confident N ew land A rcher ‘attem p tin g ’ to dislocate

him self from the N ew York social structure into w hich he was born, and relocate him self w ith the C ountess Ellen O lenska in an

This quote is a paraphrase of Bernard Berenson’s recollection of Wharton's words.

Quoted from a letter to Sally Norton (E W B ,4 2 4 ).

*2=51 Still Moments in a Turning World environm ent outside th a t of N ew York City. Sim ultaneously, the C ountess O lenska is attem pting to dislocate herself from the web of the European aristocracy w hich she had m arried into, and relocate to the N ew York of her youth ... ‘in my own country and my own town'(AT, 1073).*'* It is the fact that both characters are travelling in opposite directions that dooms this affair to failure. Like two locom otives travelling parallel to each other b u t in opposite directions, we have a m eeting of th e two for but an instant, and it is this relative

‘instant’ that lies at the heart of the novel. The ekphrastic nodes w hich I will analyse w ithin th e text will allow us to see the descriptive talents of E dith W h arto n in action.

W h en narrative m om entum is built up through th e text, we expect

this m om entum to stall at the descriptive elem ents w ithin the text, yet the power of the m aster narrative is n o t dissipated once this particular type of scene is reached. T he m om entum of th e m aster narrative

doesn’t falter, and indeed the subterranean narrative contained w ithin

th e ekphrastic node contributes to the m ovem ent of the m aster narrative even if it in tu rn refmcts the m aster narrative. There is no doubt that Wharton herself perceived her old N ew York as such and in particular she writes th a t ‘the catastrophe of 1914 had “cut all likeness from th e nam e” of m y old N ew York’ and that

‘the w ar abruptly tore dow n the old frame-work, and what had seemed unalterable rules of conduct becam e of a sudden observances as quaintly arbitrary as the dom estic rites of the P haraohs.’(FG, 780-81) As I have already stated, Wharton had written th a t th e N ew York of her past was ‘much a vanished city as Atlantis or th e lowest layer of

It would be fair to comment that Ellen OlensUa’s attempt to find solace and comfort in the nostalgia of her childhood New York, mirrors what Wharton may well have been doing in the writing of The Age of Innocence.

*2=52 Still Moments in a Turning World

Schliem ann’s T roy’(FG, 824), and that ‘nothing b u t th e A tlantis-fate of old N ew York ... makes [my] childhood worth recalling now.’(FG, 827) N ot only do these statem ents establish W harton as a polymath w ith a focus on anthropology, but they are also an aclcnowledgement of old N ew York’s status as a ‘lost’ city in m any respects, w ith the appropriateness of the inhabitants being referred to as a lost ‘tribe.’ It is no great coincidence therefore, th a t the N ew Y ork w hich N ewland

Archer inhabits in The Age of Innoeence ‘is a Idnd of hieroglyphic w orld’(AT, 1050) not only through his own eyes, but through

Wharton’s and through those of her readers. Couched in anthropological and archaeological term s, these particular references to old N ew York are used consistently throughout W harton’s writings, and would ten d to reiterate W harton’s understanding th a t this society is no m ore, th a t th e new cities w hich have been constructed upon it not only obscure th e social rigidity w hich existed, but also occlude all that was good about it. These references also indicate to the reader th at, as is the case w ith archaeological or anthropological investigation, we, the reader, will have to dig, obtain evidence, and reconstruct th e society w hich we seek to investigate.

T h e A c a d e m y o f M u s i c Ir v i n g P l a c e a t 1 4 * " S t r e e t (o f f U n i o n S q u a r e ) N e w Y o r k C i t y

DiTH W harton wrote t h a t ‘the first page of a novel ought to Econtain the germ of the whole’ (WF, 39) and that ‘my last page is

*0=53 Still Moments in a Turning World always laten t in m y first’(BG, 940). These are sim ple yet im portant statem ents of her literary theory which she puts into action throughout her writing. These are also statem ents w hich im bue the opening scenes of her fiction w ith a great formal strength. The Age of

Innocence opens w ith a night at the Opera, or to be m ore precise, a night at th e A cadem y of M usic. T he A cadem y of M usic was opened in 1854, and was the opera house of N ew York C ity until its pre-eminent position was usurped by the opening of th e M etropolitan O pera H ouse in 1883. It is interesting to note th a t th e M etropolitan Opera

H ouse was built w hen a num ber of w ealthy residents of N ew York were unable to obtain boxes at th e Academ y of M usic. This fact fits into the them e of the old patriarchs of N ew Y ork fending off the insurgent nouveaux riches, and direct us tow ard the first signs of change and evolution w ithin this particular facet of the N ew York social organism. T he w hole scene in the Academ y of M usic, w hich covers the first two chapters of th e novel and mirrors a later visit to the opera in C hapter XXXII, not only establishes the narrative foundation of the novel, but acts as an ekphrastic node in th a t th e location itself, and th e environs w hich surround this particular topographical seat, offer a

detailed subterranean narrative w hich supports the m aster narrative

b u t also provides an insight into the nuances of th e narrative m ovem ent as well as prefiguring the core them es of th e novel.

N ew York C ity was central to The Age of Innocence, as W harton’s original w orking title of ‘O ld N ew York (1875-80)”^ would indicate,

and it leaves little doubt that the city itself w ould be a central elem ent

Edith Wharton. "Subjects and Notes, 1918-1923”, Wharton Archives, Yale Collection of American Literature, Deinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University (YCAL MSS42): 37

*2=54 Still Moments in a Turning World in this particular novel. In term s of perceiving th e ekphrastic nodes w ithin th e text itself, we cannot fail to see the description of the N ew York of the early 1870s as constituting an overarching ekphrastic node w ithin the text. T he opening line of The Age of Innocence establishes the epicentre of th e text immediately by referring to not only th e spatial b u t the tem poral location of this novel:

On a January evening of the early seventies, Christine Nilsson was singing in Faust at the Academy of Music in New York. {AI, 1017)

This Opening line can primarily be perceived as a statement of fact to establish the basic setting of the novel, and as such can be seen to have very little narrative substance. Yet in terms of the ekphrastic moment, we have the establishment of several different levels of ekphrastic discourse. T he fact that th e novel is placed w ithin N ew Y ork is of vital im portance in th a t it establishes a connotative link betw een reader

and text w hich will create images of the city w ithin th e m ind of the reader in term s of N ew Y ork’s w ealth, diversity, and unique

topography. T he m ention of ‘N ew York’ also instigates a rather

simple, yet im portant subterranean narrative in its ow n right, as every reader will bring preconceived ideas (w hether accurate or not) of N ew

York C ity to their reading of the text. Yet in this opening sentence, the idea of location is further defined in th a t it is set in ‘January in the early seventies.’ T he tem poral location and th e spatial location are im m ediately outlined, and they act together not only as im portant

elem ents in th e ekphrastic node itself, but also im p o rtan t elem ents in term s of narrative.

V irginia Woolf aclmowledged the value of sim ple cartography in understanding place by w riting th a t

*2=55 Still Moments in a Turning World

it is safe to say that if you want to know the look of some town the best plan will be to get a map and study its portrait there. For some reason there is more of the character of a place in this sheet of coloured paper, with its hills of shaded chocolate, its seas of spotless blue, and its villages of dots and punctures than in all the words of an ordinary vocabulary, arrange them how you will.'^

Applying this simple visual understanding to the topographical seat of the A cadem y of M usic at the northw est corner of 14*** Street and Irving Place, close to U nion Square, enhances the fact that this event lies at the heart of N ew York Society’s social season in the 1870s. In this particular novel U nion Square lies physically at the heart of the city as outlined by W harton in The Age of Innocence. Lying in a central position betw een the H udson and East rivers, it also lies centrally betw een the law offices of N ewland A rcher downtown, and Mrs.

M anson M ingott’s hom e at 58*** Street and 5*** Avenue, the outer

I

Figure 1: The Academy of Music, Irving Place and 14th Street. {18 9 5 }. M CNY

" Virginia W oolf ‘Portraits of Places ' [1906]. In: The Essays of Virginia Woolf: 1 9 0 4 -1 9 1 2 , volume 1, edited by Andrew McNeillie. (London; The Hogarth Press, 1986), 124

*2=56 Still Moments in a Twning World lim its of the novel in term s of the city itself. This seem ingly simple exercise in cartography is another step tow ards the fabrication of an ekphrastic node built around a specific New York location w ithin this text. A further elem ent w hich contributes to an overall understanding of any location w ithin N ew York C ity is the city’s instantly recognisable grid system. A result of th e C om m issioners’ Plan of 1811, the grid is of great im portance in th a t it is one of the few elem ents of the city w hich has rem ained relatively solid for the last two centuries am idst th e constant architectural flux of this city. The C om m issioners’ Plan, or Randel Survey of 1811 is probably the m ost im p ortant docum ent in th e developm ent of N ew York City. This was a com prehensive plan w hich viewed th e expansion of N ew York

C ity not only being inevitable b u t im portant in its transition from the small eighteenth-century city to the m odern city of th e nineteenth, tw entieth, and tw enty-first centuries. T he gridiron was a favoured system of urban planning w ithin the U nited States and was already em ployed in N ew Orleans, Philadelphia, C harleston and Savannah. T he gridiron facilitated the construction of buildings in rectilinear plots, but in term s of urban aesthetics and planning was seen to be detrim ental to the natural topography of the island itself. C lem ent Clarke M oore w ho owned real estate w here new streets were to be constructed w rote th a t ‘the natural inequities of the ground are destroyed, and the existing w ater courses disregarded... These are m en... who would have cut dow n the seven hills of R om e.’*^ In the tw entieth century Lewis Mumford would reiterate this p oint and w rite th a t ‘W ith a T-square and a triangle,

Robert T. A ugustyn &. Paul E. C ohen. Meinlinttan in Maps, 1527-1995. (New York: Rizzoli, 1997), 103.

*2=57 Still Moments in a Turning World finally, the m unicipal engineer, w ithout the slightest training as either an architect or a sociologist, could “plan” a m etropolis.’*^ T he grid itself was uniform w ith the exception of the diagonal Broadway, which w ould slice through the grid, and at each m ajor avenue w ould create a ‘Square.’ These ‘Squares’ are not only an interesting m eans of following th e northw ard expansion of th e city as Broadway moves through U nion Square (4*** Avenue); M adison Square (5*** Avenue); H erald Square (6*‘* Avenue); Times Square (7**' Avenue) and Columbus Circle (8*** Avenue), b u t are also an index of w here the

‘m ost intense cultural commerce took place’.*^ In U nion Square, we have at this particular period in N ew York C ity’s history, an area of intense ‘cultural comm erce’ w ith the Academ y of M usic at its centre.

R eturning to th e opening sentence of the novel, the opera being attended is being perform ed w ithin the Academ y of M usic. This small piece of inform ation itself locates the beginning of th e story in a more exact location, n o t m erely tem porally and spatially, or cartographically b u t (in term s of th e old N ew York society of The Age of Innocence), historically as well. John Frederick Cone, in his excellent study of the politics of th e opera in nineteenth-century N ew York, First Rival of the Metropolitan Opera, explains th a t the Academ y

enjoyed the patronage of many of New York’s first families, an aristocracy of old wealth with assured social ascendancy, a class identified with this fashionable home of opera since its opening in 1854 and Icnown to social arbiters of the day as the Faubourg St. Germain set; the Belmonts, Lorillards, Cuttings, Van Nests, Van Hoffmanns, Schuylers, Astors. On many gala occasions these and other aristocrats held public court in their opera boxes, one of the epoch’s symbols of New York’s inner circle.

' Augustyn et al. M anilattnn in M aps, 102

William R. Taylor. 'The Launching of a Commercial Culture; New York City, 1860-1930.’ In: John Hull Mollenkopf, ed. Power, Culture, and Place: Essays on New York Cit. (New York; Russell Sage Foundation, 1988), 109

John Frederick Cone. First Rim l of the Metropolitan Opera. (New York; Columbia University Press, 1983), 2-3

*2=58 Still Moments in a Turning World

This understanding of th e nature of the patrons of Academ y of M usic is further enhanced w hen the narrator m entions that ‘there was already talk of the erection, in rem ote m etropolitan distances “above

the Forties,” of a new Opera/(AT, 1017) This particular aside referred to a proposal by many of the nouveaux riches of N ew York society th a t a new opera house should be built to allow them to participate in their own parallel social ritual. T he boxes of the old A cadem y were where

m em bers of th e old families of ‘the Four H u n d red’ were resident during the w inter season. Ward McAllister, Mrs Astor’s social arbiter of the late nineteenth-century ‘rem arked offliandedly th a t there were only “about four hundred ” people in N ew York Society’ a num ber arrived at as this was the num ber w hich Mrs. Astor’s ballroom could

accom m odate. Jerry Patterson goes on to explain further th at ‘“Society” was to be a select circle of recognizable people w ho could be counted on to behave conservatively and subm it willingly to the guidance ... of th eir leader [Mrs. Astor] and her first cham berlain [Ward McAllister].’^* The boxes were so exclusive th a t even the

enorm ous w ealth of the ‘new people’ {AI, 1017) such as the ‘V anderbilts, the Rockefellers, the Goulds, the W hitneys and the Morgans, who were n o t welcom ed by the old English and Dutch

families w ho occupied th e fifteen boxes in the A cadem y of M usic’^^ were unable to secure a box, and therefore secure th eir position at the ‘top tab le’ of N ew York society.

W h a rto n ’s im m ediate reference to b o th opera houses in the first page of th e novel outlines a them e w ith w hich she had engaged w ith head-on in b o th The House of Mirth and The Custom of the Countjy

Jerry E. Patterson. The First Four Hundred: Mrs. Astor’s New York in the Gilded Age. (New York: Rizzoli, 2000), 7-8

Joan Zlotnick. Portrait of An American City: The Novelists’ New York. (Port Washington, NY; Kennikat Press, 1982), 43

*2=59 Still Moments in a Turning World

— that of the carnage w hich could be w rought by a clash of two socially distinguishable b u t w ealthy groups w ithin th e same society. Yet in The Age of Innocence W h arto n is establishing th e rigid social lines w hich define th e society of this particular tim e, establishing the fact that all who were in attendance w ithin the A cadem y of M usic on this ‘fashionable n ig h t’ described in chapter I were of th e old order, were those directly or indirectly related to the ‘three families ... who can claim an aristocratic origin. ... the D agonets ... the Tannings ... and the van der Luydens.’(A7, 1054) Wharton was outlining th e strong social fram ew ork of this tim e yet she is still aclcnowledging the fact th a t on th e horizon, th e powerful forces of the nouveaux riches of New York were gathering and would assert their au th o rity in N ew York society in th e very near future.

W h arto n w rites of the reasons that N ew Y ork society attended the opera at th e A cadem y of M usic. Firstly, th e ‘conservatives’ liked it because it was ‘small and inconvenient, and thus keeping o u t the “new people” w hom N ew York was beginning to dread and y et be draw n to ’

{AI, 1017). Its smallness was im portant in th a t th e core of New York society w hich was contained w ithin th e Academ y on these ‘fashionable nights’ was tightly defined and m anageable and thus easily policed by the likes of ‘Lawrence Lefferts... the forem ost au th o rity on “form”’ {AI, 1021) and Sillerton Jackson who was a ‘great ... authority on

“fam ily”’(AT, 1022). Wharton also explains th a t th e ‘sentim ental clung to it for its historical associations’ and th e m usical ‘for its excellent acoustics’ (A7, 1017), yet im plicit in W harton’s explanations of the ‘sociable’ A cadem y’s attraction is th a t th e m usical function of th e A cadem y is b u t a pleasant aside, a tertiary m otive for attending th e opera. This p o in t is further enhanced by the fact th a t we have an

*2 = 6 0 Still Moments in a Tiiniing World expensive production w ith w orld-renow ned singers, w here the press com m ent on the “exceptionally brilliant audience” rather th an on the opening perform ance of such a production. A t the heart of the opening chapters set within the Academy, we decipher the location and building w ithin the text and see N ew York society as a culture as closed as much as that of the ‘Puritan colony, one in w hich status and identity depend on conform ity to the rules of the community.Here,

Wharton’s detail is decoded ekphrastically to divulge the m icronarrative w hich modifies the m aster narrative; th a t of the isolationist credo of the patrician families of the ‘Four H u n d red ’ who are trying to protect their territory from the encroachm ent of outsiders w ith strong financial credentials b u t w ith none of the family credentials.

T he A cadem y of M usic is the em bodim ent of society as N ew land A rcher him self understands it. T hrough Archer’s consciousness we are able to perceive this society in term s of the

‘trib e’ and th e form alities of society as aldn to the ‘to tem terrors’ of his forefathers. Pam ela ICnights writes ‘that looldng at a race’s preponderant w ords is one of th e best ways of getting at its nature [and that] The Age of Innocence contains a glossary of old N ew York.

Although a reliable concordance does not, to my Imowledge, exist for any of W harton’s works, we can readily discern a vocabulary which supports anthropological and archaeological perceptions of old N ew York: ‘trib e’, ‘ritu al’ and ‘sacrifice’, as well as a consistency in the use of term s like ‘society’, ‘duty’ and ‘convention.’ H ence we see in this

" M aureen E. M on tgoin eiy. Displaying Women: Spectacles of Leisure in Edith Wharton's New York. (New York and London: Routledge, 1998), 37

Pamela Knights writes in ‘The Social Subject in The Age of Innocence.' In: Millicent Bell, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Edith Wharton. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); 21

* 0=61 Still Moments in a Turning World

particular text, and others th a t an understanding of both disciplines is needed to com prehend bo th the character's and author's approaches to th e city and this tale. A rcher also perceives his own life in term s of conventions’ and ‘duty’ where ‘[c]onform ity to th e discipline of a small society [which] had becom e alm ost his second natu re.’{A/, 1271) T here is a social ‘form’ to be adhered to w ithin the Academ y of M usic itself, b u t this is m erely as a m icrocosm of what is expected w ithin N ew York society as a whole.

T he establishm ent of the social web at th e h eart of N ew York society via this night at the opera sets the scene for the entrance of the C ountess Ellen O lenska into this sensitive and finely balanced environm ent. Although the Countess was originally a m em ber (albeit a peripheral one) of N ew York society, her entrance is im portant due to

its superimposition upon the established social environm ent w hich Wharton has presented through her description of this event. Unlike the insurgent new m oney trying to enter old N ew York society, the C ountess has no financial credentials, b u t vitally her familial credentials are acceptable. The exclam ations of “‘W ell — upon my soul!”’ from Lawrence Lefferts and “‘My Cod!’”(A/, 1021) from Sillerton Jackson, give an im m ediate indication th a t there is a disturbance in term s of ‘form’ and ‘fam ily’ w ithin the fabric of society as seen by Lefferts and Jackson, th e self-appointed social arbiters of old N ew York society. T he inappropriateness of her dress and her Josephine look (A/, 1021) not only makes her th e centre of atten tio n w hen she enters the M ingott box, but is also establishing her status as a foreign body w hich could disturb th e fram ew ork of this society. As this is th e early m om ent of her /^-entrance into N ew York society, she m erely causes a ripple on the surface, yet the nuances of

*2=62 Still Moments in a Turning World spatial hierarchies once again come into play in the positioning of the

Countess in the M ingott box. T he Countess

stood a m om ent in the centre of the box, discussing w ith Mrs. W elland the propriety of taking the latter’s place in the front right-handed corner; then she yielded w ith a slight smile, and seated herself in line with Mrs. W elland’s sister-in-law, Mrs. Lovell M ingott, who was installed in the opposite corner. {AI, 1021-22)

T he C ountess is at the front and in the centre of th e M ingott box.

D ue to th e uncertainty of the C ountess’s social position, she is not yet p u t to th e right (acceptance) or the left (refusal); th e statem ent of in ten t has been m ade in an atmosphere of Taint im plications and pale delicacies.’(A J, 1028)

A t th e centre of this intricate web of N ew York social stratagem s we have G ounod’s Faust unfolding. In th e early chapters of the novel the opera’s ‘Daisy Scene’ is being perform ed, w ith M arguerite singing ‘“M ’ama ... non m ’ama ...”’(A/, 1018, 1272), m irroring in m any respects New land A rcher’s own doubts about his feelings toward May W elland and Ellen Olenska, but also providing a consistent refrain on how N ew land Archer feels about N ew York society itself. This scene is m irrored in the final chapters of the novel. T he same location, the same opera, the same scene is re-enacted, thus reiterating N ew land A rcher’s continuing doubts about him self and N ew York, as well as establishing the strength and pow er of N ew York social ritual by w hich he will consistently be bound.

In this seem ingly spare opening line of The Age of Innocence, we have spatial definition and tem poral definition. T here are several levels of sem antic understanding: N ew York City, U nion Square, the Academ y of M usic, Gounod’s Faust, and the intricate social jockeying w ithin th e boxes them selves. W ith all this inform ation a reader can begin to formulate th e ‘germ ’ of the novel itself. W harton writes:

*2=63 Still Momeuts in n Tiiniing World

The arrest of attention by a vivid opening should be something more than a trick. It should mean that the narrator has so brooded on this subject th at it has become his indeed, so made over and synthesized w ithin him that, as a great draughtsman gives the essential of a face or landscape in a half-a-dozen strokes, the narrator can “situate” his tale in an opening passage which shall be a clue to all the detail eliminated (WF, 40)

So Wharton, w ith her visual allusions, further illum inates our com prehension of what we can expect in The Age of Innocence and of her fiction in general. T he ‘arrest of a tte n tio n ’ indicating stasis associated w ith th e visual image, th e ‘vivid’ nature of the opening connecting directly w ith enargeia all point to this particular location as an ekphrastic episode in this text.

Although Wharton does not put a nam e to this approach, it is ekphrastic in its very nature. As Wharton points out, ‘the vivid opening should be som ething m ore th an a trick ’ and likewise, ekphrasis should be m ore th an a rhetorical trick or luxury. The ekphrastic m om ent located w ithin this location is a rhetorical elem ent w hich enhances the overall definition of the central them es of the text.

In this opening scene at the Academ y of M usic we begin to see the consistency and pow er of old N ew York society, and we also see th at

Ellen O lenska will in some way, provide a challenge to this society.

M r s . M a n s o n M i n g o t t 5 t h A v e n u e ( b e t w e e n 5 7 t h & 5 8 t h S t r e e t s ) N e w Y o r k C i t y

n N ovem ber 10*'*, 1901, an advert for an apartm en t in a block O called the ‘H enry Jam es’ at 501 W est 113*'* S treet on the corner

*2=64 Still Moments in a Turning World of Anasterdam Avenue, appeared in the New York World:

The Henry James ... All outside light: 8 spacious rooms; batm, toilets, servants’ stairs, m ost careful individual managem ent, beautiful unobstructed views and healthful section: specially appeals to refined persons: liveried service, opposite St. John’s Cathedral, Columbia University and many parks.

W illiam D ean Howells forwarded this to H enry James, telling him of the newly opened apartm ent house in N ew York and James replied:

Your most Idnd communication ... in respect to the miraculously-named “uptown” apartm ent-house has at once deeply agitated &. t^dldly uplifted me. The agitation, as I call it, is verily bu t the trem or, the intensity of hope, of the delirious dream that such a stroke may “bring my books before the public,” or do something toward it — coupled with the reassertion of my constant, too constant, conviction that no power on earth can ever do that. ... The Henry James, I opine, will be a terrifically “private” hotel, & will languish, like the Lord of Burleigh’s wife, under the burden of an honour “unto which it was not born.” Refined, liveried, “two-toileted,” it will have been a short lived, hectic paradox. Sc will presently have to close in order to reopen as the Mary Johnson or the K.W. Wiggin or the James Lane Allen. Best of all as the Edith W harton.

H enry James humorously, but w ith m ore th an a m odicum of

seriousness, relates the location and architectures — and I say architectures intentionally — of this apartm ent block to his own perception of his personality and status as a writer. T he facets of the

apartm ent block are paralleled w ith those of James himself. Interestingly, Jam es's usual self-deprecatory style — including a small,

n o t so well camouflaged barb in the direction of these m ore popular w riters — points to the fact that this particular ‘honour’ may well be

best bestow ed on E dith Wharton, whose popularity and taste may be b etter associated w ith this particular building. N eedless to say, James did not Imow Wharton at this tim e, or he w ould have seen the unsuitability of comparing this apartm ent to W harton or her fiction.

Letter from Henry James to William Dean Howells, 25 January, 1902. In: Michael Anesko. Letters, Fictions, Lives: Henry James and William Dean Homlls. (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 1997), 368-369. A dvertisement as quoted in Anesko, 369.

*€=65 Still Moments in a Tnnihig World

Yet Jam es’s allusion to the relationship betw een architecture and protagonist is still valid. Looldng at the interior and exterior of th e private hom e in The Age of Innocence we m ay, relative to the Academ y of M usic, feel th a t we are now stepping into the private dom ain of the characters. W hile this is true to a certain degree, it w ould also be true to say that in term s architectural, there are no forum s of pure privacy w ithin the novel. I say this n o t in the sense th a t the reader is always privy to th e comings and goings w ithin the text, b u t in the sense th a t the exterior of any building is intrinsically public.

Also, the interior spaces of the private residences of th e protagonists of The Age of Innocence are public in that to the eye educated in the tastes

and m ores of old N ew York society (and who else w ould enter the public portals of these residences), the social level, w ealth, and even m orality of the inhabitants can be discerned by the code established by location, architecture and decoration.

In The Decoration of Houses, w ritten w ith the architect Ogden Codman Jr. and published in 1897, E dith W harton’s credentials as a serious stu d en t of interior and exterior form and decoration were established. Shari B enstock w rites th a t

Soon after her marriage, Edith began to study seriously the history of architecture, furniture design, and house decoration. H er Italian travels contributed to these studies by opening her eyes to the neoclassical order of the eighteenth century. But the major “Awakener” — her term for people or books that opened new worlds and extended her horizons — was James Fergusson’s monum ental Histojy of Architecture, In a day when few such studies were available, this was to her an “amazing innovation.” Historically and technically precise, it cleared the mists from her haunting sense of the beauty of old buildings.” ... Fergusson’s work gave her not merely an intellectual perspective, but a vocabulary as well.^^ ^

Shan Benstock. No Gifts From Chance-. A Biography of Edith Wharton [1994], (Penguin: Hannondsvvorth, 1995), 61

*€=66 Still Moments in n Tuniing World

This vocabulary, along w ith the vocabulary gained in her book on Italian Villas and their Gardens, allowed Edith Wharton to comprehend and articulate her ideas on th e com plete lived environm ent. She saw this environm ent as composed of the natural landscape w ithin w hich a building is located, the exterior façade of a building and the interior decoration of a building w hich she w rote ‘m ust never be forgotten, is only interior architecture’(D H , 14) and should be ‘best suited to the m aster or m istress of the house w hich is being decorated.’(DH, 19)

Once again it is M arilyn C handler who articulates the aesthetic sensitivity involved in Wharton’s use of these com posite environm ents:

[... the] narrator’s often ironic descriptions of furniture, fabrics, and facades reminds us that every house and every object w ithin it reflect a choice, if only a choice to conform to prevailing fashion, and that these choices have moral and psychological as well as aesthetic consequences. The relationship of character to environm ent is em phatically reciprocal, and the houses the characters inhabit influence them as surely as these houses reflect the characters’ influence.^^

It is this principle of ‘choice’ w hich creates such a relationship betw een character and environm ent; the choice of location, choice of exterior and choice of interior are all linked to choice in term s of taste, m orality and m arriage in the eyes of old N ew York. These choices are n o t m erely broad ‘manifestations of physical traits and social types’^® as M aureen M ontgom ery points out, but are detailed descriptions im bued w ith sem antic nuance w hich vividly evoke a m ore complex image of the society in general, and the inhabitants of the building in particular.

Marilyn R. Chandler. Dwelling in the Text: Houses in American Fiction, (Oxford: University of California Press. 1991), 157

Montgomery. Displaying Women, 67

*€=67 Still Moments in a Tinning World

ATHERINE MINGOTT’S POSITION WITHIN OLD N ew York society is Csym bolised now here m ore succinctly w ithin The Age of Innocence th an in E dith Wharton’s subtle yet evocative description of the M ingott m ansion w hich is located ‘in an inaccessible wilderness near the C entral Park.’(AT, 1025) There can be little d oubt that the character of C atherine M ingott is based on that of W harton’s own aunt, Mary Mason Jones, just as Catherine M ingott’s mansion in The

Age of Innocence w ould be m odelled upon Mary Mason Jones’s hom e at

Fifty-seventh Street and Fifth Avenue. R.W .B. Lewis w rote of M ary M ason Jones th at

after living for some years in downtown Waverley Place, [Mary Mason Jones] startled society by moving almost beyond visibility to build a majestic Parisian mansion on Fifth Avenue between Fifty-seventh and Fifty-eighth Streets: a structure of pale cream stone with balustraded pavilions looming up amid the debris, the rocks, and the makeshift shanties th at otherwise characterized the area. Here, with advancing years and increasing obesity, she lived in a suite off the entiy hall from which she would be carried in to dom inate a reception (as it might be) for a great-granddaughter.(£W B, 13)^^

The Mary Mason Jones house at 734-745 Fifth A venue (M arble Row), designed by R obert Mook (1867-9) ‘consisted of boldly mansarded houses in a version of the French Renaissance-inspired style th a t had recently been used for the new pavilions at the Louvre.’ The sim ilarities between the house and personage of Mary Mason Jones w ith that of Catherine M ingott and her m ansion are too strildng to ignore. Strangely enough, Catherine M in g o tt’s presence w ithin the text is prom inent, y et to N ew York society as a whole w ithin the text,

C atherine M ingott — who, like Mary Mason Jones, rarely leaves her

Robert Stern, Thomas Mellins &. David Fishman. New York 1880: Architecture and Urbanism in the Gilded Age. (N ew York; Tlie Monacetli Press, 1999), 578. Here we had the English concept of terraced housing put into practice in New York whereby several townhonses were housed ‘within a unified monumental façade,'; Christine M. Boyer. Manhattan Manners: Architecture and Style 1850-1900. (New York; Rizzoli, 1985), 24

*€=68 S till Moments in ii Turning W orld m ansion due to incapacitation caused by her obesity — could be said to exist ‘beyond visibility’. Such is C atherine M ingott’s reclusive nature th a t she rarely if ever attends the opera any m ore, and she does n o t a tten d the w edding of May and N ew land at Grace C hurch, the two major social events in The Age of Innocence, It is interesting to note th a t N ew land Archer has a thought at his w edding “‘H ow like a first night at the O pera!’” {AT. 1158.) W e have th e music, the flowers, the protagonists, and ‘all the same faces in the same boxes’ as well as having Sillerton Jackson and Lawrence Lefferts to cast their critical eye over th e proceedings. Also, we have another im p o rtan t social occasion w hich C atherine M ingott is forced to, or chooses to, miss. This reclusiveness is undoubtedly exacerbated by the location of the M ingott m ansion itself. T he position of th e M ingott m ansion relative to the rest of N ew York C ity is vital to our understanding the nature and im portance of

C atherine M ingott w ithin the novel. Once again, in looldng back to The Decoration of Houses and Italian Villas and Their Gardens I refer to W h arto n ’s insistence on a harmonious relationship betw een the architectures of exterior, interior and ‘inm ate.M arilyn C handler elucidates this point further w hen she writes th a t

W harton teaches us in [The Age of Innocence] to read architecture and interior decoration, and indeed the entire environm ent of fabricated objects, as an intricate network of symbolic systems th at make visible and reinforce the behavioural mores and severe social stratification whose implications are so consistent an issue in her work. Living space is

Wharton writes in Italian Villas and Their Gardens of some problems Renaissance architects would face in constructing villas and their gardens; ‘ [,„] the garden must be adapted to the architectural lines of the house it adjoined; it must be adapted to the requirements of the inmates of the house, [...] and lastly it must be adapted to the landscape around it.’ In: Edith Wharton. Italian Villas and Their Gardens [1904], with pictures by Maxficid Parrish. (De Capo Press, 1988), 7. This is a statement subsequent to those made in The Decoration of Houses in 1897, that supports Wharton’s assertion that there is an organicism which connects landscape with the exterior and interior architecture of a building. It is this connection which underpins much of the analysis of not only The Age of Innocence but w ith The House of Mirth and The Custom of the Countiy too. Chapters 3 and 4 will look in some detail at the latter two novels.

*€=69 Still Moments in a Turning World

always significant space, never free of moral resonance from the moment the colors are chosen for the curtains.^'

This further reiteration of the interconnectedness betw een the lived environm ent and its inhabitant supports my analysis of the

Figure 2: Mrs. M aty Mason Jones’ Residence [M arble Block], Fifth Avenue and 57th - 58th Streets. {/675} MCNY architectural elem ents w ithin the text as m ore th an general ornam entation or backfill. T hey are linked directly to a greater understanding of individual characterisation and also to a greater understanding of the entire texture of the novel.

In a society w hich lives m ore by the sign than by the word,

W harton’s detailed descriptions of architectures (interior and exterior) and the particular placem ent of these architectures within New York’s topography, acts as an im portant hieroglyph in a society where ‘the

Chandler. ‘...Tribal Rites‘, 157

*€=70 Still Moments in a Tuniing World real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs’ (Al, 1050). T he house is a com posite image w hich through the w ritten w ord is m ade visual. The visualisation is then deciphered by the reader in order to create an interm ediate textual elem ent w hich aids in the com prehension of the im portant societal mechanics at w ork in the novel. In every possible sense of the word, C atherine M ingott can be said to inhabit the lirninal zones of N ew York City, both

Figure 3; Madison Avenue, looking Northwest from 55th Street, showing one of the 'Marble Row’ residences on the Northeast corner of Fifth Avenue & 57th Street, [light coloured building with mansard roof at centre-left was the home of Mrs. M aty Mason Jones] {c. 18 7 0 } M CNY

topographically and socially. The M ingott house, if we see W h arto n ’s

Aunt Mary Mason’s house as its analogue, w ould be located at ‘the other end of now here’(A/, 1161) on the east side of Fifth Avenue betw een 57“’ and 58“' Streets, surrounded by ‘hoardings ...quarries ...one-story saloons ...[and] ragged gardens.’(A/, 1036) Although

C atherine M ingott is on the periphery of N ew York society’s physical

world, this is also the position of the pioneer. She w ould sit at the

*€=71 Still Moments in a Turning World w indow of her hom e far up Fifth Avenue ‘as if w atching calmly for life and fashion to flow northward to her solitary doors .’(AT, 1036) There is no doubt about the solitary location of the house, and yet C atherine M ingott seems to be sure of th e inevitable m ovem ent of much of old

N ew York society towards her position, in term s of both location and attitude. As old N ew York society is hindered in its progress — both socially and topographically — by its sheer social inertia, C atherine M ingott seems to have an innate understanding of th e forces which will have to come into play in order to sustain this particular social organism called ‘old N ew York society. ' N o longer w ould this society be able to exist w ithin the herm etically sealed environm ent delineated by the ‘slippery pyram id' of Mrs. Archer, or th e touchstones of N ew

York’s social season. T he outside w orld was penetrating the cracks appearing in this environm ent and were now transform ing the very nature of this society.

O n the surface, w hat seems like a very eccentric location for the M ingott m ansion w ould seem to the tw entieth-century reader of a text published in 1920, a rem arkable piece of foresight in term s of real estate speculation. C atherine M ingott is not only bold and strong willed, b u t she is shrewd — as her ‘untying [of] her h u sb an d ’s fortune’

(A/, 1026) would attest to. She foreshadows th e ‘advance of residences as stately as her own’ (A7, 1036) towards her own home; she is also aware too th a t she is a pioneer of sorts in her own im plicit com parison to Columbus:

W hen I built this house you’d have thought I was moving to California! N obody ever had built above Fortieth Street — no, says I, nor above the Battery either, before Christopher Columbus discovered America.(A/, 1 0 3 7 )

*€=72 Still Moments in a Turning World

Possibly th e m ost im portant elem ent of C atherine M in g o tt’s prescient view of the future of old N ew York society concerns the m arrying off of her two daughters to ‘an Italian m arquis and an English b anker’(A7, 1025). She understands, at a stage in the history of old N ew York society w hen “new people” w ith th eir “new m oney” were still being repelled at th e gates of ‘the tight little citadel of N ew York’, that there was a need for ‘new blood and new m oney’ {AI,

1039) in order to revivify a society w hich was in decline. The very positioning of this house upon the m ap of Manhattan begins to build an ekphrastic m om ent. A n image of th e topography of N ew York C ity shows in a prim ary sense the location of the M ingott m ansion, y et its relative position to the rest of N ew York City instigates a m ore sophisticated secondary narrative w hich creates a clearer and m ore detailed picture of the character C atherine M ingott, and also of her formal function w ithin the text itself. T he position of the house is linked directly to C atherine M ingott’s position w ithin this society, and her views qf the future of the society.

If we draw a little closer to this ekphrastic m om ent, as Wharton herself does as she develops her description of the M ingott m ansion, we can see that W harton’s view of the exterior architecture of the house is consistent w ith w hat we already u n derstand of Catherine M ingott’s character. T he exterior of the m ansion is distinctively ‘French’ in th a t it was ‘supposed to be m odelled on th e private hotels of the Parisian aristocracy’. {AI, 1025) T he m ansion is on the topographical periphery of the society’s dom ain, yet it is still an integral elem ent of th e social fabric of N ew York City. W e see th at there are direct parallels betw een the M ingott m ansion and Catherine

M ingott in th a t she is once again seen as being a part of the N ew York

*€=73 Still Moments in a Turning World

‘aristocracy’, whilst having strong links w ith E uropean continent w ith its ‘foreign society ...[and] corrupt and fashionable circles.’(AT, 1025) Wharton also makes the connection betw een th e style of the exterior architecture (where the ‘cream -coloured house was there as visible proof of [Catherine M in g o tt’s] m oral courage’(A/, 1025)) and C atherine’s ow n position w ithin the m oral spectrum of old N ew York, further increasing our understanding of the im portance w hich Wharton attributes to th e lived environm ent w ithin this text. The hom es are n o t only

measures of [New York society’s] wealth and taste bu t also, in a more subtle fashion, of their priorities, their authority, their recognition of consensually decreed standards of taste and behaviour, and their various degrees of hesitancy to depart from these standards.

C atherine M ingott consistently deviates from th e staid standards of

‘taste and behaviour’ w hich the general mass of N ew York society hold in such high esteem , and her choice of hom e (location, architecture, organisation and decoration) is truly indicative of her own strong personality.

C atherine M ingott hopes th a t one day th e cobblestones outside her Fifth Avenue m ansion will be replaced by ‘smooth asphalt, such as people reported having seen in Paris’ (A7, 1036). H er hom e is m odelled after the ‘private hotels of Parisian aristocracy’ and the interior architecture mingles ‘the M ingott heirlooms ... [with] the frivolous upholstery of the Second Em pire’ as well as w ith ‘pre-

R evolutionary furniture and souvenirs of the Tuileries of Louis

N apoleon.’(A7, 1025) T he interior environm ent w hich C atherine

M ingott im m erses herself in, like the exterior architecture of the M ingott m ansion, is one w hich emphasises th e com fortable

Chandler. ‘...Tribal Rites’, 157

*€=74 S till Moments in ii Turning W orld coexistence of b o th A m erican and European influences. This fact underpins her attitudes tow ards N ew York society and the inevitable injection of new blood into the society. C atherine M ingott’s broad geo-cultural perspective enables her to w iden her w orld view and her understanding of her ow n society, and also understand the nature of the w orld as it is in Europe and how it will influence this society in th e near future. O nce again, C atherine

M ingott turns to the European influence in th e structure of the internal architecture of her home:

The burden of Mrs. Manson M ingott’s flesh had long since made it impossible for her to go up and down stairs, and with characteristic independence she had made her reception rooms upstairs and established herself (in flagrant violation of all the New York proprieties) on the ground floor of her house; so that, as you sat in her sitting-room window w ith her, you caught (through a door that was always open, and a looped-back yellow damask portiere) the unexpected vista of a bedroom w ith a huge low bed upholstered like a sofa, and a toilet-table with frivolous lace flounces and a gilt-framed mirror. (A/, 1037)

This layout comes close to th a t described by W h arto n in The Decoration of Houses w here she develops the idea of th e drawing-room w hich in m ediæval England was a “w ith-draw ing-room” where ‘the lady and her m aidens retired from the boisterous festivities of the haH’(DH, 124-25). Later in France, the “w ith-draw ing-room” would split into two rooms, the inner room being the ‘sleeping cham ber’ and the outer room w hich was used ‘not only for adm inistering justice and receiving visits of state, b u t of inform al entertainm ents and the social side of fam ily life.’(D H , 124) C atherine M ingott does entertain (against th e social proprieties of N ew York) in a hom e firmly established w ithin the European tradition, reiterating further the overarching view th a t C atherine M ingott does n o t fear in the least the interm ingling of differing cultural codes.

*€=75 StiU Moments in a Turning World

T he cum ulative elem ents w hich create a com prehensive description of C atherine M ingott’s hom e result in a consistency and harm ony betw een exterior location, the interior decoration and exterior architecture, but also a consistency in th e lived environm ent as it pertains to C atherine M ingott herself. T he architecture has a distinctive French patina, it is individual, and it foreshadows the m ansions w hich will arrive at the top end of Fifth A venue just a few years later. It breaks w ith the convention and proprieties of N ew York society in th e early 1870s just as Catherine M ingott herself had done. Yet these ‘idiosyncratic departures from architectural and social proprieties’^^ are n o t created by Wharton as a whim : th ey are created to firmly establish the genesis of the narrative of change which connects W harton’s three m ajor N ew York novels.

T he depiction of the M ingott m ansion points to Catherine M ingott as a person w ho exists w ithin society w ith o u t adhering rigidly to the social conventions as understood by th e social arbiters of th a t society (Laurence Lefferts and Sillerton Jackson). Wharton is providing th e reader w ith a key to unlocldng th e inner selves of m any of the m ain characters w ithin this text by showing th a t there is linkage betw een exterior, interior and inm ate. O ur increased understanding of

M ingott through an exploration of W h arto n ’s description of her hom e opens up our understanding of Ellen O lenska w ho retains the ‘wicked blood’(Af, 1138) of Catherine M in g o tt’s father, old Bob Spicer, and is the only one w ho, as Catherine M ingott announces ‘takes after me

[C atherine M ingott]’(A/, 1137). This connects Ellen O lenska to C atherine M ingott in their sim ilar attitudes tow ard convention, and her own understanding of both the old N ew York m ind and that of

Chandler. ‘...Tribal Rites‘, 157

*€=76 S till Moments in a Turning W orld the E uropean as well. Ellen’s downfall here is th a t she does n o t possess the w ealth to project her will, nor protect her will, as her au n t does. A lthough N ew York through its history has been characterised by currents of change, the core of the city has rem ained constant throughout. In The Age of Innocence we see th a t the topographical solidity of th e street plan itself, and its inherent predictability, mirrors the social predictability of the old N ew Y ork society w hich is inhabited by M ay W elland and N ew land Archer. Yet the text, like the city itself, contains its originality and character w ithin the detail. T he im portance of C atherine M ingott’s hom e is central to m uch of The Age of Innocence in th a t she is w ithin and w ithout the society o f old N ew York. Carol Singley writes th a t The Age of Innocence ‘develops two world views, one centred in the staid traditions of old N ew York, and the other in the dynam ic life of Ellen Olenska. However, C atherine M ingott seems to me to em body a ‘third world view.’ She is established w ithin ‘the staid traditions of old N ew York’ yet still retains m any influences and attitudes of her tim e in Europe,

influences w hich, w ithout her genealogical and financial credentials, would put her on the outside of N ew York society. W e m ay look at May W elland as the personification of the

staid social predictability of old N ew York and its isolationist ethos,

and Ellen O lenska as being its antithesis in th a t she em bodies the contradictory principles of sociable unpredictability and individuality w ithin this particular social edifice. B ut w ith C atherine M ingott we

have a woman who is very much a part of both these camps. She is

undoubtedly an integral influence upon old N ew Y ork society despite

" Carol J, Singley. Edith Wharton: Matters of Mind and Spirit. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 165

*€=77 Still Moments in a Turning World the fact that she ‘never had beauty'(A7, 1027), and was ‘nothing b u t a vulgar Spicer'(AI, 1137) who in her younger years

mingled freely in foreign society, married her daughters in heaven Icnev^ w hat corrupt and fashionable circles, hobnobbed with Dukes and Ambassadors, associated familiarly with Papists, [and] entertained Opera singers.(A/, 1025)

D espite these social eccentricities, C atherine M ingott was ‘bold' and retained a ‘strength of will and hardness of h e art’(AI, 1025) and most im portantly exhibited ‘extreme decency and dignity of her private

life...’(AI, 1027) C atherine M ingott's unorthodoxy rem ains acceptable w ithin th e conservative N ew York society because her core values (a

good personal reputation, linked w ith her financial w ealth and

probity), are those w hich lie at the centre of N ew York society. In a society w hich guards its membership through carefully

selected m arital and comm ercial unions w hich help to solidify the financial foundations of their inherited w ealth and position, C atherine M ingott’s daughters are indicative of a tim e in the n o t too distant future w hen N ew York society could not sustain itself w ithout m arrying into m oney and position beyond the rarefied precincts of old

N ew York. Edward W esterm arck, whose works W harton was familiar

w ith, would write of the ‘tendency of endogamous peoples to die o u t’ and th a t ‘it is a well-established fact’ th a t in a small community where ‘scarcely any m em bers ... marry mem bers of other com m unities’ th a t they are m ore ‘liable to every Idnd of deterioration than ... larger

groups.’ Catherine M ingott’s understanding of what was just over the ‘social h o rizon’ appears to reiterate the narrator’s opening observations in the first chapter of the novel concerning ‘the “new

Edward Westermarck. The History of Human Marriage, 3"' edition. {London: Macmillan, 1903), 346-348 as quoted in 'A ppendix F -5’ - The Age of Innocence [1920], edited by Michael Nowlin. (New York: Broadview, 2002), 410-41 1.

*€=78 Still Moments in ii Tuniing World people” w hom N ew York ‘was beginning to dread and yet be drawn to .’ {AI, 1017) Wharton has not chosen the tem poral and spatial settings of this text by chance, nor has she chosen them solely for the sake of her

nostalgic feelings about this tim e and place in her own life. She has chosen them because the text itself lies on a threshold; a threshold leading from the old order to a new order relying greatly on the

financial pow er of the nouveaux riches for its overall fiscal health, where pure w ealth and exogamous social unions will becom e pre-em inent. By the end of th e novel, this particular point is shown through the up and com ing m arriage of May and N ew land’s son Dallas to Fanny

Beaum ont. N ew land, and society as a whole, has accepted a new social

structure w hich allows such a marriage, and indeed em braces it. C atherine M ingott’s characterisation foreshadows this union, as do the location, th e architecture, and the decoration of her hom e. Each elem ent fits neatly together to form a complete ekphrastic node, a highly visual ekphrasis w hich acts as a hieroglyph — a picture

representing words —which once deciphered opens up a secondary narrative w ith C atherine M ingott at its centre, and w hich feeds

directly into the them e of societal evolution and change.

C o u n t e s s E l l e n O l e n s k a (f a r d o w n ) W e s t 2 3 r d S t r e e t N e w Y o r k C i t y

HILE THE TWO TOPOGRAPHICAL SITES ALREADY discuSsed W establish the complexity of old N ew York society and a

*€=79 Still Moments in n Turning World possible discordant elem ent evolving around this society, it is the relationship betw een N ew land A rcher and Ellen O lenska w hich is the lynchpin bringing all the elem ents together. N ew land A rcher’s first visit to Ellen O lenska in her ‘hired’ hom e ‘far dow n W est Tw enty-third Street’(AI, 1067) is of central im portance to a text w here the relationship betw een Ellen and N ew land is pivotal. R eturning to m y earlier analogy that this novel is

prim arily about the point of m eeting of two ‘trains travelling in opposite directions’, this particular episode can be seen to be th at m om ent of intersection. Obviously, N ew land and Ellen have m et before, but only w ithin the rigidly policed structures of old N ew York society, and im portantly, only in public. In viewing this episode as the point of intersection, the im portance of this m om ent lies in the fact th a t it is th e first private, face to face, engagem ent of these two im portant characters. W h arto n em phasises this particular episode’s

structural im portance by fram ing the interior elem ent of the location

in such a way that not only is th e reader’s perspective altered by the

framing, b u t N ew land A rcher’s perception is changed w ithin this frame.

N ew land A rcher stands on the threshold of Madam e O lenska’s

house on W est T w enty-third Street where ‘curiosity was his utm ost feeling’(AI, 1070). The ‘threshold’ is a place of entry not only into this specific novelistic episode, b u t an entry into the Balditinian

chronotope of the threshold. Balchtin sees the chronotope in general as an ‘organizing center’ w here spatial m arkers and tem poral markers

intersect and fuse. This creates a chronotope w hich allows us to read texts ‘as x-rays of th e forces at w ork in the culture system from which

*€=80 Still Moments in a Turning World they sp ring.M ore specifically, th e chronotope of th e threshold operates w ithin this m atrix as one w hich is

highly charged with emotion and value, ... it can be combined with the m otif of encounter, bu t its m ost fundam ental instance is as the chronotope of crisis and break in life. The word “threshold” itself already has a m etaphorical m eaning in everyday usage (together with its literal meaning), and is connected with the brealdng point of a life, the m om ent of crisis, the decision that changes a life (or the indecisiveness th at fails to change a life, the fear to step over the threshold). In literature, the chronotope of the threshold is always metaphorical and symbolic, sometimes openly but more often implicitly ... In this chronotope, tim e is essentially instantaneous; it is as if it has no duration and falls out of the normal course of biographical time.

T here is no doubt that this entire scene, played o u t w ithin Ellen

O lenska’s hom e, is a chronotope of the threshold. T he spatial m arkers in particular —location, description of exterior and interior decoration

— are vividly constructed by Wharton. The tem poral m arker w hich gives the feeling th a t ‘tim e is essentially in stan tan eous’ occurs when

N ew land notices th a t the ‘only visible specim en’ of a clock in Ellen O lenska’s draw ing-room ‘had stopped’ (AI, 1070). N ew land’s understanding of the crossing of Ellen’s threshold is linked to his im plicit guilt at being there, as he understands that this is a point of ‘crisis’ in his life. N ew land perceives that by crossing th e threshold, he is crossing th e threshold w hich has up to that po in t separated

N ew land and Ellen from a sexually charged environm ent w hich will facilitate th eir m utual attraction. B ut the m erging of th e chronotopic elem ents w ithin this scene run parallel to Murray ICrieger’s ‘still m ovem ent’^® w ithin ekphrasis w here ICrieger sees th e m ultitude of understandings of this phrase as underpinning th e essential nature of

M.M. Bakhtin. The Dialogic Imagination, edited by Michael Holqiiist, transiated by Caryl Em erson and Michael Holqulst, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981: 250, 425-426

Bakhtin. The Dialogic Imagination, 2 4 8

Where Murray Krieger, in his article 'Ekphrasis and the Still Movement of Poetry; or, Laokoon Revisited.' [i967]. In: Ekphrasis: The Illusion of the Natural Sign, Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992: 2 6 3 -2 8 8 .

*€=81 Still Moments in a Tuniing World the ekphrastic episode in th a t it is the co-existence of th e stasis (still) w ith w hich description is linked and the dynam ic (m ovem ent), where narrative is linked. The descriptive elem ents in b o th ekphrasis and the chronotope are embedded in a static m atrix, yet they sim ultaneously produce a m icronarrative w hich informs and refracts the m aster narrative.

Like the location of all Wharton’s buildings w ithin her N ew York texts, the topographical site of a building is linked through its architectures to th e residents themselves. Ellen O lenska’s ‘hired’ hom e ‘far dow n W est T w enty-third Street’ is not enclosed w ithin Mrs. A rcher’s ‘small slippery pyram id’(AI, 1096) — an accurate phrase used to describe the finite and precipitous nature of old N ew Y ork’s social hierarchies — but in a ‘strange q uarter’ w ith denizens like ‘dress­ makers, bird-stuffers and “people w ho w rote”.’ (AI, 1069) Catherine M ingott may well live in the seemingly uncharted wilderness near

C entral Park, but she does have m oney and her reputation. Ellen has chosen to live in a ‘bohem ian’ area of th e city — ‘des quartiers excentriques’{Al, 1074) — an area w hich is ‘charted’ yet is not deem ed totally unacceptable by m ainstream N ew York society. It is a position w hich once again mirrors Ellen O lenska’s positioning in the M ingott box at the opera, w here she takes up a position w hich neither includes nor excludes her totally from the inner sanctum of N ew York society.

T he street is ‘dishevelled’ and the house had ‘peeling stucco ... w ith a giant w isteria throttling its feeble cast-iron balcony’ (AI, 1069). As is the case w ith C atherine M ingott’s mansion, Ellen’s house is out of th e ordinary, and is not the standard brownstone constructed tow nhouse of Mrs. Archer’s circle. It is dislocated from the arena of

N ew Y ork’s social kingdom just as Ellen O lenska herself is, yet

* € = 82 StiU Moments in a Tuniing World

N ew land is able to bridge this divide. Although he is a m em ber of N ew York society, he keeps a toe in the ‘cultural’ waters of N ew York w ith his books, and his acquaintance w ith “‘fellows who wrote” ... m usicians and ... painters’ (AI, 1096) who he m eets at his club, the C entury Association; a club organised in 1847 to ‘form an association of gentlem en of the city of N ew York ... engaged or interested in literature and the fine arts, w ith a view to their advancem ent, as well as the prom otion of social intercourse.’^^ Ellen O lenska aclatowledges her own peripherality, yet it seems to be w hat she w ants:

“I like the little house,” she adm itted; “but I suppose what I like is the blessedness of its being here, in my own country and my own town; and then, of being alone in it.” She spoke so low that he hardly heard the last phrase; but in his awkwardness he took it up. “You like so much to be alone?” “Yes; as long as my friends keep me from feeling lonely.”(A/, 1073)

Ellen O lenska is acloiowledging her independence outside the collective of N ew York society. She says, ‘I suppose I ’ve lived too independently,’ thus establishing herself, like Archer, as one who is a part of society yet still able to move outside it. O nce again, however, the sim ilarities between N ew land and Ellen are only on the surface.

R eality will not allow them to exist together: w here N ew land is firmly ensconced w ithin old N ew York society w ith solid reputation, money, family connections, and his gender, Ellen comes from the other direction: her gender, reputation (and we cannot forget th at

reputation and gender are intrinsically linked w ithin all W harton’s

fiction), financial position, and ‘otherness’ in term s of her European

Quoted from Robert Stern, Thomas Mellins &. David Fishm an. Nciv York 1880: Architecture and Urbanism in the Gilded Age. (New York: The Monacelli Press, 1999), 216. During the period of the novei the ciub would have been located at 109 East Fifteenth Street between Union Square and Irving Place, only a few yards from the A cadem y of M usic.

*€=83 Still Moments in a Tuniing World background, firm ly place her out w ith society. It is only her family connections w hich allow her a tenuous foothold in society itself. Ellen O lenska has undertaken the transform ation of the interior of this house into her interior. In an old N ew Y ork society where objects expressed cost through their scale, m aterials and elaboration, Ellen O lenska’s ‘bits of wreckage’ are notable for by th eir delicacy; her paintings are notew orthy in th a t in the eyes of N ew land A rcher (who believes him self to be educated in these m atters) they are not recognised as being w ithin the confines of N ew York’s own understanding of w hat a fashionable Italian painting is and isn ’t.

A rcher is ‘bewildered’. H e is bew ildered by the sense of w hat he perceives to be Ellen’s ‘ta ste ’, w hich is not the taste defined by those w ho inhabit that narrow spine betw een the H udson and East Rivers.

This bew ilderm ent at the interior of Ellen’s hom e is m irrored by the C ountess’s own bew ildered perception of a N ew Y ork w hich on the surface she thought so simple in th a t it is ‘so straight up and down — like Fifth A venue ... w ith all the cross streets n u m b ered ’. (AI, 1076) She has, however, a daw ning understanding of th e labyrinthine qualities of this city. This them e of social polarisation can be tak en further w hen we

look at th e future hom e of M ay W elland and N ew land Archer, w hich

‘was thought rem ote’:

[The] newly built house in East Thirty-ninth Street ... [was] built in a ghastly greenish-yellow stone th at the younger architects were beginning to employ as a protest against the brownstone of which the uniform hue coated New York like a cold chocolate sauce. {AI, 1072)

Like the hom es of C atherine M ingott and Ellen O lenska, A rcher’s

prospective hom e is rem ote, and architecturally is of a form which

differs from the ubiquitous brownstone of collective society. Yet in

*€=84 StiU Moments in a Turning World term s of the city’s spatial hierarchies the house is m oving closer to the top of th e island and is on the East side or the ‘right side’, thus keeping it w ithin society’s cordon sanitaire, and w ithin Mrs. Archer’s

‘small slippery pyram id’ w hich delineates N ew York society. T he fram ing device of the threshold to the O lenska house gives the reader a focus on a mom ent w here time seemingly stands still, and a description is given w hich causes th e perception of the reader to

change from the verbal to the visual. This change in perspective is

further enhanced by the im portant ‘telescope’ m otif w hich runs

through this chapter: another visual tool w hich aids in W harton’s control of how a reader will visualise the scene at its centre, and another device w hich helps frame th e ekphrastic m om ent. It is here

th a t N ew land’s own perception of his w orld is m odified for a tim e, and im portantly, as it is constructed through N ew land A rcher’s own

consciousness, it m odifies how the reader perceives old N ew York society.

N ew land A rcher’s entire perception of the exterior w orld (New

York) changes once he enters Ellen O lenska’s hom e. A t the point of crossing ‘M adam e O lenska’s threshold’ into this realm , he has his first

feelings of doubt and guilt, pondering on the fact th a t he ‘m eant to

tell May of the C ountess O lenska’s request — her command, rather — th a t he should call on her th a t afternoon’(AI, 1070). T he irony th a t N ew land is n o t a ‘free m an ’ due to th e fact that Ellen h ad appeared in

N ew York, is not lost on him , and the im plicit subtext here convinces

N ew land that this is all the m ore ironic due to his attraction to Ellen.

N ew land A rcher feels great ‘curiosity’ as he is about to enter the house of the C ountess, and this curiosity is n o t disappointed in any way.

Crossing the threshold into Ellen’s houses changes N ew land A rcher’s

*0=85 StiU Moments in n Turning World relative position concerning N ew York C ity and allows him to perceive th a t w orld in a different m anner. H e learns through being w ith Ellen O lenska, to ‘open ... [his] eyes to things' w hich he had ‘looked at so long’ that he ‘ceased to see th em .’ (AI, 1075) In Wharton’s first outline of what was to become The Age of Innocence, W harton wrote that ‘Gradually Archer falls in love w ith [Ellen] Sc sees th a t life w ith M ay W elland, or any other young woman who has not had Ellen’s initiation, would be unutterably dull.’ Also, Ellen is perceived as being the personification of ‘an Awful Warning to young girls w ith an inclination to “marry foreigners’” and w ho herself believes th a t “‘European corruption” has tain ted her soul.’ It seems that W harton’s

general understanding of the character Ellen O lenska in her prim ary outlines was to be one of her symbolising an individual who has been

‘infected’ w ith some European disease w hich she will forever be unable to shake off. These obvious statem ents from the first outline to the

novel are transform ed into the ‘faint im plications’ w hich would be expected from an author borne of the very society at th e centre of the novel. N o t only does this reinforce the unhealthy insularity of old

N ew York society, b u t it also allows the reader of the final published w ork to comprehend w here bo th C atherine M ingott and N ew land A rcher fit into the overall schem ata in term s of their own ‘infection’

by the European disease.The C ountess’s m aid is N ew land’s first introduction to this ‘other w orld’ into w hich the C ountess has already been initiated. T he ‘sw arthy foreign-looldng maid, w ith a prom inent bosom under gay neckerchief does n o t speak N ew land’s language, b u t he ‘lotew th a t the southern races com m unicated w ith each other in the

' Taken from Edith Wharton’s "Subjects and Notes, 19 18-1923” from the Edith Wharton Collection, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, In: ‘Appendix C: Wharton’s Outlines’ — Edith Wharton. The Age of Innocence [1920], edited by Michael Nowlin. (New York: Broadview, 2002), 343-344.

*€=86 Still Moments in a Tuniing World language of pantom im e, and was mortified to find her shrugs and smiles so unintelligible. ' (AI, 1070) This fact introduces us into a w orld w here com m unication on an initial level will not be verbal, but visual. N ew land is unable to com m unicate verbally, w hich by and large is true of a N ew York society itself w hich is seen to communicate by Taint im plication and pale delicacies.' It is this non-verbal, visual com m unication w hich will establish the atm osphere of this interior:

W hat he saw, meanwhile, with the help of the lamp, was the faded shadowy charm of a room unlike any room he had Icnown. He knew that the Countess Olenska had brought some of her possessions with her — bits of wreckage, she called them — and these, he supposed, were represented by some small slender tables of dark wood, a delicate little Greek bronze on the chimney-piece, and a stretch of red damask nailed on the discoloured wallpaper behind a couple of Italian-looking pictures in old frames.(A/, 1071)

This draw ing-room in a house in N ew York City, ‘by the tu rn of the hand, and the slcilful use of a few properties, [had] been transform ed into som ething intim ate, “foreign,” subtly suggestive of old romantic scenes and sentim ents.'(AI, 1071-72) N ew land’s new perspective locates him w ithin a ‘romantic scene’ and places him at such a distance from N ew York that ‘it seemed much farther off th an

Sam arkand.’(tVI, 1076) This im plied detachm ent from N ew York w hilst under the influence of the atm ospheric draw ing-room of the C ountess Ellen O lenska

makes him look at his native city objectively. Viewed thus, as through the wrong end of a telescope, it looked disconcertingly small and distant; bu t then from Samarkand it would. (A/, 1076)

This ‘new’ perspective allows him to see the talism anic nature of the van der Luydens (the first family of N ew York society in bo th a literal and figurative sense) im plode w hen Ellen points out that like any

com m odity, the value increases the rarer it becomes: ‘A t a stroke she

had pricked the van der Luydens and they collapsed.’(A/, 1075) This

*€=87 StiU Moments in ii Tinning W orld is the climax of the earlier episode w here Ellen described the van der Luyden m ansion as ‘gloomy’ and N ew land felt an ‘electric shock’ w hich thrilled him . This room whose ‘atm osphere ... was so different from any he had ever b reath ed ’ allows N ew land, who has an educated aesthetic palate, to build another w orld w ithin this room, a world which is as intoxicating to him as Ellen herself. ‘N ew land A rcher prided him self on his Itnowledge of Italian art. His boyhood had been saturated w ith

Rusldn, and he had read all the latest books on art: John Addington Sym onds, V ernon Lee’s “E uphorion,” th e essays of P.G. Ham erton, and a w onderful new volum e called “The R enaissance” by W alter

Pater. H e talked easily of Botticelli, and spoke of Era Angelico w ith a faint condescension.’(A/, 1071) The spell is broken w hen reality begins to appear w hen th e Countess weeps. In comforting her N ew land slips out of his trance-like state:

It was burnt into his consciousness th at he had called her “Ellen” — called her so twice; and that she had not noticed it. Far down the inverted telescope he saw the faint white figure of M ay W elland — in New York’(A/, 1077)

A nd now th e spell is broken. T he D uke of St. Austrey enters th e scene w ith Mrs. Struthers, and N ew land is soon back out onto the ‘wintry street’ w here ‘New York again becam e vast and im m an en t.’(A/, 1078)

T he telescope now viewed through the proper sight, is upon him , and tim e begins to move once again.

Wharton further reiterates the ‘otherness’, yet sim ultaneously the attraction, of Ellen’s house in this conversation betw een the C ountess and N ew land Archer:

“How do you like my funny little house?” she asked. “To me it’s like heaven.” As she spoke she untied her little velvet bonnet and tossing it away with her long cloak stood looldng at him w ith m editative eyes.

*€=88 StiU Moments in a Tum iug W orld j s “You’ve arranged it delightfully,” he rejoined, alive to the flatness of the words, bu t imprisoned in the conventional by his consuming desire to be simple and strildng. “Oh, it’s a poor little place. M y relations despise it. But at any rate it’s less gloomy than the van der Luydens’.” The words gave him an electric shock, for few were the rebellious spirits who would have dared to call the stately home of the van der Luydens gloomy. Those privileged to enter it shiver there, and spoke it as “handsom e.” But suddenly he was glad that she had given voice to the general shiver. (A/, 1073)

W ith the van der Luydens considered as being close to th e apex of the ‘small and slippery pyram id’ w hich sym bolised N ew York society in the eyes of m any, we m ay well expect N ew land A rcher to feel an ‘electric shock’ w hen their hom e in N ew York is described as ‘gloom y’. Yet ‘gloom y’ precisely describes the M adison A venue tow nhouse of

Louisa and H enry van der Luyden.

M r . & M r s . H e n r y v a n d e r L u y d e n M a d i s o n A v e n u e N e w Y o r k C i t y

h e A d j e c t i v e ‘gloom y’ has r e s o n a n c e s o f a n o l d h o m e , an Toften uninhabited hom e, a hom e of the past. T here is no doubt th a t the general tim bre of th e descriptions of the van der L uyden’s

draw ing-room in their m ansion on M adison Avenue, is one of the

past. Yet w hen N ew land A rcher adm ow ledges th a t the ‘large shrouded

room’ was ‘so complete an image of its ow ners’(A/, 1058) we cannot

fail to see th a t there is m ore complex m achinery at work. O nce again, Wharton directs us tow ards th e harm onies involved in the com plex lived environm ents contained w ithin The Age

of Innocence. I use th e term ‘harm onies’ in order to once again reiterate

*€=89 Still Moments in a Turning World

W harton’s construction of environm ents w hich have at their core the intricate relationship betw een character and m ilieu. There is an un d o u b ted harm ony w hich exists between all the characters discussed and their hom es, w here the hom e underpins the character’s position w ithin th e city’s social hierarchy as well as delineating the attitudes of th e residents too. Wharton locates the van der Luyden m ansion on

M adison Avenue, most probably located som ewhere betw een 24^^' and

34^’' Streets, thus locating it in a central longitudinal location betw een

the W ashington Square of another old aristocratic N ew York family, the D agonets, and the M ingott m ansion on Fifth A venue betw een 57^‘"

and 58^^' Streets. T he van der Luyden m ansion is also placed on the nght-hand side of Fifth Avenue, thus further enhancing and defining a spatial location w hich w ould be perfectly connected to the social position of th e inhabitants of this m ansion. T he progress of N ew York C ity in m any respects followed

Broadway as it sliced its w ay diagonally thorough th e city. M adison

Square, being another im portant node w here Broadw ay intersects an avenue, and not just any avenue b u t Fifth Avenue, is w here M adison

Avenue begins, and as M. Christine Boyer writes in Manhattan Manners: Architecture and Style ‘The M adison Square Presbyterian

Church was th e first indication th a t residential buildings would follow

w hen it was constructed in 1853 at T w enty-fourth Street and M adison Avenue. By the late 1850s the hom es of N ew York’s first

families could be found on all the adjacent side streets between Fourth and Sixth A venues.T he van der Luydens can undoubtedly be

classified as one ‘of N ew York’s first fam ilies’, and as the upper

reaches of both Madison and Fifth Avenues (above 42”^ Street) were

" M. Christine Boyer. Manhattan Manners: Architecture and Style IS50-1900 , New York: Rizzoli, 1985: 50

*e90 Still Moments in n Turning World

Still relatively undeveloped, it would be fair to assume that the van der Luyden mansion was placed somewhere between 24^^' and 34‘^' Streets, as in its description in The Age of Innocence it seems to have been a firmly established home for some time. Yet, in W harton’s novel The Buccaneers, set contem poraneously w ith The Age of Innocence, some doubt is cast on this particular location w hen she w rites of th e inappropriateness of this address during one of th e few short passages set in N ew York

W hen Colonel St George bought his house in M adison Avenue it seemed to him fit to satisfy the ambitions of any budding millionaire. T hat it had been built and decorated by one of the Tweed ring, who had come to grief earlier than his more famous fellow-criminals, was to Colonel St George convincing proof that it was a suitable setting for wealth and elegance. But social education is acquired rapidly in New York, even by those who have to absorb it through the cracks of the sacred edifice; and Mrs. St George had already found out that no one lived in M adison Avenue, th at the front hall should have been painted Pompeian red with a stencilled frieze, and not w ith naked Cupids and hum m ing birds on a sky-blue ground, and that basem ent dining-rooms were unlcnown to the fashionable.

The Colonel, who was insensitive to details, continued to be proud of his house; even when the Elmsworths, suddenly migrating from Brooldyn, had settled themselves in Fifth Avenue he would not adm it his mistake, or feel the hum iliation of the contrast. And yet w hat a difference it made to a lady to be able to say “Fifth Avenue” in giving her address to Black, Starr and Frost, or to Mrs Connelly, the fashionable dress-maker! In establishm ents like th at they classed their customers at once, and “M adison Avenue” stood at best for a decent m ediocrity.‘‘^

This passage offers an im portant insight into the van der Luydens in that although they are socially at the top of the tree, they are physically being left behind as the D agonets w ould be in The Custom of the Countiy, and can be seen as being little m ore th an ‘“decent m ediocrity’” in the w hole scheme of old N ew Y ork society.

Edith Wharton. Fast and Loose &. The Buccaneers, [1977 &. 1938], edited by Viola Hopkins Winner (Charlottesville and London; University Press Virginia, 1993); 182-83

ae91 Still Moments in

N ext, we can note that Wharton spends no tim e on the exterior architecture of this environm ent, and as one of th e tru e patriarchs of old N ew York society, there is no exterior ostentation in the van der Luydens’ architecture. W h arto n instead moves directly to the central focal p oint of the episode, the drawing-room itself, w hich appears as a long-abandoned and forgotten room . The ‘m onum ental ormolu clock on the w hite m arble m antelpiece’ has ‘gauze still veiling’ it, keeping it as it was w hen th e van der Luydens were previously here. This could have been the previous w inter, or it could have been tw enty years ago. In a ‘high-ceilinged white-walled ... draw ing-room ’ tim e itself slows down to such a pace th a t the ‘tick of th e ... ormolu clock ... grew as loud as the boom of a m inute-gun.’ This scene is as static as any w ithin this text, and it is deliberately so. The van der Luyden m ansion is located in another tem poral plane, as are th e inhabitants, as are their values and outlook.

T he two slender figures w ithin this edifice on M adison Avenue seem ed to have been ‘gruesom ely preserved in the airless atm osphere of a perfectly irreproachable existence, as bodies caught in glaciers keep for years a rosy life-in-death’(A/, 1056-59) and are thus in total harm ony w ith th e tim elessness of the m ansion itself. The portrait dating from tw enty years before this visit, of Louisa van der Luyden wearing ‘black velvet and V enetian p o in t’, is no different from Louisa as she is today in the flesh. Likewise, H enry van der Luyden, ‘spare and frock-coated, w ith faded fair hair, a straight nose like his wife’s and the same look of frozen gentleness in eyes th a t were m erely pale grey instead of pale b lu e’, is a another gently faded picture of the past. B oth H enry and Louisa van der Luyden, perceived as ‘merged identities’(A/, 1057), inhabiting a ‘super terrestrial tw ilight,’(A/,

* ^ 9 2 Still Moments in a Turning World

1054), are locked into an existence in w hich they are used as a talism anic artefact ‘of some rem ote ancestral a u th o rity ’ (AI, 1058), w hich will not only bind th e families of old N ew Y ork together, b u t will ward off the ever-pervasive influences of change w hich have been a part of th e fabric of th e city since its birth. This entire description of this particular topographical site has very strong elem ents of ekphrasis throughout. T he static nature of the portrayal of th e van der Luydens and their environm ent, through not only th e m ode of verbal description, but also through im plicit and explicit statem ents relating to th e van der Luydens them selves, establishes the basis of the ekphrasis. It is the secondary narrative w hich is created through the description w hich evokes an ekphrasis w hich m akes the p o int about how th e van der Luydens are perceived by the society, as well as how they are used by th a t society to attem pt to allay any movem ent with the times. Yet, the pow er of this particular description is increased all the m ore by the contrast w ith w hat is a diam etrically opposite position and tim bre, th e Beauforts of Fifth

Avenue.

M r . & M r s . J u l i u s B e a u f o r t F i f t h A v e n u e N e w Y o r k C i t y

HERE THE VAN DER LUYDENS REFRAIN from any public show of W their existence and w ealth, Julius and Regina Beaufort publicly display their w ealth through their Fifth A venue m ansion, w hich was perceived as the ‘m ost distinguished house in N ew Y ork.’

*ïp93 S till Moments in n Turning W orld

T he B eaufort’s ‘heavy brown-stone palace’(A7, 1031) lies on Fifth

Avenue, the spine of the city itself, w here the flow of traffic w ould fix this house firm ly on a very public location in term s of both its position (on the central axis of the city) and its architecture. By having their annual ball on an Opera night th ey indicate to

the w orld that they em ploy enough people to take care of such arrangem ents in th eir absence w hilst at the O pera them selves; having a ballroom which was ‘left for three-hundred-and-sixty-four days of the year to shuttered darkness, w ith its gilt chairs stacked in a corner

and its chandelier in a bag’(A/, 1030) indicates th e im portance to the Beauforts of public display, by creating a room for th e sole purpose of

the ball w hich is used but one evening a year. T hey have their own

‘red velvet carpet and have it rolled dow n th e steps by their own footm en, u nder their own aw ning.’(A/, 1032) This is a hom e w hich

has been ‘boldly plann ed ’ w ith public display as its prime function,

and contrasts absolutely w ith the private and subdued van der Luyden

m ansion. T he interior of the house, in planning and detail, once again underpins the idea that public display of w ealth is a core function of

this m ansion’s existence. In order to enter the ballroom, th e house is designed so th a t

instead of squeezing through a narrow passage ... one marched down a vista of enfiladed drawing-rooms (the sea-green, the crimson and the bouton d’or), seeing from afar the many-candied lustres reflected in their polished parquetry, and beyond that the depths of the conservatory where camellias and tree-ferns arched their costly foliage over seats of black and gold bamboo.' {AI, 1032)

N ew land A rcher arrives late and ‘daw dles’ in th e B eaufort library ‘hung w ith Spanish leather and furnished w ith Buhl and malachite.’

{AI, 1032) a library w hich, in many ways, could be the library of Still Moments in a Turning World

Elm er M offatt in a future incarnation of N ew York C ity in The Custom of the Countiy. Eric H obsbaw m explains a purpose for such decoration;

Objects express their cost and, at a tim e when m ost domestic ones were still produced largely by manual crafts, elaboration was largely an index of cost together w ith expensive materials. Cost also brought comfort, which was therefore visible as well as experienced. Yet objects were more than merely utilitarian or symbols of status and achievement. They had value in themselves as expressions of personality, as both the programme and the reality of bourgeois life, even as transformers of man.'*^

T he B eaufort mansion is constructed as a ‘transform er of man' and indeed th e transform er of w om an, exem plified in the transform ation of M rs. Beaufort:

Mrs. Beaufort belonged indeed to one of Am erica’s most honoured families; she had been the lovely Regina Dallas ... a penniless beauty introduced to New York society by her cousin, the im prudent M edora Manson, who was always doing the wrong thing from the right motive {AI, 1030)

Also, Julius B eaufort cannot escape the seed of doubt planted in the ‘business conscience’ of N ew York C ity w ith the rum our of his being

‘“helped” to leave England by the international banldng house by w hich he had been em ployed.’(A/, 1031) T he B eauforts’ financial display of strength, of th eir ownership of th e trappings of w ealth (as opposed to the rental of th e trappings of w ealth), to som e degree, has transform ed th em — society attends their social functions albeit w ith an understanding th a t the ‘Beauforts were n o t exactly common ... they were even w orse.’(AT, 1030) It seems to be fitting, in the overall pattern of th e text, th a t the im pending financial ruin of Julius

B eaufort causes him to attem p t one final roll of the dice. H e ‘hires’ a spectacular em erald necldace w hich Regina B eaufort wears to the

O pera one evening. In th e eyes of N ew York society, those factors w hich allowed th e B eauforts’ m em bership of N ew York society —

E. J. H obsbaw m . The Age of Capital, 1848-1875. {London; Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975), 231

*î?95 Still Moments in a Tuniing World family, w ealth, and reputation — have been irreconcilably altered. The m ost powerful w eapon the Beauforts had, their w ealth, has gone, and the rental of th e trappings of w ealth is now indicative of their fall from grace.

h e p r im a r y n a r r a t iv e o f The Age of Innocence tells a tale of the T doom ed affections of N ew land A rcher for his fiance's exotic cousin, the C ountess Ellen Olenska, in the face of th e rigid rituals and

rules of a powerful N ew York society. Placing N ew York C ity at the centre of this tale begins to alter the tale on a subterranean level. Specific topographical sites w ithin the text function in m any ways as

Bruno Latour’s ‘black-boxes’ do'*^^; they provide an effect w ithout explicitly stating the process w hich produces the effect in question.

In this chapter I have looked at the process in question, one of

illum ination through ekphrasis, w hich in itself is an act of deciphering the visual images constructed w ithin the text. A n ekphrasis of a

topographical site in this novel is a description of a location w ithin N ew York w hich contains a subterranean secondary narrative w hich

offers greater sem antic detail to the reader in order to aid their understanding of th e text. Each topographical site w hich I have analysed acts as a prism through which the m aster narrative is

refracted, thus changing the nature of the novel in its process. As is the case w ith any exercise in deciphering, th e reader is now in possession of m ore inform ation th a t he/she had before, inform ation

Bruno Latour. Scioice in Action, Cambridge, MA; Har\'ard University Press, 1987; 2-3.

*^96 Still Moments in a Turning World w hich can only increase their com prehension of this carefully crafted text, and established the germ inating idea of change in this particular old N ew York society, at this particular tim e. T he narrative strategy w hich is underpinned by this use of the illuminating incidents‘^^ or ekphrases w ithin the text, is one w here the scope, power, and conflicts of th e society are rendered through the opening scene at the A cadem y of M usic. The im portance, stability and vitality of particular positions w ithin the upper echelons of this society are established and com m ented upon through th e descriptions of the locations and structures of th e hom es of the van der Luydens, the Beauforts and Catherine M ingott. U nderstanding th e m ansions of these characters is vital for an understanding of th e characters them selves.

Finally, the detailed description w ithin the novel of Ellen

O lenska’s hom e becom es the focal point of th e novel, as this is the m om ent of intersection of the two prim ary protagonists, N ew land

Archer and Ellen Olenska. T hey are in an environm ent w hich is

foreign to that of old N ew York society and are th en able to com m unicate outside the taciturn society w ithin w hich they generally exist.

This p oint is not only a po in t of m eeting, b u t is th e m om ent in the text w here, through N ew land A rcher’s consciousness, we begin to

gain a clearer view of a society w hich has been veiled by Taint

im plications and pale delicacies.’ It is this shift in perception,

catalysed through the description of Ellen O lenska’s hom e on W est

There are many terms used within this drapter concerning the analysis of the text, namely ‘illuminating incidents' chronotope, ekphrasis. Ekphrasis is the over-riding term which lies at the heart of the analysis as it is the written description of a scene, art object, building or event. The ekphrasis makes a scene more vivid thus making a reader focus on the semantic definition. The description in its own right may be narratilogically at a stop, but what is being described holds within it a secondary narrative which refracts the master narrative. The ekphrases

w 9 7 Still Moments in a Turning World

T w enty-third Street, w hich tells th e reader m ore ab o u t the real m ain protagonist of the novel, old N ew York society, and in particular establishes the narrative of change w hich is carried forward through The House of Mirth and The Custom of the Country. A novel constructed around N ew land A rcher’s aesthetically acute consciousness offers the reader an insight into this particular society through what can be seen as the sub-conscious vision of Archer.

T he society initially has the strength and purity of the original patrician society, b u t there are hints about its failing health as old society becom es draw n to th e ‘new people’ w ith th e ‘new m oney’ who were beginning to m ake their new m ark on society. T he van der

Luydens and their hom e, described as ‘fading’, brings about an

understanding that although they seem n o t to be getting any older,

their influence is indeed fading. Conversely, the disgraced Regina B eaufort — who married into ‘new ’ m oney and was seen to be

‘growing younger and blonder and m ore beautiful every year,’(A/,

1031) — is th e exam ple of the restorative and transform ing powers of

incredible w ealth. C atherine M ingott ‘sees’ th e society changing, and is com fortable w ith this to a certain degree. H er w hole being is one w hich has existed in b o th the old N ew York and European societies,

w hich appear throughout th e novel to be an anathem a to each other, b u t is an exem plar of how th e society will function and flourish in the

future. These are the them es in w hich Edith W harton would immerse

herself in b o th The Buccaneers and m ore im portantly, as I shall discuss in chapter four. The Custom of the Countiy.

in this analysis are of places in particiilar, yet these same analyses intersect with Wharton's understanding of her ‘illuminating incidents’ and Bakhtin’s chronotopes.

in p 9 8 ‘But cveiy man Jack when he first sets foot on the stones of Manhattan has got to fight. H e has got to figh t a t once until cither he or his adversary wins. There is no resting between rounds, for there arc no rounds. It is sluggingfivm the first. It is a fight to a finish. Your opponent is the City. ... And, oh, the city is a general in the ring. Not only by blows does it seek to subdue you. It woosyou to its heart with the subtlety of a siren. It is a eomhination of Delilah, green Charti-euse, Beethoven, chloral and John L in his best days. ' O. Henry'

‘M ost reckless things arc beautiful in .some way. ’ John Ashbeiy-

|he ease w ith which critics have pigeonholed Edith W harton’s major fiction as ‘novels of m anners’ shows a distinct lack of im agination and intellectual rigour in the reading of her major fiction. The House of Mirth, in particular, has very strong naturalist credentials and Barbara Hochman writes th a t this novel ‘neatly exemplify[ies] the “naturalist” plot of individual decline, with its concern for the pressures of environm ent and circumstance, and its

O. Henry [pseud, of William Sydney Porter], ‘The Duel' [1910] In: Kenneth T. Jackson & Da\dd S. Dunbar, eds. Empire City: New York Through the Centuries {New York; Columbia University Press. 2002), 497

From ‘An Interview with John Ashbery.’ In: Richard Kostelanetz, ed. American Writing Today, volume I, {Washington DC: US International Communication Agency, 1982), 270

*ts=99 ‘Beyond!’: The Bart Milieu focus on forces (both inner and outer) beyond th e control of the characters’.^ T he fiction of E dith W h arto n is seldom discussed with a naturalist critique to th e fore, y et throughout her fiction W harton has consistently understood th e vital im portance of b o th heredity and environm ent upon her own fiction. W harton’s own appreciation of the naturalist tenets w ithin literature can be gleaned from The Writing of Fiction, w here she writes of the im portance of the ‘relation of [...] characters to th eir houses, streets, towns, professions, inherited habits and opinions’ {WF, 8) in Balzac’s fiction in particular, b u t im plicit w ithin this appreciative view is th a t these elem ents are also im portant in Wharton’s own writing. Wharton’s undoubted appreciation of Balzac and the principles w hich underpinned his fiction can be found w ithin much of her own writing, b u t The House of Mirth in particular places a great em phasis upon th e environm ents w ithin w hich Lily Bart locates herself as not only indicators of her social disintegration, but in some ways, causes of her social disintegration.

Wharton’s own personal understanding of her own environm ents throughout her life, and their palpable aesthetic and em otional im portance to her, can be seen in her ow n statem ent th a t she ‘always saw th e visible w orld as a series of pictures m ore or less harm oniously composed”^. She goes on to say that she had a ‘secret sensitiveness to the landscape’; th a t she perceived th e ‘unifying magic beneath the diversities of the visible scene’ (BG, 824); and that from a young age she had a ‘photographic m em ory of rooms and houses’ (BG, 805). All these statem ents support the fact that the visible world, in

’ Barbara Hochman. ‘The Amtkcning and The House of Mirth: Plotting Experience and Experiencing Plot.’ In: Donald Pizer, ed. The Cambridge Companion to American Realism and Naturalism: Tlomils to London (Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 1995), 212

' As quoted in Eleanor Dwight. Edith Wharton: An Evtraordinaiy Life (New York; Hany N. Abrams, 1994), 8

4^100 ‘Beyond!': Tiw Bart Milieu term s of landscape and architecture, had a very im p o rtan t role to play in Edith Wharton’s life and fiction, and they also p o in t to the fact that although ekphrasis and the chronotope are excellent general theories, her own aesthetic theories held w ithin her biographical and other non-fiction writings are th e real foundations of this analysis. W harton’s vivid descriptions throughout TJie House of Mirth — of the varied environm ents or m ilieus w hich Lily Bart passes through — can be read as ekphrastic descriptions. T he descriptive detail used by Wharton to construct her m ilieus is enhanced by th e connotative inform ation already located w ith the reader, and the resultant m icronarrative — subterranean to th e m aster narrative but certainly not of lesser im portance — enhances th e reading of the text as a whole.

HERE N e w Y o r k C it y o f t h e 1870s in The Age of Innocence W was a ‘remembered place’ for Edith Wharton — writing the novel in France during 1919-20; the N ew York C ity of the 1900s in

The House of Mirth was a ‘lived place’ at the tim e of its com position, w ith Wharton still resident on Park Avenue. T he publication chronology of W harton’s three m ajor N ew York novels is as follows: 1905 - The House of Mirth, 1913 - The Custom of the Country, and 1920 - The Age of Innocence. Yet they are set respectively in cl900, cl910 and

cl875. As a group of three texts w hich address the mechanics of change w ithin N ew York society at different periods, W harton has an excellent sense of the period as can be seen through many of her

writings, and im portantly for these particular novels, Wharton has

*el01 ’Beyond!’; The Bart Milieu lived, recognised and ‘pain ted ’ these particular versions of N ew York w ith some degree of sldll and accuracy. W h arto n does struggle, however, w ith her rendering of the city and its society in b o th Twilight Sleep (1927) and Hudson River Bracketed{l929). These novels are set contem poraneously w ith their publication, and having n o t been resident in N ew York for almost 20 years, and having visited only once since 1913, W harton did not have the requisite social, geographical or architectural Imowledge of those particular versions of N ew York. She does n o t offer a detailed rendering of the city in either novel, and as such, an ekphrastic reading is n o t possible to the degree reached in th e novels being analysed in this thesis. Once again, we can com pare N ew York to

Schliem ann’s T roy in th a t the cities of Twilight Sleep and Hudson River Bracketed are new cities built upon those illustrated m asterfully in her three m ajor N ew York novels, w here she was w riting of th e city which she had inhabited or was inhabiting. Candace W aid writes th a t as early as 1902, Wharton was at w ork on a N ew York novel entitled “D isintegration”, a novel which w ould rem ain unfinished, though elem ents from “D isintegration” w ould find th eir way into The House of Mirth (original worldng title “A

M o m en t’s O rn am en t”) w hich Wharton may have started com posing as early as 1903 and completed in 1905.^ In term s of th e narrative of change w hich exists through W harton’s three m ajor N ew York novels, “D isintegration” seems to be an apt source for som e elem ents which found th eir way into The House of Mirtlr, apt in th e sense th a t where

The Age of Innocence im plied th a t the currents of change were on the

See Candace Waid. ‘Building The House of Mirth.' In: James Barbour Tom Quirk, eds. Biographies of Books: The Compositional Histories of Notable American Writings. (Columbia & London; University of Missouri Press, 1996).

*=!p102 ‘Beyond!’: The B an Milieu visible b u t d istan t horizon, The House of Mirth would aclmowledge the im m inent arrival of the nouveaux riches, not only through understanding Lily Bart’s own journey but through the explicit arrival of N orma Hatch towards the end of the novel, foreshadow ing the spectre of U ndine Spragg and all that she represents in The Custom of the Country. Wharton wrote The House of Mirth from within N ew York society, and as a result, on publication she had a distinctly critical reception from some w ithin N ew York society. Wharton wrote of The House of Mirth:

This supposed picture of their little circle, secure behind its high stockade of convention, alarmed and disturbed the rulers of Old New York. If the book had been the work of an outsider, of some barbarian reduced to guessing at what w ent on behind the stockade, they would not so much have m inded — m ight have laughed over its absurdities, or, more probably, not even heard of its existence. But here was a tale w ritten by one of themselves, a tale deliberately slandering and defiling their m ost sacred institutions and some of the m ost deeply revered members of the clan! And what picture did the writer offer to their horrified eyes? T hat of a young girl of their world who rouged, smoked, ran into debt, borrowed money, gambled, and — crowning horror! — w ent home with a bachelor friend to take tea in his flat!^

The ‘picture’ w hich Wharton offered to th e ‘horrified eyes’ of her

‘clan’ in w riting The House of Mirth was one w hich lacked the precise topographical sites we have analyzed in The Age of Innocence. There is no A cadem y of M usic w hich can epitom ize the sophisticated dynamics of old N ew York society in such an oblique y et effective m anner; there are no easily decipherable domiciles like that of Catherine M ingott’s m arble m ansion in th e N ew York hinterland w hich so clearly offers a prescient view of th e future of old N ew York society. Yet w ithin The

House of Mirth there is still th e city itself. W ith the inhabitants of this

Edith Wharton. 'Introduction to The House of Mirth.’ [1 9 3 6 ] In: The Uncollected Critical W ritings, edited with an introduction, by Frederick Wegener. (Princeton, NJ; Princeton University Press, 1996), 268

4fs=103 ‘Beyond!’: The Btirt Milieu particular novel and their own less concrete but still powerful milieus, there continues to exist a basis for the ekphrastic analysis of the city. As has been stated in the previous chapters, classical ekphrasis has its m odern analogues in Wordsworth’s ‘spots of tim e’, W oolf’s ‘m om ents of truth’ and in particular Joyce’s ‘epiphanies’. O f these, it is the epiphanic trope w hich has been most consistently discussed in recent years. In particular it was A shton N ichols who was most articulate in discussing the concept;

The notion th at a powerfully felt, m om entary experience can be transform ed by the m ind into a significant image plays a central role in Rom antic theories of poetic meaning. The new literary epiphany reverses traditional ideas about inspiration by providing a poetic technique in which meaning emerges only after the interpretation of the revelatory moment.^

A lthough he is prim arily dealing w ith ‘R om antic theories of poetic m eaning’ there are no obstacles to the application of this concept to the novel itself, as Proust, Joyce and Faullm er have shown. T he nature of an ekphrasis, as outlined in chapter one, exam ined enargeia w ithin a verbally descriptive context, it was the enargeia w hich m ade ‘vivid’ the

description, thus raising sem antic awareness through the vivid description in th e m in d ’s eye, m uch like th e ‘em ergent m eaning’ in

A shton’s definition of th e ‘revelatory m om ent’ above. W harton’s delineation of Lily Bart’s journey through th e m any ‘circles’ of N ew York society is th e device by w hich the em ergent m eaning from this

particular novel surfaces, and also the device w hich drives the three novels forward.

Ashton Nichols, The Poetics of Epipliaiiy: Ninetccnth-Ccntuiy Origins of the Modem Literary Moment. (Tuscaloosa; The University of Alabama Press, 1987), xi

&IP104 ‘Bcyoud!’: The Bart Milieu

N ORDER TO UNDERSTAND THE NATURE of th e ‘B art M ilieu’ of this Ichapter’s title, we must first understand th a t Lily Bart has no milieu. H er m ilieu is, in actuality, ‘beyond’ w hatever m ilieu the reader is located in w hilst reading the novel. A t no tim e is Lily Bart firmly established w ithin a setting th a t she can call her own. This is the predicam ent w hich lies at the heart of The House of Mirth, and it is the source of the narrative drive of the novel. In The House of Mirth — set around a quarter of a century later th an The Age of Innocence in fin-de-siècle N ew York— Wharton writes of th e transience and fragility of w ealth and beauty. Lily Bart’s journeys w ithin N ew York C ity serve to focus the reader’s m ind upon her place as a beautiful ‘o rn am en t’ w ithin this society, a ‘highly specialized p ro d u ct’ w hich w ould be as ‘helpless out of its narrow range as the sea-anem one torn from the rock.’{HM, 235) Lily Bart’s narrow range is just th at, and her progress through th e novel is defined by the narrow ing of that range through a series of decisions and circum stances th a t move her through a succession of m ilieus w hich are n o t her own.

Lily B art self-consciously strives to find her ow n place in The House of Mirth. She desires to be at the centre of society, w ithin the rarefied atm osphere of a citadel she can call her own. Yet through

W harton’s use of th e topographical site we come to understand th at Lily is never established at the centre of her desired environm ent, b u t is

always on the threshold of each environm ent, at th e edges of the ‘carefully differentiated stra ta ’ referred to by D iana Trilling.® It is C arolyn H eilbrun’s understanding of this threshold position or

Diana Trilling, ‘The House o f M irth Revisited.’ Iti: h-ving Howe, ed. Edith Wharton: A Collection of Critical Essays. (Englewood Cliffs NJ; Prentice-Hall, 1962), 106

*tpl05 'Beyond!The Bart Milieu

‘lim en’, w hich establishes a clearer understanding of how the topographical sites in the novel function as a series of ekphrases which will allow us to identify w ith Lily Bart’s singular journey;

The word ‘lim en’ means ‘threshold,’ and to be in a state of liminality is to be poised upon uncertain ground, to be leaving one condition or country or self and entering upon another. But the m ost salient sign of liminality is its unsteadiness, its lack of clarity about exactly where one belongs and what one should be doing, or wants to be doing.^

This statem ent on lim inality, particularly as it pertains to the position of w om en in society, precisely defines Lily Bart’s precarious existence in relation to N ew York society, and it is her ‘unsteadiness’ and her ‘lack of clarity’ w hich m irrors the ‘unsteadiness’ of N ew York society

as its cordon sanitaire is breached by the insurgent nouveaux riches. A t the age of tw enty-nine, and w ith no inherited fortune from her parents, Lily will be consistently ‘unsteady’ un til she marries or inherits from som eone else w ithin her family. It is also obvious at an

early stage in th e novel, in her dealings w ith prospective husband Percy Gryce, th a t she has clarity of purpose concerning her future, b u t

is n o t willing to take th e necessary steps to realise this purpose. Lily Bart’s journey is one w hich maps onto a fluctuating lim inal position. Lily never stays on the threshold of one particular m ilieu in the novel, b u t moves through increasingly socially isolated milieus.

As a woman w ithout any strong familial or financial roots in the

w orld in general, and in N ew York C ity in particular, Lily Bart has nothing to anchor her to any single location. This lack of physical

m ooring feeds into her lack of m ental m ooring, particularly in term s of

decision-malcing. She is a beautiful Idte blow ing in th e wind, who keeps herself just out of reach of those w ho can bring her under

control. W here location was an intrinsic elem ent in th e understanding

Jpc=106 ‘Beyond!': The Bent Milieu of the delicate m echanics of old N ew York society in The Age of Innocence, the lack of these firm locations in The House of Mirth calls upon an analysis based upon the incom patibility of Lily B art w ith the spatial milieus w hich she passes through as th e novel progresses. Wharton, through her w ork on interior and landscape design, believed in a harmony betw een inhabitant, dom icile, and landscape. In reading Wharton's N ew York novels in particular, a cipher is apparent w hich enables us to understand the m echanics of her texts. In this

particular context th e reader perceives a series of discrete details which have a broader and m ore complex m eaning once th ey have been deciphered using a key. T he key, in looldng at W harton’s N ew York novels, is her own keen aesthetic sense coupled w ith her understanding of harmony betw een inm ate, building and landscape. It

should also be noted th a t cipher is another term for ‘hieroglyph’: an

image standing for words, or a sign having some hidden m eaning. T he ekphrases involved in the m ajor N ew York novels covered in this thesis are th e strongest in all W harton’s fiction. H er innate

understanding of th e intricacies of the social m achine th a t is N ew

York society, in the periods covered by the three novels (1870s - 1910s), is at its strongest here as this was th e period that Wharton

herself was a part of that society. The F m it of the Tree (1907) and Ethan Frome (1911) both have distinct naturalistic tendencies concerning environm ent and th e relationship to characterisation, yet they lack the

sophistication and comm ent im plicit w ithin th e N ew York ekphrases, a sophistication w hich is lacldng as W harton did n o t have th e innate

'' Carolyn G. Heilbrnn. Women’s Lives: The View From the Threshold. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 3

See The Decoration of Homes (1 8 9 7 ) [tvith O gden C odinan, Jr.]; Italian Villas and their Cardens (1904) and; Italian Backgrounds (1 9 0 5 ).

JWP107 'Beyond!': The B art Milieu

Imowledge of these areas as she did the N ew York of this particular period. In Lily Bart, we have a peripatetic protagonist, and as such, we do n o t have firm contexts w hich m ight enable us to ekphrastically decode, fram e and read th e character as was the case in The Age of Innocence. This, however, is exactly the point. Lily Bart lacks a room of her own, as it were, and it is her incom patibility w ith the environm ents she passes through w hich is th e central focus of this chapter.

lthough the novel moves through several geographies — ABellomont, Monte Carlo, Hudson Valley, Long Island and Tuxedo — it is N ew York C ity w hich plays a pivotal role in creating a m ore incisive understanding of The House of Mirth. Lily Bart’s journey begins at the centre of the city (the centre here being G rand Central Station) and the centre of society, and through centrifugal social forces she is catapulted through a succession of m ilieus until she reaches th e ‘outside’ edge of her city in her final days at th e boarding­

house. Although we are aware of the surface m echanics of Lily’s m ovem ent through different social environm ents, it is an ekphrastic

understanding of th e milieus Lily inhabits through th e novel which offer an enlightened understanding of Lily Bart’s character and flaws,

as well as that of the city and society itself.

In term s of ekphrasis. N ew York C ity functions in a sim ilar way in The House of Mirth to th a t in The Age of Innocence. A particular

topographical site or environm ent is exam ined in term s of its location

w ithin N ew York; its hierarchical position w ithin the city; its exterior

JHP108 ‘Beyotid!’: The Bart Milieu architecture and its interior architecture. By accessing our ‘store-house of images derived from sensory perception and inform ed by com m on culture’^^ we are able to image Lily B art’s environm ents and decode the novel in a m ore efficient and insightful manner. T hrough a series of these analyses we will see how Wharton has used th e overarching ekphrasis of N ew York C ity (and all that the city represents) to increase th e sem antic com plexity of the novel.

W ith The House of Mirth, we do n o t have a text w hich has the obvious topographical sites th a t The Age of Innocence has. The former, on first inspection, can undoubtedly be seen to be m uch closer to the contem porary understanding of ekphrasis in its analysis of Lily Bart herself, as a commodified object of beauty and value. The novel’s original worldng title of ‘A M o m en t’s O rn am en t’ points toward this as does th e pivotal tableaux vivants scene in chapter XII of th e first book of The House of Mirth. These elem ents are undoubtedly deeply connected to th e visual arts'^, yet they are n o t th e prim ary m aterial w hich I will be looldng at. These elem ents have th eir own im portance w ithin the text, and th e deciphering of these particular ‘im ages’ — from an ekphrastic p oint of view — is rather straightforward. In this analysis of The House of Miith I will be concentrating on the city itself w ithin the text. This study will not focus on the firm relative hierarchies th a t were involved in the analysis of The Age of Innocence, b u t will investigate Lily Bart’s fluid transitions through a series of social environm ents w ithin the text. Lily’s passage through society is indicated through the reading of each topographical site. As

Ruth Webb. ‘Ekphrasis ancient and modern; the invention of a genre.’ W ord & Image, ! 5.1 (Jamiary-March 1999): 13

For an excellent analysis of Lily Bart’s own personal aesthetic construction and value sec Reginald Abbott. '"A Moment’s Ornament”: Wharton’s Lily Bart and Art Nouveau.’ Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature, 24.2 (1991): 73-91

4tPl09 "Beyond!': The B art Milica well as each reading having intrinsic literary w orth in term s of com m ent on society and characterization, the overview of Lily B art’s m ovem ent through a whole series of settings will serve to emblemize her social decent and parallel geographical peripheralisation. Like The Age of Innocence in th e previous chapter and The Custom of the Country in the next chapter, N ew York C ity has a pre-em inent position w ithin the m echanics of the text. T he city’s commercial and cultural pre-em inence is intrinsically linked to N ew Y ork society and its relationship to the com m odity, and commoditisation is of central im portance in this text.'® Success in The House of Mirth is seen in the attain m en t of w ealth and position (and th e appropriate hom e which goes along w ith such w ealth), y et the power of w ealth, as Robert Gates writes, ‘crushes and subverts the finer instincts ... Justice, honour, courage, love — all are sacrificed in the search for w ealth and a false security against poverty and loneliness.’''* Tim e has m oved on, as has N ew York society, and as Catherine M ingott in The Age of Innocence had hinted, the old order them selves w ould be superseded by a new breed of parvenus w hose ‘sudden possession of m oney has come w ithout inherited obligations’.'® In the words of Maria Melvill, a girl who had attem p ted to establish herself w ithin N ew York society alm ost a century before The House of Mirth was w ritten: ‘If you have n o t w ealth, you must have patience to p u t up w ith every slight, &

" Wayne W, Westbrook’s article ‘Lily-Bartering on the New York Social Exchange in The House of Mirth.' Ball State Univcr.siy Forum, 20 {1979); 59-64, offers a succinct analysis of the social coininodification of Lily Bart.

Robert A. Gates, The New York Vision: luterpretations of New York City in the American Novel. (Lanhain, MD; University Press of America, 1987), 38

Letter from Edith Wharton to Dr. Morgan Dix, December 5"‘, 1905. In: Edith Wharton. The Letters of Edith Wharton, edited by R.W.B. Lewis and Nancy Lewis. (London; Simon &. Schuster, 1988), 99

4^1 10 ’Btyoitel!’: The Bart Milieu m any m ortifications.’*>16 Lily Bart has not the w ealth, and ultim ately she does n o t have the patience either.

iHE o p e n i n g s e n t e n c e s o f TJie House of Mirth, like those in The TAge of Innocence, establish bo th the ekphrastic and chronotopic elem ents in this novel: ‘Selden paused in surprise. In th e afternoon rush of th e G rand C entral S tation his eyes had been refreshed by the sight of M iss Lily Bart.’(HM, 5) Spatially, the scene is defined by the reference to G rand C entral Station, the

gate-way of the city [which] marks the beginning and end of many things. ... a rendezvous for lovers and the means of flight for the faithless. [W jhere the city goes out into the fields to play, and the country comes to the town to work. ' ^

In term s of tem porality, Lawrence Selden has ‘paused ’ at th e sight of th e aesthetically exquisite Lily Bart, and is him self static in the ‘ru sh ’ of the station — connecting us to Murray ICrieger’s idea of the ekphrastic paradox of ‘still m ovem ent’.'® W harton also writes th a t Lily m ay well be perceived as being ‘in the act of transition’(HM, 5) in this opening passage. This understanding of Lily Bart’s appearance at this particular location in a state of tran sitio n establishes the lim inality of th e character in term s of physical environm ent, but also hints at her em otional positioning

on th e lim en. She is w ithout a firm sense of her ow n place, and the opening paragraphs of The House of Mirth point forward to Lily B art’s

From a letter from Maria Melvill to Peter Gansevoort ‘December Saturday morn.’ 1818. As quoted in Eric Hom berger. Mrs. Astor's Neiv York: Money and Social Power in the Gilded Age. (New Haven London; Yale University Press, 2 0 0 2 ). 55

" Jesse Lynch Williams. ‘The Gates of the City.’ Ccntuty Magazine, 74.4 (August 1907): 488

4^1 1 1 'Beyond!': The B art Milieu continual m ovem ent through points of transition. This is as static as

Lily gets at the centre of the novel, w hich begins at th e centre of the city itself. T his idea of transition w hich follows Lily Bart throughout the text is established by the firm spatial coordinates at th e opening of the novel. W harton’s opening scene is of course not by chance, b u t by design. H er dichotom ous description (m ovem ent/stasis — functional/accessory — colour/monochrom e) of the scene at G rand

C entral S tation is intrinsically ekphrastic in that through her vivid description, a secondary narrative is activated by way of the enargeia generated through an ekphrasis of the scene. As has previously been stated, Lily B art is a w om an w ithout financial or architectural substance, and is a character of great fluidity. Yet W h arto n cleverly opens th e novel in G rand C entral S tation at a tim e w hen the statio n ’s own architectural quality was in a state of fluidity, as it was undergoing a process of architectural transition from the old G rand

C entral S tation to the G rand C entral S tation we Itnow today. This fact ideally locates Lily Bart both tem porally and spatially at the beginning of The House of Mirth.

Structurally, W harton chooses G rand C entral S tation as the starting p o in t of th e novel for several reasons. First, that Grand

C entral S tation is the physical locus of the city in term s of topography and functionality, and also that Lily’s journey from th e centre to the

periphery is best illustrated by initially placing her at the station, and

th en illustrating her centrifugally driven passage tow ard th e periphery of the city and society.

See pages 27-34 of this thesis for a more thorough investigation into Krieger’s ‘still moment’ as it pertains to ekphrasis.

4flPlI2 'Beyond!': The B art Milieu

Also, in term s of ekphrastic discourse, G rand C entral S tatio n ’s position at the centre of the city is im portant in th a t it is a point of com parative stasis at the centre of N ew York City. T his fact fulfils the prim ary prerequisite of description w ithin the novel; of having any point of description in a state of tem poral stasis, thus we have the narrative pause w hich allows for the spatial developm ent of any descriptive elem ent of a text.

G rand C entral S tation also plays into our understanding of spatial hierarchies of th e city; it is high up the island, central, and just to the right of N ew York’s central spine. Fifth A venue, therefore it holds a pre-em inent position w ithin the topography of th e city itself. G rand C entral S tation is also a structure w hich acts as ‘a physical separation betw een th e dense worldng-class ten em en t developm ents to its east and the genteel refinem ents of Fifth and M adison to the W e st’.'** Again, this establishes very early on the lim inality of Lily Bart as she struggles to rem ain at th e centre of N ew York society. Wharton has written of Lily’s being in th e ‘act of transitio n ’ and the very location of this scene delineates this position and supports it. T he station itself also possesses som e representative m eaning in our initial understanding of Lily B art in the novel. G rand

C entral S tation, in its original guise as G rand C entral D epot, then

G rand C entral Term inal, was intended to be an awe-inspiring structure celebrating the trium ph of Cornelius V anderbilt in building his railroad em pire. It was to be the m etaphorical jewel in his crown. The structure was m odelled after the Louvre, w ith an exterior of

Elliot Willcnsky. 'Grand Central: Shaper of a City,’ In: Deborah Nevins, ed. Grand Central Terminal: City within the C ity, with a foreword by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. {New York: Municipal Art Society of New York, 1982), 8 5 -8 6

*^113 'Beyond!’: The Bart Milieu grandeur and beauty whose ‘Im périal Façade >20 in no way conveyed the plain interior aspect of th e structure, and w hich by th e tu rn of the century ‘no longer conveyed [this] sense of grandeur’^'. This particular view of G rand C entral S tation directly maps onto Lily Bart’s character in this novel; a woman who is prim arily engaged w ith her external beauty (as most observers of M iss Bart art). N onetheless, the tacit im plication of the question: ‘had she indeed reached the nine-and- tw entieth birthday w ith w hich her rivals credited her?’(HM , 6) is th a t she m ay well be reaching the last stages of her ow n shelf-life (as G rand C entral S tation was at this tim e), and her im perial and beautiful exterior m ay well mask an em pty cavernous interior w hich has ‘traffic’ yet no room to call one’s own. As has been stated, the station itself also has an im p o rtan t sem antic value w ithin the text in th a t it was also in a state of transition. O nly in 1898 was th e revam ped G rand C entral Term inal renam ed G rand C entral Station. A t the tim e of com position and publication of The House of Mirth, plans were already afoot to build the G rand C entral S tation we latow now, which has so firmly held onto its iconic status throughout the tw en tieth and into the tw enty-first century.

T he mise-en-scene w hich opens the novel finds Lily Bart and Lawrence Selden static at the central point of th e city, and ironically in a place of pure functionality — Grand C entral Station. The reader is draw n in by th e fact that the protagonists are static as the world rushes around them . W e are draw n to this scene w here ‘Selden paused’ w hilst seeing th a t Lily Bart ‘stood apart from the crow d’. (HM , 5) Like an observer of a fine piece of art in a m useum , Selden’s

Attributed to Lewis Mumford in Kurt C. Schlichting. Grand Central Tcnninal: Railroads, Engineering, and Architecture in New York City. (Baltimore; The Johns Hopldns University Press, 20 0 1 ), 33

Schiiditing. Grand Central Tenninal, 53

4#1 14 'Btyoud!'; The Bart Milieu stasis is one of necessity in his adm iration for th e object he beholds, and he is n o t alone in being affected by the pow er of beauty, as 'M iss Bart was a figure to arrest even the suburban traveller rushing to his last tra in.’(HM, 5) Wharton im m ediately establishes Lily’s aesthetic radiance in th e eyes of Selden and those of th e reader by describing her in th e m ost obvious artistic language, full of form and colour, through Lawrence Selden’s own painterly consciousness: Lily B art’s

‘vivid h ead’ had a ‘purity of tin t’, her ‘lashes were set in her sm ooth w hite lids, and ... th e purplish shade beneath th em m elted into the pure pallour of th e cheek’ w ith her ‘hand, polished as a b it of old ivory’.

As I have m entioned previously, Lily Bart has no environm ent of her ow n to delineate and lim it her actions and behaviour.

Therefore, she is able to cross thresholds, even thresholds w hich w ould norm ally be considered inappropriate for a woman of her standing to cross, like that of Lawrence Selden’s apartm ent at The Benedick — a hatchelor apartm ent building — w here Lily com m its her first m ajor social transgression of the novel. The Benedick, possibly nam ed after Shakespeare’s m ost famous bachelor, is an ap artm en t w hich seems to have been constructed for th e dom icile of professional single men.

Sim on Rosedale owns the building, as Lily Bart soon finds out after leaving Selden at th e end of chapter one, and it is he w ho m entions the nam e of th e building as she leaves:

“The Benedick?” She looked gently puzzled. “Is th at the name of this building?” “Yes, that’s the name: I believe it’s an old word for bachelor, isn’t it? I happen to own the building — that’s the way 1 know.” (HM, 15)

* e l l 5 ‘BLyond!’: The Bart Milieu

Selden is com fortable and able to move w ithin this building for obvious reasons, and Lily Bart is clearly not, once again for reasons linked to social im propriety. This frictional m om ent of cohesion is indicative of the w hole com plex relationship betw een Lily and Selden — they are physically attracted to each other y et they aren’t financially compatible. Lily requires a m ilieu w hich m atches her expensive exterior, and Selden cannot provide th e financial w herew ithal to accommodate Lily. As Lily says herself w ith a brutal honesty w hich she seems to be at ease w ith in Selden’s company; T am horribly poor — and very expensive. I m ust have a great deal of m oney.’(H M , 10)

Lily B art herself, unlike Ellen O lenska and Catherine M ingott in The Age of Innocence, and Ralph Marvell in The Custom of the Country, has no sym bolic architecture w hich can define her position in society. A rchitecture defines not only social position, but also character in

W h a rto n ’s novels to a great degree. It defines the action and /^action of characters as well. W here Sim on Rosedale gravitates tow ard a m ansion w hich firm ly establishes his position in society due to his w ealth, his aspirational goals, and his particular position upon the hierarchical m ap w hich even at the beginning of the tw entieth-century still underpins much of N ew York society, Lily Bart has no such structure to her life. Yet in m any respects we have th e ideal synergistic partnership here, in w hich Rosedale’s status would be enhanced by the acquisition of Lily Bart, and Lily’s own position w ithin th e centre of society w ould be cem ented by her appropriation of a husband and a m ilieu fit for a beauty such as hers. H er rejection of such a match later in th e novel will push her further tow ard the periphery of society. For

jktPl 16 ‘Beyond!’: The Bent Milieu m uch of the novel Lily is offered a setting, yet rejects it as being inappropriate for her persona.

T h e S e l d e n M i l i e u

ily B a r t ’s f ir s t t e n t a t iv e m o v e a w a y from th e centre of city Loccurs quite innocently w hen she asks Selden to take her som ewhere ‘for a breath of air’(HM , 6) after th ey m eet at the station

in the opening chapter of th e novel. W ith th e inevitability which follows any movem ent from the centre, in this case N ew York C ity ’s

centre at G rand C entral Station, Lily Bart moves tow ard the periphery as she and Selden turn ‘northward’ on ‘Madison A venue’(HM , 7). It is during this particular stroll that Lily Bart passes through the ‘Selden m ilieu’ for the first time, a setting w hich — like m ost of th e others in The House of Mirth — not only defines the eponym ous inhabitant, but

will also highlight the fact th a t Lily Bart has no place of her own in this sense, is n o t suited to the Selden m ilieu as it stands, and who

actively sees th e success of her future as being connected directly to

her appropriation of her own environm ent.

In analysing th e character of Lawrence Selden this early in the

novel we m ust look only at his abode — The Benedick — to understand him . Again, Wharton uses the harmony of in h ab itan t, architecture and landscape to establish a character. The description of not only the

location of th e building, its nam e, its architectural character and the design and decoration of the interior of Selden’s ap artm en t all serve to

induce an ekphrasis w here the description itself brings the surface

$^TI7 'Beyond!’: Tiw Bart Milieu narrative to a seem ing stasis. A subterranean narrative, however, is generated w hich can be seen as prescient by th e careful reader; prescient in th a t the building's nam e points to Selden’s status as a confirm ed bachelor and prescient in th e sense th a t his financial strength perceived through the interior detail of th e apartm ent is seen as being incom patible w ith Lily B art’s expensive needs.

The Benedick itself is an im aginary building in th e sense th a t it did n o t exist in this p art of town at this tim e. Yet it w ould be of no surprise to us that Wharton did Imow of the existence of an apartm ent block called The Benedick at 80 W ashington Square East at the tim e of com position of The House of Mirth. R obert Stern writes of this particular block betw een W est Fourth S treet and W ashington

Place: a six-story apartm ent house intended for bachelors, ... [it] contained thirty-three apartm ents on the first five floors w ith four artists studios on the sixth’ built from ‘Philadelphia red brick and N ova Scotia stone facadeThis m atches up quite well w ith Selden’s

Benedick w ith its ‘new brick and lim estone house-fronts’(HM, 7), yet it is undoubtedly m ore im portant to understand that these particular types of structures were as th e New York Times w rote, of a ‘new order of dom estic architecture’ w hich had ‘grown out of th e dem ands of m odern society.Selden’s own cultural credentials would make him ideally suited to such an apartm ent block. H e is a bachelor, he is an aesthete, and he is n o t endow ed w ith noticeable w ealth.

Selden’s apartm ent is well located in term s of its relative position to Fifth Avenue, the m ajor artery of N ew York City, lying on

Robert Stern, Thomas Mellins &. David Fishman. New York 1880: Architecture and Urbanism in the Gilded Ace. (N ew York: The Monacelli Press, 1999), 542

Times. ‘A Home for Bachelors.’ (June 29, 1879); 5, Ur. Robert Stern, Thomas Mellins & David Fishm an. Netv York 1880: Architecture and Vrbanism in the Gilded Age. (New York: The Monacelli Press, 1999),

a#dl8 'Beyond!': The B art MUieii

50^^' S treet betw een Fifth and M adison Avenues. Furtherm ore the ap artm ent’s own position ‘on the top floor’(HM, 7) further cem ents its pre-eminent position w ithin th e city’s spatial hierarchies, and serves to solidify Lawrence Selden’s own m ilieu and his own character w ithin the novel as a man who is established and accepted w ithin New

York society. Selden invites Lily up for tea w hilst she waits for th e next train to take her to Bellom ont:

He paused a moment. “Come up and see,” he suggested. I can give you a cup of tea in no time — and you won’t m eet any bores.” H er colour deepened — she still had the art of blushing at the right time — but he took the suggestion as lightly as it was made. “W hy not? It’s too tem p tin g — I’ll take the risk,” she declared. “Oh, I’m not dangerous,” he said in the same key. (HM, 7)

Lily understands that there is an elem ent of ‘risk’ in her going into the building, and Selden seems to have an understanding of this too w ith his placatory comm ent ‘I’m not dangerous.’ This I believe is true,

Selden is not dangerous, but the apartm ent block is and will be even m ore so w hen Lily m eets Sim on Rosedale on leaving. Lily is a valued com m odity in this society at this m om ent, and th e choice she makes here devalues her. T he decision she m akes and its seeming

‘spo n tan eity ’(H M , 7) is indicative of her peripatetic nature in this novel. Lily Bart has nowhere of her own, now here to anchor her and dictate the behaviour required by her place in society w hich she would hold as delineated by her own environm ent. Lily Bart’s physical peripateticism parallels her m ental peripateticism , hence this risky decision of going into a building so singularly unsuited to her — The

Benedick — and hence th e decisions she makes throughout th e novel.

Lily Bart’s rootlessness in N ew York C ity is one of the reasons th a t she m akes th e decision to cross Lawrence Selden’s threshold.

# e l l 9 ‘Beyond!’: The Bart Milieu

B akhtin’s succinct view of the chronotope of th e threshold as a ‘motif of encounter [...] of crisis and bim k in a life’ w ith a strong m etaphorical im plication connected w ith th e ‘decision that changes a life'^'^ is an excellent exegesis of w hat the ‘th resh o ld ’ m eans in the fiction of Wharton. Wharton seems to consciously delineate particular areas w ithin her novels w ith the m otif of threshold. In The Age of Innocence this is obvious in chapter IX w hen N ew land A rcher visits Ellen O lenska for th e first time at her hom e on W est T w enty-third

Street: ‘he stood on Madam e O lenska’s th reshold’. Much like Lily B art’s decision to enter The Benedick, A rcher’s decision to enter Ellen O lenska’s is one w here risk is recognised yet ignored. A rcher has the protection of fam ily and position in a society w here those factors are significant: Lily has no real family, no real position and therefore no protection.

Lily Bart’s tim e in Selden’s apartm ent begins w ith her crossing the threshold^^ into Selden’s bachelor apartm ent. T he décor itself establishes tw o im p ortant factors about Lawrence Selden. T he first is th a t he is undoubtedly a bachelor, and one w ho has a strong aesthetic sense in his taste in cultural artefacts (‘old prints’, ‘walls of books’, and ‘faded T urkey rug’(HM,8)) throughout his apartm ent, and secondly that he is not a man of great w ealth, w ith a part-tim e servant, ‘faded’ rug, ‘shabby leather chairs’, ‘shabby’ coat, and ‘shabby walls’(HM, 8,11,12) — the reiterative adjective ‘shabby’ does not miss its m ark w ith the reader. This entire environm ent works on two levels.

It first establishes the fact th a t Lily is not a part o f it and has no environm ent of her own, and it also establishes th a t Lawrence Selden

Bakhtin. 'Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the N o v e l’, 24 8

HM: 8, 12.

*tpl20 'Beyond!': The B art Milieu and Lily Bart, although there exists a mutual attraction on many levels, are ultim ately n o t able to coexist in this environm ent, as she is a precious and delicate w ork of art, and he is a m iddle-class bachelor who has tastes above his means. T he environm ent w ithin w hich Selden exists is one which obviously delineates m any aspects of his own character, yet it also acts as a harsh contrast to th e fem inine delicacy of Lily Bart;

As he watched her hand, polished as a bit of old ivory, with its slender pink nails, and the sapphire bracelet slipping over her wrist

she was amazingly pretty

he noted, with a purely impersonal enjoym ent, how evenly the black lashes were set in her sm ooth white lids, and how the purplish shade beneath them melted into the pure pallour of the cheek. (HM, 8-10)

T hroughout this opening chapter Lily is viewed through the male gaze of Lawrence Selden and is viewed purely in term s of physical beauty.

As an aesthete, it is no surprise th a t Selden adm ires and desires her, and the setting serves to tell us of Lily’s beauty and its untouchable nature w here Lawrence Selden is concerned; his particular m ilieu is n o t grand enough to accommodate such an artefact except on a very tem porary basis. Lily’s own comm ent that ‘It seems so odd to want to pay a lot for an ugly badly-printed book that one is never going to read r(HM, 11) implies th a t one m ay as well purchase the beautifully printed-book that no-one is going to read. H ere, Lily B art sees herself as Percy G ryce’s next piece of expensive A m ericana to be purchased.

In a novel w hich is about the rootlessness of a beautiful w om an in N ew York C ity and its upper class society, we have ekphrases at w ork in the initial delineation of Lily Bart and her transitional status in her appearance a t G rand C entral Station. Lawrence Selden’s apartm ent also establishes the m ost salient characteristics of the two

* el2 1 ‘Btyoiid!’: The Bart Milieu m ost im p ortant protagonists in The House of Mirth. Selden is described, through his ow n environm ent, as a man who adm ires Lily but cannot afford her, and Lily is defined as an aesthetic artefact who has great worth on the open m arket, a m arket peopled only by w ealthy male vendees. T he w om en w ho are com petition to Lily in m any respects

(‘m y best friends — well, they use me or abuse me; but they don’t care a straw what happens to m e’(H M ,10)) will play a part in devaluing Lily w ithin th e m arket and thus affect her chances of finding a place of her own. In this chapter, it becom es clear th a t Lily Bart consciously understands her value and place w ithin N ew Y ork society. Although she understands her own value in the society her goal is never as obviously vulgar as gaining a particular financial sum through m arriage, but to appropriate a space w hich she can call her own. She sees her own fulfilm ent lying in establishing her own environm ent: ‘If

I could only do over m y aunt’s draw ing-room I know I should be a b etter w oman.’(HM, 8) She also proceeds to tell Selden of one of the reasons why she never m arried a previous suitor, D illw orth:

“[D illw orth’s mother] was afraid I should have all the family jewels reset. And she wanted me to promise that I wouldn’t do over the drawing-room. ” “The very thing you were marrying for!” “Exactly!” {HM, 10)

O nce again, Lily acknowledges the im portance of acquiring a place for oneself, and it is D illworth’s moth er’s act of blocldng this acquisition w hich lies at the centre of failure of this particular courtship. Lily is, in her very own words, ‘horribly poor — and very expensive’, and she understands that there is really but one w ay to address this issue: m arriage.

*P122 ‘Beyond!': The Bart Milieu

T he single m ajor point of contention w hich arises through the reading of The House of Mirth is th a t of Lily B art’s own culpability in her downfall. Early in th e novel it is explained th a t Lily ‘was so evidently the victim of the civilization w hich had produced her, th a t the links of her bracelet seem ed like m anacles chaining her to her fate.’(HM, 8) H ere, it seems th a t Lily has no pow er to control her future, and that her downfall is fated. A t the end of th e novel Lily herself tends to support this perception w hen she says

I was just a screw or a cog in the great machine called life, and when 1 dropped out of it I found I was of no use anywhere else. What can one do when one finds that one fits into one hole? O ne m ust get back to it or be throw n out into the rubbish heap’(/-/M, 240)

This particular attitu d e of being dislocated from the ‘one hole’ she can function and flourish in is one w hich is supported throughout the novel by her inability to ‘fit’ elsewhere. T hroughout all the social strata Lily encounters in The House of Mirth, she struggles to find her place because she has none. Constantly in fltix, Lily is unable to exist in any environm ent outside th e one environm ent w here she w ould ‘fit’ one she has yet to encounter w hen the novel opens, and one w hich seems to exist only w ithin th e ether of her idealised inner world. Lily Bart, through her own character and circum stance, is ultim ately ‘beyond’ the environm ents she attem pts to inhabit.

Yet Lily does see entering The Benedick as a ‘risk’ and makes a decision all on her own to enter the building. She adm its to Selden tow ard the end of the novel that ‘Once — twice — you gave m e the chance to escape from m y life, and I refused it: refused it because I was a coward.’ Maybe it is the case th a t this is the price exacted by society on a woman who carries out, as Richard Poirier has w ritten,

*P123 'Beyond!’: The Bart Milieu

‘tiny acts of independence.’^^ Free will, to some degree, does n o t seem to be a factor in Lily’s actions; she ‘fits into one hole’ only. O n finally parting from Lawrence Selden’s ap artm en t for the final tim e, Lily can but leave th e m em ory of her previous self w ith Selden. This m ay be Lily’s own acloiowledgem ent th a t Selden was in the past a viable partner w ho would have m ade her happy. Now, however, it is too late. She can only leave a trace of her personality w ith Selden:

There is some one I m ust say goodbye to. Oh, not jou — we are sure to see each other again — bu t the Lily Bart you knew. I have kept her with me all this time, but now we are going to part, and I have brought her back to you — I am going to leave her here. W hen I go out presently she will not go with me. I shall like to think th at she has stayed with you — and she’ll be no trouble, she’ll take up no room. (HM, 240)

This is a reiteration of an earlier understanding of th e dual nature at w ork w ithin Lily w hen she is walking w ith Selden at Bellom ont:

There were in her at the m om ent two beings, one drawing deep breaths of freedom and exhilaration, the other gasping for air in a little black prison-house of fears.(HM, 52)

There are tw o Lilys at work here: one w hich is governed by th e society w hich she was born into and its ‘black prison-house of fears’, and the other a place of independence and freedom w here her own spontaneous thoughts and em otions can exist. These spontaneous thoughts and em otions are at their strongest upon th e rural landscape w ith Selden, a place w here bo th are n o t im pinged by concepts of m ilieu and terrain and ownership. W e cannot fail to understand th at

Selden was ‘as much as Lily, the victim of his environm ent’(HM, 120) yet he had his place w ithin th e environm ent, a place of safety.

Importantly, Lily’s feelings of independence and happiness occur only w hen she is extracted from N ew York C ity and its society, a fact which

Richard Poirier. A World Ehenhere: The Place of Style in American Literature. (London: Ciialto and Windus, 1967), 222

a#T24 ‘Beyond!': The Bart Milien establishes the city itself as th e m eans of Lily’s eventual social suffocation.

T h e P e n i s t o n M i l i e u

AN Cohn succinctly explained the plot and structure of The J House of Mirth when she wrote: Lily Bart represents polish and respectability attem pting to achieve financial security. As Lily falls from the sanctity of society to loss of reputation and finally financial destitution, Mrs. Wharton provides us w ith a series of houses, rooms, furnishings, and ornam ents th at emblemize this decent.^^

C rand C entral S tation is the first of a series of architectures which

W h arto n uses to ‘em blem ize’ Lily’s descent. Lily Bart’s tim e w ithin the Selden m ilieu opens up our understanding of her rootlessness in term s of a hom e, and in term s of her em otional physiology. In analysing Julia P eniston’s m ilieu, we prim arily engage w ith it through an ekphrastic discourse w hich establishes th e necessary conditions to create a subterranean narrative to aid our understanding of Lily Bart. Ironic as it m ay seem, there is no direct description of any ‘real’

B artian setting throughout the text — as of course she has none — yet through th e ekphrastic descriptions of the environm ents she passes through, we are able to discern through contrasts, perception, and the m etadiegesis w ithin ekphrastic description, Lily’s idealised milieu, as well as the increasingly p o ten t message to the reader, th a t she will never have her own place.

Jan Cohn. ‘The Houses of Fiction: Domestic Arciiitecture in Howeiis and Edith Wiiarton.’ Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 15.3 (Faii 1973): 545

*tPl25 'Bcyoud!’: The Bart Milieu

B uilding upon Cohn’s understanding of th e basic elem ents of

The House of Mirth, Thom as Bender, in his article ‘T he M odern City as Text and C o n tex t’ provides a m ore focussed approach to this text by w riting that ‘[cjities ... are on-going contests over th e possession and appropriation of terrainsLily B art is constantly attem pting to appropriate her ow n ‘terrain ’, and she consistently fails in her ‘on­ going contests’ for a terrain of her own as can be seen in her early attem p t to m arry D illworth, and also in her contest w ith Grace

Stepney over th e P eniston milieu. If there is any ‘terrain ’ or m ilieu w ithin The House of Mirth w hich comes close to becoming Lily B art’s, it is not one to be gained through matrim ony, but one w hich would be gained through inheritance. As Julia P eniston’s favoured niece — in th e early part of the novel — there is a consistent expectation that on the horizon lies in w ait th e Peniston m ansion and th e ‘four hundred thousand’(HM, 174) that go w ith it.

M rs. Julia P eniston is Lily’s aunt, and th e detailed description of her hom e in The House of Mirth is of vital im portance to our understanding of a setting w hich is th e polar opposite to th a t w hich Lily B art im agines to be her ideal. To begin w ith, th e m ansion’s location itself moves Lily another step further away from the centre, thus showing th a t the centrifugal forces of N ew York society are at work. T he setting also serves as a foreground to display Lily’s own inappropriateness in this house, in a sense foreshadow ing her fall from grace in M rs. P eniston’s eyes.

T he P eniston m ilieu is an environm ent w hich is constructed by

Wharton to decry a past, yet aclmowledge th a t it still prevails. It is

Thomas Bender. The Modern City as Text and Context: The Public Culture of New York.’ Rhnsta di Stiidi Auglo- Americaui (RSA), 6 (1990): 21

*el26 'Beyond!': The B art Milieu also constructed in order to articulate, to some degree, the naturalist expression of W harton’s literary technique of this tim e. W harton’s aim in looldng at Mrs. P eniston’s m ansion is not to provide us w ith any great insight into th e Peniston persona per se, but to provide a highly contrasting backdrop upon which Lily Bart can be placed, dissected and studied. It is once again through an ekphrastic engagem ent w ith th e text th a t the reader will be b etter able to understand Lily Bart’s peripheral positioning w ith in society. T he reader will also more clearly understand Lily’s struggle to appropriate her own terrain, and her battle against the consistent undercurrent of determ inistic ideology w hich underpins Wharton’s naturalist approach. As E dith Wharton so often does w ith many of her characters, we are introduced to them via their own specific surroundings. In this case, we are introduced to Lily Bart’s aunt w ith a rather unique description of the dom estic ablutions w hich precede th e opening of her Fifth Avenue hom e for — as she perceives it — the N ew York social season:

The first two weeks after her return represented to Mrs. Peniston the domestic equivalent of a religious retreat. She “w ent through” the linen and blankets in the precise spirit of the penitent exploring the inner folds of conscience; she sought for moths as the stricken soul seeks for lurldng infirmities. The topm ost shelf of every closet was made to yield up its secret, cellar and coal-bin were probed to their darkest depths and, as a final stage in the lustral rights, the entire house was swathed in penitential white and deluged w ith expiatory soapsuds. {HM, 78)

T he quotidian task of cleaning a house is likened m etaphorically to a religious experience or m ore exactly a religious cleansing of the soul, a fact w hich is supported by the use of formal religious diction throughout. H ere we have a passage w here a direct connection is being m ade by w ay of m etaphor, betw een the physical environm ent and the

*eT 27 'Beyond!’: The Bait Milieu moral character of th e inhabitant; the act of cleaning the house is seen as being parallel to the act of cleansing th e soul. T he quasi-religious experience of cleansing th e house is supported also by the description of Mrs. Peniston herself:

Mrs. Peniston was a small plump woman, w ith a colourless skin lined with trivial wrinldes. H er grey hair was arranged with precision, and her clothes looked excessively new and yet slightly old-fashioned. They were always black and tightly fitting, w ith an expensive glitter: she was the kind of woman who wore jet at brealcfast. Lily had never seen her when she was not cuirassed in shining black, w ith small tight boots, and an air of being packed and ready to start; yet she never started. {HM, 84)

This description, both funereal and m ilitaristic, holds that no colours except black and grey are associated w ith M rs. Peniston. M ost im portantly, the final com m ent th a t she had an ‘air of being packed and ready to start; yet she never started ’ holds w ithin it the im plication th a t she is dressed as if in m ourning yet seems to have nothing to mourn for, except possibly the passing of a different age.

This insightful line; ‘ready to start; yet she never started ’, also establishes the stasis required in an ekphrastic passage; som ething is ready to start but does not, hence there is no tem poral m ovem ent.

Through both opening descriptions of m ilieu and character, tem poral stasis is created, yet the descriptions them selves place th e m ilieu and character (for they are intrinsically linked) at the centre of a subterranean narrative w hich establishes the P eniston environm ent as one w hich exists in the past.

E dith W h arto n implies at th e outset th a t M rs. Peniston and her m ilieu are in some w ay isolated from fln-de-siècle N ew York society:

In Mrs. Peniston’s youth, fashion had returned to town in October; therefore on the tenth day of the m onth the blinds of her Fifth Avenue residence were drawn up, and the eyes of the Dying G ladiator in bronze who occupied the drawing-room ^window resumed their survey of th at deserted thoroughfare. {HM, 77)

*el28 'Bcyoiul!’: Tiw B art Milieu

M uch can be gleaned from this short extract, and th e sim ple statem ent th a t Julia P en isto n ’s house is located on ‘Fifth A venue’ furnishes her w ith a certain level of financial and social credibility. Yet the extract does contain a tem poral shift to Julia P eniston’s youth which in tu rn makes us consider the possibility th a t her adherence to N ew Y ork’s social tim etable is one w hich is o u t of date by several years. Julia P eniston’s own isolation from society seems to be parallel to that of the D ying G ladiator’s own isolation as he surveys the ‘deserted thoroughfare’ th a t is Fifth Avenue, a street w hich — if society was adhering to Mrs. P eniston’s social tim etable — w ould have been m ore active. Although no exact geographical coordinates are given, there is no doubt that the Peniston house is central in term s of its vantage point over th e comings and goings of N ew York society:

Fifth Avenue had become a nightly torrent of carriages surging upward to the fashionable quarters about the park, where illum inated windows and outspread awnings betokened the usual routine of hospitality. O ther tributary currents crossed the main stream, bearing their freight to the theatres, restaurants or opera; and Mrs. Peniston, from the secluded watchtow er of her upper window, could tell to a nicety just when the chronic volume of sound was increased by the sudden influx setting toward a Van Osburgh ball, or when the m ultiplication of wheels m eant merely th at the opera was over, or that there was a big supper at Sherry’s. (HM, 95)

Julia P eniston’s house is central in th a t it lies up o n the central

spine of N ew York C ity — Fifth Avenue — a fact w hich in itself indicates M rs. P eniston’s financial comfort and to some degree her social com fort. This extract further establishes th a t Lily’s aunt lives on Fifth A venue below C entral Park, and yet far enough up Fifth Avenue n o t to have been overtaken (yet) by th e com m ercial diaspora w hich by

th e end of the n ineteenth century had settled up to around Forty- second Street.

*ip 129 ‘Beyond!’: Tiw Ba? t Milieu

T here is little in th e w ay of specific indicators w ithin The House of M irth w hich p oint to an exact topographical site of the Peniston m ansion, yet we can discern its likely position by understanding the nature of com m ercial and dom estic developm ent along Fifth Avenue throughout the nin eteen th century. In particular, Jerry E. Patterson in his inform ative book Fifth Avenue: The Best Address not only writes of th e com m ercial encroachm ent on Fifth A venue at the end of the n ineteenth century up to around Forty-second S treet b u t also writes th a t above ‘Forty-second Street, new residences ten d ed to be larger th a n those from T hirty-fourth to Forty-second streets.’ These indicators, along w ith th e fact that Sherry’s restaurant seem ed to be in the close vicinity of the Peniston house — ‘Sherry’s had relocated to

Fifth Avenue and the southw est corner of Forty-fourth Street ... in O ctober 1898’ — points to Julia P eniston’s house being located in the Forties on Fifth Avenue.

In term s of spatial hierarchies and spatial location, the Peniston m ilieu is one w hich is located close to G rand C entral Station, and as explained earlier in this chapter, this location is one w hich lies at the centre of the city, and as such has a seemingly stationary locus. If one imagines a wheel turning, all points on the periphery and plane are in m otion, but at the central point of the plane, th e p o int about which th e system revolves is seemingly stationary. H ere, referring back to the m om ent of stasis at the beginning of the novel, w here Lily B art’s ‘arrested’ form exists w ithin some arabesque reality w hich is in flux all around her, we have the stationary locus of the novel. It is here th a t she technically comes to life in the novel, and it is here th a t she is in

Jerry E. Patterson. Fifth Avenue: The Best Address. (New York: Rizzoli, 1998): 108, 125, 135

* e l3 0 'Beyond!’: The Bait Milieu the ‘act of transitio n ’ w hich will begin her journey toward the periphery, Lily B art in th e opening chapter of the novel is static as an art object in m any respects, and likewise with a setting w hich is close to the locus of the city, Julia Peniston in her m ansion is also static. As an individual character she is — com paratively — a static object in th a t she is often the detached observer of the flâneuristic trad itio n in her

‘secluded w atchtow er’:

Mrs. Peniston followed the rise and culm ination of the season as keenly as the m ost active sharer in its gaieties; and, as a looker-on, she enjoyed opportunities of comparison and generalization such as those who take part must proverbially forego. (HM, 95)

N o t only does Julia P eniston refrain from engaging with society w henever possible b u t she seems to prim arily exist spatially in a state of sedentary stasis. She does n o t seamlessly merge with m odern society. W ith th e exception of her ‘rare en tertain m en ts’ and her interrogations of Grace Stepney and Lily B art w here she seeks to absorb ‘th e secret chronicles of society’(HM , 97-98), Julia Peniston exists spatially at the centre of the city, and tem porally in the 1860s.

It is here th a t we can see th a t Julia P eniston has im portant parallels w ith Mrs. Manson M ingott in The Age of Innocence. T hey are both, in different ways, geographically isolated yet socially accepted w ithin society; both function formally to illum inate certain them atic tenets w ithin their respective texts, Mrs. Manson M ingott pointing to

the necessity of accepting new blood (prim arily European) into a society w hich needs to change to survive in th e future, and Julia Peniston sym bolising a world which had now gone and was in the past,

and was increasingly being left behind.

*#131 'Btyoiid!’: Tiw Bart Milieu

It is also interesting to note th a t Julia P eniston ‘from the secluded w atchtow er of her upper window' would watch ‘the sudden influx’ of people w ho were ‘setting toward a Van Osburgh ball, or th e m ultiplication of wheels [which] m eant [...] that th e opera was over, or that there was a big supper at Sherry’s’ (HM, 95). This particular act is referred to in W harton’s novella ‘N ew Y ear’s Day’ — a novella set in the 1870s — as ‘a Dutch hab it still practised in the best N ew York circlesand although this act of observation and judgem ent of society from the P arretts’ m ansion w indow s is an act w hich tunes in w ith the aristocracy of old N ew York society of the 1870s, it is an act w hich is outm oded a quarter of a century later in the w orld of Lily Bart, and an act which once again places Julia

Peniston in a different tem poral and aesthetic plane from Lily Bart and w hich further isolates Lily w ithin this milieu. If the previous short, succinct, and suggestive description of

Julia P eniston induces a feeling th a t she is perceived as some em balm ed corpse w ith the agelessness and tim elessness associated w ith such a creature, th e n th e m ilieu w ithin w hich she exists will also have sim ilar qualities if W harton’s use of setting is to be consistent and credible. It should be of no surprise th a t her technical and artistic virtuosity is b o th consistent and credible in The House of Mirth:

The house, in its state of unnatural immaculateness and order, was as dreary as a tomb, and as Lily, turning from her brief repast between shrouded sideboards, wandered into the newly-uncovered glare of the drawing-room she felt as though she were buried alive in the stifling limits of Mrs. Peniston’s existence. (HM, 79)

T he funerary allusion is extended from the description of Mrs. Peniston to that of her hom e as well. W ith w ords invoicing shrouds.

' Edith Wharton. 'New Year's Day’ in Novellas and Other Writings (New York; Library of America, 1990): 492

*#132 ‘Beyond!’: The Bart Milieu tom bs, burial, and if one reads instead of ‘newly uncovered glare’ newly uncovered gj-ave, W h arto n establishes a harmony betw een character and milieu. Yet we also perceive the scene through Lily’s consciousness and thus und erstand that she herself feels entom bed w ithin this ‘dreary’ environm ent, once again dem onstrating th a t this cold, narrow,

aged and colourless m ansion does not match th e character of the spry

and beautiful Lily Bart, who is indeed stifled by the ‘lim its of Mrs.

P eniston’s existence’. Freedom from this situation will only come

w hen M rs. P eniston no longer exists. Lily’s ow n perception of this suffocating environm ent is further heightened by th e description of her own room in th e Peniston house.

It is also im p ortant to note th a t Lily’s own consciousness hints toward

w hat she herself sees as her own ideal milieu:

H er room was large and comfortably-furnished — it was the envy and adm iration of poor Grace Stepney, who boarded; but, contrasted with the light tints and luxurious appointm ents of tire guest-rooms where so m any weeks of Lily's existence were spent, it seemed as dreary as a prison. The m onum ental wardrobe and bedstead of black walnut had migrated from Mrs. Peniston’s bedroom, and the m agenta “flock” wall­ paper, of a pattern dear to the early ’sixties, was hung with large steel engravings of an anecdotic character. Lily had tried to mitigate this charmless background by a few frivolous touches, in the shape of a lace- decked toilet table and a little painted desk surm ounted by photographs; bu t the futility of the attempt struck her as she looked about the room. What a contrast to the subtle elegance of the setting she had pictured for herself — an apartm ent which should surpass the complicated luxury of her friends’ surroundings by the whole extent of that artistic sensibility which made her feel herself their superior; in which every tin t and line should combine to enhance her beauty and give distinction to her leisure! Once more the haunting sense of physical ugliness was intensified by her m ental depression, so that each piece of the offending furniture seemed to thrust forth its m ost aggressive angle. {HM,86)

Lily once again sees herself as im prisoned w ithin this ‘dreary’ setting.

T he room m ay be ‘large and comfortably-furnished' b u t it is her

aesthetic ‘distaste’ for th e ‘ugliness’ {HM, 78) w hich surrounds her w hich so easily makes her a stranger to this place. Although the décor

*#133 'Beyond!’: The Bart Milieu m ay well date back to the ’sixties, Lily attem pts to counterbalance each elem ent of the décor in the Peniston m ilieu w ith her own additions to the room; w here there are ‘steel engravings’, Lily brings ‘photographs’ to the room; w here M rs. P en isto n ’s furniture is ‘m onum ental’ in scale, Lily has a ‘little painted desk’; and the light touch of Lily’s ‘lace’ on her ‘toilet tab le’ is overw helm ed by the bold ‘m agenta “flock”’ on th e walls of the room . As one w ould now expect, the precise and delicate beauty of Lily Bart could only desire a setting of a sim ilar aesthetic vein to exist w ithin, and in order to appropriate such a setting Lily will have to marry appropriately first, or inherit a large sum.

In creating a patchwork description of the Peniston m ansion, supported w ith m uch discrete descriptive detail, Edith W harton establishes the ekphrastic scene. T he reader is given a vivid am ount of descriptive detail, and the m etadiegesis established through the description tells us much about the environm ent w hich is required to sustain Lily Bart. In regard to Lily’s needs and expectations Wharton tells us th a t ‘[Lily Bart] could not figure herself as anywhere b u t in a drawing-room , diffusing elegance as a flower sheds perfume’(HM , 79). M entally, Lily cannot contem plate any other m ilieu in w hich she can exist. She does consider a future w here she will be able to convert the Peniston m énage to her own needs as she ‘had frequently w ounded

[M rs. P eniston’s] susceptibilities by suggesting th a t th e drawing-room should be done over’(HM , 80) Yet, as a reader we understand th a t it is Grace Stepney w ho ‘[s]incerely adm ired the purple satin drawing­ room curtains, th e D ying G ladiator in the w indow, and seven-by-five painting of N iagara’(HM, 79), it is she w ho envied and adm ired Lily’s

*#134 ‘Beyond!’: The Bart Milieu room in th e P eniston house, and it is Grace Stepney w ho is and will be best suited to inherit the Peniston m ansion. A t th e h eart of th e ekphrastic discourse surrounding the Peniston m ansion, we have to consider two im p ortant passages related to Lily’s existence in the m ansion. Firstly: ‘As was always th e case w ith her, this m oral repulsion found a physical outlet in a quickened distaste for her surroundings’ {HM, 78) and ‘Once m ore th e haunting sense of physical ugliness was intensified by her m ental depression.’ {HM, 86) B oth extracts establish a strong link betw een Lily B art’s em otional physiology and her aesthetic sense, thus once again strengthening th e foundations of Wharton’s consistent treatm en t of the m ajor characters in her N ew York novels up to this point, in th a t she constructs them w ith an associated m ilieu to further solidify their tem peram ents, attitudes, actions, and fates, and subsequently provides a richer texture to th e novel than would otherwise be expected on a cursory reading of the text.

In looldng at ekphrasis w ithin the N ew Y ork novels of Edith Wharton, one m ight be expected to look at th e fam ous tableaux vivants scene in The House of Mirth. In term s of the m odern understanding of ekphrasis, it is the scene w hich w ould be best suited for analysis in term s of ekphrastic discourse. Yet I believe its simplicity w ithin the structural context of th e novel relegates its im portance to th a t of another exam ple of the prim ary leitm otif w hich perm eates the novel, th a t of th e com m odification of female beauty. W hat I see as being a m ore sophisticated reading of th e text, w hich burrows deeper th an the surface understanding of the text, is the fact that Edith Wharton has used her u n d o u b ted Icnowledge of N ew York City, its topography, architectures, history and social stratifications to great effect in

*#135 ‘Beyond!’: The Bart Milieu suffusing th e novel w ith a vitality which comes only from an understanding of nuance w ithin th e text. Wharton has constructed the Peniston m ilieu, along Mth the character M rs. Peniston, to show th e reader th a t m ilieu and character are strongly connected to each other. The locating of the m ansion w ithin N ew York, on Fifth Avenue, w ith interior décor which tem porally locates th e m ansion, initiates an ekphrastic discourse. The result of this discourse is th a t we come to understand that W harton’s descriptive construction serves to underpin Lily Bart’s struggle to find a ‘room of her own. ’ H erein lies th e paradox for Lily B art in The House of M irth. W here Virginia W oolf insists that ‘a woman must have m oney and a room of her ow n if she is to w rite fiction’^ ^ W harton is indicating that for Lily’s future to be perceived as successful, she m ust have a room of her own and money to exist as she wishes, yet paradoxically it seems th a t the room cannot be obtained w ithout m oney, and m oney w ithout the room.

T hrough an ekphrastic reading of th e P eniston m ilieu, we see th a t Lily cannot acquire a place of her own. W e see th a t she is not suited to the P eniston m ansion, and more to the point, we see th a t it is Grace Stepney w ho is best suited, in all ways, to occupy the Peniston m ilieu, as indeed she does after M rs. P eniston’s death.

Finally, analysing this particular location in th e novel allows the reader to gain an insight into the idealised environm ent w hich Lily sees herself inhabiting in the future, the idealised environm ent which

she sees as being her own milieu: one of great beauty (and cost) which w ould create a mutual growth and enhancem ent of both mansion and

" Virginia Woolf. A Room o f O ne’s Oivn [1 9 2 9 ], In: A Room o f O ne’s O m i and Three Guineas. (Harinondswortii: Penguin, 1993}, 3

*#136 ‘Beyond!’: Tiw Bart Milien inm ate, yet som ew hat ironically, one w hich the reader increasingly finds difficult to picture Lily w ithin.

T h e P a r i s h M i l i e u

HERE MOST LOCALES W ITHIN The House of Mirth are used to W show Lily Bart’s transition from the N ew York social elite to the physical and societal peripheries of N ew Y ork City, th e Parish m ilieu does so b u t provides some further added value in term s of our understanding of Lily Bart. An overall descriptive picture of the Parish apartm ent, gleaned from dialogue and descriptive text throughout the novel, creates an ekphrastic elem ent w ithin th e text. O nce again, the descriptive detail concerning locale and interior of the Parish apartm ent acts not only as detail w hich enhances th e realist texture of the novel, but also establishes a context w ithin w hich Lily B art is placed, and like the cinem atic M ozhuldhin experiment^^ touched upon in C hapter O ne of this thesis, induces specific reader responses.

T he Parish apartm ent in The House of M irth is a setting w hich far from being used as a place w hich Lily passes through fleetingly, is a place w hich is described and referred to throughout th e text. In this sense, th e Parish apartm ent acts as a touchstone for the reader. This setting functions as an im plicit indicator of Lily’s own shifting thoughts about such an environm ent and how they subtly change through the course of her experiences w ithin th e city. T he Parish m ilieu also builds upon the them atic concern of th e peripheralisation

See page 15 of this thesis for a fuller explanation o f the Mozhukliin experiment.

*#137 'Btyaiul!’: The Bart Milieu of Lily Bart, as the Parish m ilieu is undoubtedly a further step away from Grand C entral Station, Lawrence Selden’s ap artm en t and Julia

P eniston’s m ansion. In th e very first chapter of the novel, Lily B art im parts to Lawrence Selden her feelings about both girls like Gertrude Parish and the m ilieus they inhabit:

“How delicious to have a place like this all to one’s self! W hat a miserable thing it is to be a woman.” She leaned back in the luxury of discontent. Selden was rummaging in a cupboard for the cake. “Even w om en,” he said, “have been loiown to enjoy the privileges of a flat.” “Oh, governesses — or widows. But not girls — not poor, miserable marriageable girls!” “I even Icnow a girl who lives in a flat.” She sat up in surprise. “You do?” “I do,” he assured her, emerging from the cupboard with the sought- for cake. “Oh, I Icnow — you m ean Gerty Parish.” She smiled a little unldndly. “But I said marriageable — and besides, she has a horrid little place, and no maid, and such queer things to eat. H er cook does the washing and the food tastes of soap. I should hate that, you know.” (HM, 8)

Lily at once equates the ‘horrid little place’ of C erty Parish and girls like her w ith th e fact that they are n o t 'marriageable’. T he im plication — ironic as it turns out — is th a t they are n o t beautiful like Lily, and

are therefore destined for a life of dull spinsterhood. Selden him self seems to understand that such a m ilieu as that of C erty Parish w ould

n o t suit Lily: ‘he was struck w ith the irony of suggesting to her such a

life as his cousin G ertrude Parish had chosen.’(H M , 8) H ere at an

early stage, W h arto n establishes Lily’s understanding of her world.

She is beautiful, thus marriageable, thus able to m arry well and have the m ilieu to match ... ideally. C erty Parish herself seems to agree

w ith such connections w hen later on Wharton writes (through C erty ’s consciousness) th a t it m ay well be the case that ‘[a] dull face invited a

*#138 ‘BeyoudV: The Bart Milieu dull fate’(HM, 128), thus supporting a view th a t beauty attracts men, m oney and a sparlding life. W e discover m ore of Lily’s attitu d e tow ard G erty and her flat w hen she remembers Gerty is Selden’s cousin:

“It was horrid of me to say that of G erty,” she said with charming com punction. “I forgot she was your cousin. But w e’re so different, you loiow: she likes being good, and I like being happy. And besides, she is free and 1 am not. If I were, I daresay 1 could manage to be happy even in her flat. It must be pure bliss to arrange the furniture just as one likes, and give all the horrors to the ash-man.” (HM , 8)

Important here is Lily’s assertion th a t G erty ‘likes being good, and I like being happy’, her understanding being th a t being good and happy are m utually exclusive, and Lily’s im plicit aclcnowledgement th a t she has to be ‘b ad ’ to be happy. Yet m ore im portant is th e statem ent th a t Lily sees G erty as being free. Lily, in her ow n m ind, is n o t free. She is n o t free to do as she wishes, but has to do as society expects. She is not free to create her ow n space until she has m arried; and she is not free from her own fate, n o t the fate th a t belies a beautiful woman, but th e fate w hich belies a beautiful woman who has no place of her own to condition her behaviour, but has a spirit w hich consciously or subconsciously fights against the expectations of N ew York society. T he Parish apartm ent is n o t an environm ent w hich Lily passes through discreetly. It is a touchstone of some im portance to th e text.

W e have seen it act as a context which brings to the fore Lily’s own worries and fears very early in the novel, b u t it is also an environm ent that for a brief in stan t becomes her own. It becom es a m ilieu w hich for a brief m om ent in th e novel, is m atched by Lily Bart’s own em otional physiology.

A fter an ugly and threatening tête-à-tête w ith Gus T renor at his

N ew York m ansion (which Lily had attended due to som e duplicitous

*#139 'BcyoiuW: The Bari Milieu moves on the p art of Trenor) her self-delusion is m om entarily shattered. T renor appears to have been giving Lily his own m oney, and n o t th e rewards of th e good investm ent of Lily’s capital as he had said. She had been faced w ith a choice: repaym ent w ith her affections or repaym ent of th e $9000 she owes Gus Trenor. Lily is devastated:

Over and over her the sea of hum iliation broke — wave crashing on wave so close th at the moral shame was one w ith the physical dread. It seemed to her th at self-esteem would have made her invulnerable — th at it was her own dishonour which put a fearful solitude about her. {HM, 116) and is all th e m ore so because she Icnows th a t she is prim arily responsible for the predicam ent. Lily, at this p o in t in the novel, is arguably at her m ost vulnerable, both physically and morally. It is at this m om ent th a t Lily is seen to be vulnerable in th a t she has no place of her own, no physical sanctuary and no place w hich in itself w ould denote a firm position w ithin N ew York society w hich would have released her from this situation. In a small amount of tim e, Lily has changed: ‘[s]he seem ed a stranger to herself, or rath er there were two selves in her, the one she had always Icnown, and a new abhorrent being to w hich it found itself chained’(HM, 117). Where previously,

Lily’s beautiful self could not conceive of existing in the Parish milieu, her abhorrent self of this m om ent sees some refuge on the ‘fam iliar alien streets’ of N ew York in th e flat of G erty Parish. Lily herself articulates her m alaise to Gerty:

Can you imagine looldng into your glass some m orning and seeing a disfigurem ent — some hideous change that has come to you while you slept? Well, I seem to myself like that — I can’t bear to see myself in my own thoughts — I hate ugliness, you Icnow — I’ve always turned from it — bu t I can’t explain to you — you wouldn’t understand. {HM, 131)

W e have, once again, a succinct articulation of Wharton’s theory of harmony betw een character and m ilieu. Lily Bart sees

$el40 'Bçyoïtd!’: The Bart Milieu external physical appearance as being connected directly to the em otional aesthetic, both of which are directly linked to an appropriate environm ent. Lily is initially confident in her external beauty and her m arriageable credentials, and sees a future ahead of her w here she will inhabit her very own place. A t the confrontation w ith Gus T renor, his ow n articulation of the vulgar deal betw een them brings Lily’s own complicity in such an arrangem ent to the forefront of her psyche. She perceives herself as being tw o people, the beautiful

Lily and the abhorrent Lily. T he abhorrent Lily cannot exist w ithin the P eniston m ilieu at th a t point; she is unable to exist w ithin an environm ent w hich alm ost reeks of a restrictive m oral code w hich is out of synchronisation w ith her perception of her own moral turpitude at this p o in t in th e novel.

Lily spends the night in G erty Parish’s flat, and on waldng in the m orning, the beautiful Lily comes to her senses as it were:

This sense of physical discomfort was the first to assert itself; then she perceived, beneath it, a corresponding m ental prostration, a languor of horror more insufferable than the first rush of her disgust. The thought of having to wake every morning with this weight on her breast roused her tired mind to fresh effort. She m ust find some way out of the slough into which she had stumbled: it was not so much compunction as the dread of her morning thoughts that pressed on her the need of action. B ut she was unutterably tired; it was weariness to think connectedly. She lay back, looldng about the poor slit of a room w ith a renewal of physical distaste. The outer air, penned between high buildings, brought no freshness through the window; steam -heat was beginning to sing in a coil of dingy pipes, and a smell of cooking penetrated the crack of the door. {HM, 133-34)

A fresh day has dawned and the aesthetic Lily awakes from her fugue of th e previous evening. Pier norm al sensibilities now take over and

she reacts against th e Parish environm ent. PPer ‘physical discom fort’

has a ‘corresponding m ental prostratio n ’, once again establishing the

link betw een physical environm ent and m ental pathology of the

*el41 'Bcj’Olul!’: The B art Milieu character. In the space of a few hours the Parish apartm ent has been both a sanctuary for Lily and an anathem a, thus we have an ekphrastic description of an environm ent w hich allows for a substantially m ore sophisticated secondary narrative to evolve. O ur understanding of the im portance of the Parish m ilieu is not only based around Lily Bart’s superim position upon it, but also that of

Selden, and G erty Parish too. G erty's own perception of her personal environm ent comes into sharp focus after her m atchm alcing to bring

Selden and Lily together. T he irony here, however, does n o t escape her in th a t she loves Selden. This irony is heightened by th e clarity of her insight into th e nature of Lily B art in th a t she ‘m ight be incapable of m arrying for m oney, b u t she was equally incapable of living w ithout it, and Selden's eager investigations into the small econom ies of house-keeping m ade him appear to G erty as tragically duped as herself.'(HM, 128) G erty’s own depression at the hopelessness of her situation corresponds w ith her view of her own milieu:

She remained long in her sitting-room, where the embers were crumbling to cold grey, and the lamp paled under its gay shade. Just beneath it stood the photograph of Lily Bart, looldng out imperially on the cheap gim-cracks, the cramped furniture of the little room. Could Selden picture her in such an interior? Gerty felt the poverty, the insignificance of her surroundings: she beheld her life as it m ust appear to Lily, {HM, 128)

G erty’s interior feelings of sadness and jealousy parallel her perception of th e pallid surroundings drained of all colour. G erty is as insightful as any character in The House of Mirth w hen her consciousness pushes forward the statem ent that ‘[a] dull face invited a dull fate’ (HM , 128) and undoubtedly, a dull milieu.

As G erty has so lucidly understood, Selden’s ‘eager investigations into the small econom ies of house-keeping’(HM, 128) has its basis in an expectation of a future w ith Lily. H e views Gerty’s

$^142 'Bejwiid!': The B art Milieu flat n o t as G erty’s, b u t as a view of th e possibilities of a future existence w ith Lily on a lim ited budget:

G erty’s little sitting-room sparlded with welcome when Selden entered it. Its m odest “effects,” compact of enamel paint and ingenuity, spoke to him in the language just then sweetest to his ear. It is surprising how little narrow walls and a low ceiling m atter, w hen the roof of the soul has suddenly been raised. Gerty sparlded too; or at least shone with a tem pered radiance. He had never before noticed th a t she had “points” — really, some good fellow m ight do worse ...

[...]

Selden evinced an extraordinary interest in her household arrangements: com plim ented her on the ingenuity with which she had utilized every inch of her small quarters, asked how her servant managed about afternoons out, learned th at one may improvise delicious dinners in a chafing-dish, and uttered thoughtful generalizations on the burden of a large establishment. {HM, 128)

H ere, th e Parish apartm ent is transfigured into a notional Selden/Bart milieu. Yet this is a place th a t will never exist outside the im aginations of the protagonists.

T he P eniston m ansion, comparatively spealdng, is rather simple in its form and function w ithin The House of Mirth. It prim arily serves to articulate Lily’s m ovem ent away from the centre of N ew York and its ruling class, and her placem ent upon the peripheries of N ew York C ity and its society. The sophisticated elem ents in th e instance of the analysis of the Parish apartm ent revolve around Lily’s duality which begins to outline the conflicts w ithin Lily’s m ind betw een w hat is expected of her, w hat she is fated to do, and what she wants to do. The use of the m ilieu also substantiates W harton’s own technique in linldng m ilieu w ith character, and finally it places Lily even further away from th e centre of th e city and its ruling society.

*s=143 'Beyond!’: The Bart Milieu

T H E H a t c h M i l i e u

a w r e n c e S e l d e n , o n h is r e t u r n f r o m E u r o p e , and after a plea Lfrom G erty Parish, attem pts to find Lily B art in order to provide ‘such vague help as he could offer’(HM, 212). In doing so he finds out th a t she has left her hotel, b u t the hotel clerk hands him a slip of paper w ith her forw arding address:

and he read on it; “Care of Mrs. N orma Hatch, Emporium H otel,” his apprehension passed into an incredulous stare, and this into the gesture of disgust w ith which he tore the paper in two, and turned to walk quicldy homeward. {HM, 212)

There is no doubt as to the feelings of Lawrence Selden at this news.

His disgust is built upon his love for Lily and th e disappointm ents of her ‘liaisons’ w ith Gus T renor and George D orset, and this news of her new place of residence adds further to this anger and disappointm ent,

as he sees it as being a strong indicator of Lily's place w ithin society and her own attitu d e tow ard the silent moral and financial decrees

th a t underpin th e society. T he hotel, in the fiction of E dith W h arto n in particular,

inhabits a very particular place in the social and architectural hierarchies at th e centre of W harton’s N ew York fiction:

N ot only does the hotel have the worst design of any of the author’s habitations, but it is the dwelling place of persons of questionable repute: those who are rootless and ill-bred, and those who are refined, but who have chosen to rebel against the mores of the social class into which they were born. Appropriately, Wharton uses the hotel as a setting ... as a residence for characters who are undergoing or attem pting to undergo, a change in social standing —always an inauspicious enterprise in her novels. Throughout her fiction, in fact, Wharton consistently portrays the hotel as the antithesis of w hat she considered to be the ideal home.^^

Susan Koprince.‘Edith W harton’s Hotels.’ Mrt.ï.vrtc/(H.îeH,ï m 10.1 (Spring 1985): 13

*tPl44 ‘Beyond!’: The Burt Milieu

As the antithesis of the ideal hom e, the hotel also lacks other attributes w hich we connect w ith a hom e. It lacks the ‘w arm th and stability of a genuine hom e’ and because it has ‘no history or class trad itio n ’ it fails to be a ‘repository of values w hich a fam ily has built up over tim e and passed down from one generation to the next.’^^^ All of these understandings about the hotel in W harton’s fiction act as a strong counterpoint to th e milieus Lily has passed through throughout The House of Mirth, and serves to foreshadow th e place hotel living has in The Custom of the Countjy, w ith the attendant moral im plications on the queen of \\otç\Jhôtel living, U ndine Spragg. K oprince further articulates the associative values of th e hotel by stating th a t the hotel in W harton’s N ew York fiction

is generally contrasted with the brownstone — a dwelling which, though old-fashioned and constraining, is nonetheless the m ost respectable upperclass home the New W orld has to offer. Thus, the lavish disorder of the Emporium Hotel in The House of Mirth stands in contrast to the “glacial neatness” of Julia Peniston’s Fifth Avenue brownstone.

Lawrence Selden’s attitu d e tow ard Lily’s new -found residence is explained all the m ore by this contextualisation of th e hotel m ilieu in

The House of Mirth. T he reader is also enlightened as to Lily B art’s further peripheralisation and the associated em otional strain w hich is being exerted upon Lily in such an environm ent.

W h en the reader is first introduced to Lily w ithin the H atch m ilieu of th e Em porium H otel, Lily seems at long last to be com forted by her environm ent:

W hen Lily woke on the morning after her translation to the Emporium Hotel, her first feeling was one of purely physical satisfaction. The force of contrast gave an added keenness to the luxury of lying once more in a soft-pillowed bed, and looking across a spacious sunlit room at the breakfast-table set invitingly near the fire. Analysis and introspection

" Koprince. ‘Edith Witarton’s Hotels’, 14

" Ibid, 20

*el45 'Beyond!': The B art Milieu

might come later; but for the m om ent she was no t even troubled by the excesses of the upholstery or the restless convolutions of the furniture. The sense of being once more lapped and folded in ease, as in some dense mild medium im penetrable to discomfort, effectually stilled the faintest note of criticism. (HM, 212)

It is of no surprise th a t Lily finds such comfort both physically and em otionally acceptable at this p oint in the novel after so many blows from those around her, and this p oint can also be likened to her evening spent w ith G erty Parish after her m eeting at Gus T ren o r’s m ansion. Yet we are still aware th a t Lily has m ade another move tow ards the periphery of N ew York society, indicated not only by Lawrence Selden’s response to discovering her new address, b u t Lily’s own feeling that ‘she had been conscious of entering a new w orld’(HM , 212), a new environm ent th a t we feel cannot house Lily Bart. For the first time in the novel, Lily has stepped into an environm ent w hich was totally ‘strange to h er.’ Lily has now passed out of th e N ew York society she had been fam iliar w ith into the nether-w orld of th e aspirant nouveaux nches. Lily becom es aware of the artificiality of th e m ilieu on m eeting Mrs. N orma Hatch:

Seated in a blaze of electric light, impartially projected from various ornam ental excrescences on a vast concavity of pink damask and gilding, from which she rose like Venus from her shell. The analogy was justified by the appearance of the lady, whose large-eyed prettiness had the fixity of som ething impaled and shown under glass. (HM, 213)

Lily is aware of th e artificiality of this environm ent yet N orma Hatch is not, or does n o t seem to. Lily has experienced ‘true culture [and] resided in ... truly aristocratic dwelling[s]and is totally

‘unacquainted w ith the w orld of the fashionable N ew York h o tel’ (HM, 213). T here is indeed comfort, sumptuous ness and w ealth underpinning this environm ent, and albeit Lily Bart’s first response is

Ibid, 17

*^146 ‘Beyoltd!’: The Bait Milieu th a t of relief, she quickly understands that she is a stranger in a strange land w here the H atch m ilieu is concerned. Lily eventually seems alm ost detached from the hotel environm ent as ‘Mrs. Hatch and her friends seem ed to float together outside the bounds of tim e and space’ {HM, 214), and she herself is, in a sense, a voyeur in th a t she ‘had an odd sense of being behind the social tapestry, on the side w here th e threads were Icnotted and the loose ends hung' but this also indicates th a t Lily B art is now on th e w rong side of th e social tapestry, th a t she is truly nearing th e outer lim its of N ew Y ork City. In many ways this is n o t a place w ithin w hich Lily truly participates, b u t is m ore accurately a scene w hich she observes w ith a flaneuristic quality; th e detached observer from w ith in the crowd. In an environm ent w hich on the surface Lily should be happier w ithin, Lily ends up being m ore isolated as she finds it difficult to ‘find any point of contact betw een’ (HM, 215) her own ideals and those of Mrs.

H atch. This comes as no surprise as we see th a t th e m ovem ent of N orma Hatch, pow ered by her w ealth, is into m ainstream N ew York society, w hereas Lily, in her poverty, is travelling in the opposite direction.

Lily Bart’s contact w ith this m ilieu is short-lived. H er placem ent w ithin the hotel serves to show her continuing journey toward the social and physical extremities of the city. This is an alien environm ent in every way and serves to establish Lily Bart in a

‘w ilderness of pink damask’, the operative w ord here being ‘w ilderness’. T he hotel is another p oint of transition very m uch like

G rand C entral S tation in th e first chapter of the novel. W here G rand C entral S tation is a node w here people physically move in and out of

the city, th e Em porium H otel here is transitional in th a t is a node

*#447 ‘BcyoiulF: Tiw B art Milieu w here people are attem pting to enter society, w hilst Lily is leaving the society.

’B e y o n d !’: T h e B a r t M i l i e u ?

ic p h r a s is , u s e d i n t h e a n a l y s e s of E dith W harton’s major N ew EYork fiction, is an extrem ely p o ten t device in our comprehension of not only th e m ore complex narrative threads and textures of the text, but also of Wharton’s own overarching philosophy concerning th e relationships betw een m ilieu and character. T hroughout this thesis I have alluded often to E dith W harton’s naturalist credentials. The publication of The House of Mirth in 1905, was at a tim e in literary history w hen T heodore D reiser [Sister Carrie (1900)], W illiam D ean Howells [Tlu Rise of Silas Lapham (1872); The Hazard of New Fortunes

(1890)], Stephen C rane [Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893); The Red Badge of Courage (1895)] and Frank N orris [McTeague (1899); The Octopus (1901)] were all an im portant part of th e literary landscape.

The realist/naturalist credentials of these authors are beyond question, but Wharton herself is seldom looked at w ith a naturalist perspective.

W h en Zola wrote in The Experimental Novel in 1893 that the acts of m an ‘are n o t produced in isolation or in a bare v o id ’ and that ‘the social condition unceasingly m odifies said acts’^^, he was outlining a m anifesto w hich E dith W harton would, to som e degree, buy into w ith her thoughts on th e im portance of m ilieu on character. Indeed, her

Zola quotes from Stephen Regan, ed. The Niueteciuh-Ceutuiy Novel: A Critical Reader. (London: Routledge, 2001 ), 112

*#148 'Beyond!’: The Bart Milieu

Strong naturalist im pulse is applied to the novel in th a t here she has an aesthetic organism whose dichotomous nature lies at th e heart of this fiction. I would argue th a t th e environm ent/character paradigm established by th e ekphrastic decoding of th e texts is at its m ost p o ten t w hen used in the N ew York fictions. Yet, in The House of Mirth, it is the seem ingly paradoxical issue of Lily Bart’s lack of a place of her own w hich brings this particular novel alive. Lily Bart’s role as the peripatetian in The House of Mirth takes her through num erous environm ents, all of which are associated w ith characters other th an herself. Yet they tell us much about Lily Bart and th e im portance w hich N ew York society gives to financial power, and about the consequences m eted out to those who do not ruthlessly take their chances and give in to any thoughts of true love and individualism .

Subsequent to Lily Bart’s attem p t at gainful em ploym ent as a m illenary assistant at M m e. R egina’s, Lily is heyond N ew York society.

Lily is physically beyond the environs of that society in th a t she now inhabits a boarding-house on the geographical periphery of the city, b u t she is also beyond that society in th a t she no longer has power or influence enough to survive w ithin that particular atmosphere. ‘B eyond!’ is the w ord im printed upon Lily Bart’s seal, and it best describes Lily Bart’s m ilieu in fin-de-siècle N ew York. In term s of anything she has previously experienced, th e boarding-house is ultim ately ‘b eyond’ the environm ent w here she w anted to exist. Yet, this particular m ilieu is a place w hich Lily readily, and for the first tim e, calls ‘hom e.’ In the latter p art of the novel Lily has a strong perception of the boarding-house being ‘hom e’: ‘Lily at length turned tow ard h o m e’ (232); ‘as she tu rn ed hom ew ards’ (232); ‘she was too tired to retu rn h o m e’ (235); ‘she actually had a reason for hurrying

*#149 'Bejwiiil! The B art Milieu h o m e’ (236); and ‘She found, however, on reaching h o m e’ (236). This signals to th e reader (and to Lily herself) th a t Lily now exists w ithin a m ilieu w hich parallels her social and em otional state. T he boarding­ house is another transitional space, m uch like G rand C entral Station at th e opening o f the novel, yet this is a transitional space beyond the city as Lily perceives it. This is a m ilieu th a t Lily is paying for, it is a m ilieu w hich is tem porary by its very nature, and it is the tem porary nature of the m ilieu w hich generates the question of w here will Lily go to next, and as such prepares the reader for th e coup dc grace. It is rather sim ple to perceive home as a distinctly positive concept, b u t it is n o t inherently a qualitative term . H om e is in actuality a dwelling, it need n o t be w arm, comfortable, nor aesthetically pleasing, and in th e case of Lily Bart, the boarding-house certainly has no great attraction to her, as we can see w hen Lily returns to th e boarding-house after another day on the streets:

As she turned homeward her thoughts shrank in anticipation from the fact that there would be nothing to get up for the next morning. The luxury of lying late in bed was a pleasure belonging to the life of ease; it had no part in the utilitarian existence of the boarding-house. She liked to leave her room early, and to return to it as late as possible; and she was walldng slowly now in order to postpone the detested approach to her doorstep. (HM, 232)

It w ould be a simple, b u t m isguided step to see Lily’s understanding of the boarding-house as being ‘hom e’ as an acknowledgem ent of her finding her own place. As an independent being, she inhabits a room of her own, b u t it is hardly a m ilieu which suits her. T he boarding­ house is yet another example of a transitional m ilieu w ithin w hich Lily exists before m oving off to the next, w hich for Lily B art will ultim ately m ean her suicide, w ith death becom ing her ultim ate dwelling place.

T he boarding-house location is n o t given as an exact address (as is the case w ith m ost residences in The House of Mirth), y et the city can

*#150 ‘BeyomW: The Burt Milieu be viewed as a social organism w hich has a hierarchical structure inherent in its topography, and, we can thus have an educated guess as to w here th e boarding-house is located and can decode its hierarchical character w ithin the city itself. As previously stated in C hapter Two of this thesis, pre-em inence is given to the centre, th e top, and the right in m any societies b o th ancient and modern.It is established th a t Lily Bart’s boarding-house is located w est (to the left of centre) of Fifth Avenue, an im p ortant fact in th a t Selden, the D orsets, M rs. Peniston (and Grace Stepney), the Trenors, and Sim on Rosedale all live on or to the east (right) of Fifth Avenue, th e central social artery of the city, and are pre-em inent w ithin th e city’s social hierarchy. N o t only is the boarding-house located on the west side of the city, b u t it is deep into the w est as we discover w hen Rosedale accom panies her hom e from the Longpvorth :

they emerged from the hotel and crossed Sixth Avenue again. As she led the way westward past a long line of areas which, through the distortion of their painted rails, revealed with increasing candour the disjecta membra of bygone dinners (HM, 229)

N o t only is the boarding-house m ilieu n o t central, it is far to the west (left) and therefore low in the topographical hierarchy as was the C ountess O lenska’s hom e in The Age of Innocence. T he down-at-heel area in itself points to Lily Bart’s m isfortune, her financial predicam ent, and her overall em otional destitution. In using the H otel

Longworth in The House of Mirth, Wharton may well have had the

Langwell H otel on W est 4T*' Street in m ind. Although th e Longworth seems to be in the vicinity of an elevated railroad station on Sixth

Avenue, and at the tu rn of the tw entieth century th e only elevated railroad stations on Sixth Avenue in this vicinity were at 33"'' Street

See pages 44-45 in tliis thesis for further discussion on spatial hierarchies,

*#151 'Beyond! The Bai t Milieu and 42""* Street. Tow ards th e end of the novel, on leaving Selden’s apartm ent for the last tim e, Lily walks down Fifth A venue to 4L^ Street, before resting in Bryant Park. T he exact details are n o t of great im port here, but what is im portant is the general vicinity of Lily B art’s m ilieu — the boarding-house — and from these details we can deduce th a t she is living som ewhere in the garm ent district (close to M me.

R egina’s shop) in and around Chelsea. This location is a far cry from the affluent and sought after Fifth Avenue, W ashington Square, and east side of the city.

As w ould seem to suit a residence heyond th e environs of accepted N ew York society, the exterior of the boarding-house is rundown, and its inappropriateness as a residence for Lily is seen through the eyes of Sim on Rosedale as he scans ‘th e blistered brown stone front ... discoloured lace, and the Pom peian decoration of the m uddy vestibule’(HM, 229) and as he com m ents vociferously to Lily Bart that ‘it is no place for you!’ (HM, 233)

Like M rs. P eniston’s house, this boarding-house is placed tem porally in another tim e. The ‘Pom peian decoration’ alluded to in the above extract points to Clarence C ook’s publication of 1880, W hat

Shall We Do With Our Walls? in which he shapes the tastes in A m erican decorative design by promoting the aesthetic (and social) advantages of classical Pom peian decoration. T his was a trend 20 years previous to the period in w hich The House of Mirth is placed. This only serves to focus on the fact that the boarding-house h asn ’t been decorated for a very long tim e, and that it exists outside Lily B art’s ideal temporal location as well as her ideal spatial location.

In term s of th e interior of the boarding-house, th e décor is in sym pathy w ith both location and exterior detail. Indeed, there is

*#152 'Beyond!': The Burt Milieu som ething redolent of Charlotte Perldns G ilm an’s w onderful short story T h e Yellow Wallpaper’ (1892) in term s of th e confined ‘small q uarters’ of Lily Bart’s ‘narrow room’ w ith ‘its blotched wall-paper and shabby p a int’(HM, 224-25), There is indeed a correlation betw een b o th m ilieu and em otional state in b o th The House of Mirth and ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’, and this coupled w ith ‘th e peacock-blue parlour, w ith its bunches of dried pampas grass, and discoloured steel engravings of sentim ental episodes, ... [and] the dusty console adorned w ith a Rogers statu ette ’(HM, 232) substantiates the fact th at this is a place w hich is unsuitable for Lily Bart. It is as unsuitable as the P eniston m ansion was, in th a t it is of another age, it is n o t of Lily’s ‘m o m ent’. Also, it lacks suitability as it is aesthetically exhausted; it does not match th e beauty and freshness of Lily Bart even in her m ost im poverished state. N o t for th e first time in The House of Mirth we becom e aware th a t m ilieu and character becom e entw ined. Lily sees a connotation betw een her physical state and the aesthetic surroundings of the boarding-house residence:

For a while she had been sustained by this desire for privacy and independence; but now, perhaps from increasing physical weariness, the lassitude brought about by hours of unwanted confinem ent, she was beginning to feel acutely the ugliness and discomfort of her surroundings. (HM, 224)

M uch like her initial feelings in aw akening in th e H atch residency of th e Em porium H otel for the first time, likewise with th e boarding­ house these feelings soon turn to despair. In reading the physical/aesthetic dichotom y, we should also note th e transform ative qualities of th e boarding-house environm ent through Lawrence Selden’s positive em otional outlook as he sees him self stride tow ard a future w ith Lily Bart:

*#153 'Beyond!': The Bai t Milieu

The next m orning rose mild and bright, with a promise of summer in the air. The sunlight slanted joyously down Lily’s street, mellowed the blistered house-front, gilded the paintless railings of the door-step, and struck prism atic glories from the panes of her darkened window. W hen such a day coincides with the inner mood there is intoxication in its breath (HM, 251 )

Selden’s own positive attitu d e and flexibility of approach now mirrors his earlier feelings on visiting G erty Parish’s flat for dinner. Through his happiness a patina of respectability and accommodation can be reached. Yet fate has its p art to play in the life of Lawrence Selden too. T he tem porary gilding of what Lily herself w ould perceive as the soiled cage of b o th G erty’s flat and th e boarding-house, is just that, tem porary. Lily Bart’s ‘struggle against th e influence of her surroundings’ (HM, 256) ends where th e fates of heredity and milieu have always led throughout the text, beyond the periphery of the physical city and its society, (beyond the periphery of life itself,) into death.

h e id e a t h a t L il y B a r t is s u b je c t t o powerful social centrifugal T forces is probably most obvious in the penultim ate chapter of The House of Mirth. It is at this point th a t Lily B art is now beginning to aclmowledge th e tragic reality of her situation. She has m oved beyond the exterior nature of her ‘m aterial poverty’ and confronted the altogether m ore salient and brutal poverty of her interior life:

It was indeed miserable to be poor — to look forward to a shabby, anxious middle-age, leading by dreary degrees of economy and self- denial to gradual absorption in the dingy communal existence of the boarding-house. But there was something more miserable still — it was the clutch of solitude at her heart, the sense of being swept like a stray uprooted growth down the heedless current of the years. T hat was the feeling which possessed her now — the feeling of being something

*#154 ‘Beyond!': The Bart Milieu

rootless and ephemeral, mere spin-drift of the whirling surface of existence, w ithout anything to which the poor little tentacles of self could cling before the awful flood submerged them . And as she looked back she saw th at there had never been a time w hen she had had any real relation to life. H er parents too had been rootless, blown hither and thither on every wind of fashion, w ithout any personal existence to shelter them from its shifting gusts. She herself had grown up w ithout any one spot of earth being dearer to her than another: there was no centre of early pieties, of grave endearing traditions, to which her heart could revert and from which it could draw strength for itself and tenderness for others. In whatever form a slowly-accumulated past lives in the blood — w hether in the concrete image of the old house stored with visual memories, or in the conception of the house not built with hands, but made up of inherited passions and loyalties — it has the same power of broadening and deepening the individual existence, of attaching it by mysterious links of Idnship to all the mighty sum of hum an striving. {HM, 248)

This passage is w orth quoting in full as it n o t only establishes the interior and exterior chaos of Lily’s life at this p o in t near th e end of the novel, but also firmly reiterates the point of view th a t at the heart of all Lily Bart's perceived shortcom ings is the fact that she had no centre of gravity in term s of a physical domicile, and thus no centre w ithin w hich to gather ‘passions’, ‘loyalties’ and ‘visual m em ories’ w hich would have given her a centre from w hich to thrive. Lily B art’s innate social fluidity, far from being a talent, is the very facet of her personality w hich produces the m ultitude of ‘accidents’ w hich lead to her final resting place: th e boarding-house. Lily Bart’s social fluidity corresponds directly w ith her m definition and h^capacity to find her own environm ent. T he fact th a t Lily Bart has no hom e of her own, no structure to hold and protect her physical and m ental being from m arginalisation, is related directly to the fact th a t her interior self has no lim its; therefore m entally and em otionally Lily cannot be

contained w ith in the city. She has no ‘room of her ow n’ in th e sense of Wharton’s understanding of the preferred harm ony betw een

environm ent and character, and as Lily Bart concedes in this passage

*#155 ‘BLjoitd!': The B art Milieu

‘[s]he herself had grown up w ithout any one spot of earth being dearer to her th a n another.'

*#156 H

^Iln em r iris anisikina a&ain i i l l i r i s .J ^ e w !%»:

..ail literature, iu one sense, is made up of guide-books.

Herman Melville’

To name a place, in fiction, is to pretend in some degree to represent it — and I speak here of course hut o f the use of existing names, the only ones that cany might.

Henry James-

riting of The House of Mirth in 1905, Edith W harton talks of ‘our new world, where the sudden possession of m oney has come w ithout inherited obligations or any traditional sense of solidarity between the classes/^ Ralph Marvell in The Custom of the Countiy — published eight years later — ponders also of the ‘new w orld’ whose genesis lay within the insurgent nouveaux riches at large in N ew York City during the first decade of the tw entieth centuiy;

what Popple called society was really just like the houses it lived in; a muddle of misapplied ornam ent over a thin steel shell of utility. The steel shell was built up in Wall Street, the social trimmings were hastily added in Fifth Avenue; and the union between them was as monstrous and factitious, as unlike the gradual homogenous growth which flowers into what other countries know as society, as th at between the Blois

' Herman Melville. Rcdhiirii: Hi.s First Voyage [1849] (London; Constable & Co., 1929), 201

' Henry James. ‘New York Edition Preface to Roderick Hudson.’ hr. Henry James. Literaiy Criticism: French W iiters, Other European Writers, The Thcfaces of the New York Edition (New York: Library of America, 1984), 1043

’ Letter from Edith Wharton to Dr. Morgan Dix, [December 5'’’, 1905]. In: The Letters of Edith Wharton, edited by R.W.B. Lewis and Nancy Lewis (London: Simon & Schuster, 1988), 99

*#157 ‘I’ll never tiy anything again till I try New York. ’

gargoyles on Peter Van Degen’s roof and the skeleton walls supporting them .’'*

M arvell, in articulating his thoughts in such a way, tells us of the traditionalist ‘D agonet view of life’ (CC, 669). In particular, he provides a D agonet reading of their own society as having evolved naturally through ‘gradual homogenous growth’ as opposed to the pejorative view of th e insurgent invader society as ‘monstrous and factitious’, built upon financially strong yet insubstantiate social and cultural foundations. Importantly, Marvell also makes im plicit the correlation betw een character and setting in the com m ent ‘society was really just like the houses it lived in .’ This correlation betw een

‘society’ and its ‘houses’ is the paradigm w hich drives th e ekphrastic analyses throughout all of W harton’s N ew York fiction, and in The Custom of the Country it is a vital elem ent not only in term s of decoding the m ore sophisticated nuances of narrative, but also in term s of the overarching structure of the text itself.

In creating this paradigm to look at Edith W h arto n ’s m ajor N ew York texts, there m ay well be a perceived obstacle in the application of such an analysis to The Custom of the Countiy. The structure of The Custom of the Countiy — w hich could well be subtitled ‘The C ustom of Two C ountries’ — is such that only half of the novel is actually set in N ew York, w ith the rem ainder prim arily in France. The Custom of the Countiy has five books, w ith the first set prim arily in N ew

York, and the last in Saint D ésert and Paris. A lready we can see a catoptric structure^. T he m iddle three books are prim arily set w ithin N ew York, yet there is a strong counterbalance w ith th e European

Edith Wharton, The Cu.stom of the Countiy [î913], from Edith Wharton: Novel.<: (New York: Libraiy of America. 1985), 669 (hereafter cited in text as CC)

Catoptric is a term which refers to qualities of mirrors and in particular reflections within mirrors.

*#158 ‘I’ll never tiy anything again till I try New York. ’ settings. W here W h arto n uses Mrs. Manson M ingott and her milieu in The Age of Innocence to ekphrastically offer a glim pse of N ew York society's changing nature, W h arto n is certainly m ore explicit in her structure of The Custom of the Countiy. T he difficulty here could be seen to be that an analysis of the N ew York ekphrases w ould constitute only a partial analysis of the text, and that this novel’s inclusion in a thesis on W harton’s major N ew York texts could well be seen as invalid in some respects. Yet, acknow ledging th a t the European elem ent is vital to the overall understanding of the novel, there can be no doubt that N ew York C ity is the vital elem ent at the heart of this text. It is the contrasting Spragg, Marvell and Van Degen m ilieus in particular w hich delineate and substantiate not only the m ajor characterizations, but also th e m ajor them es at th e centre of the novel. It is the N ew York elem ents of th e novel w hich provide the m ost substantive ekphrastic m aterial and associated analyses, yet the European dim ension of the text is of some im portance, W harton’s catoptric structure throughout the novel serves to use the reflected European spatial analogues as a com m entary in them selves upon their N ew York equivalents.

W harton’s delineations of the tw o societies are reflections of each other; they are likenesses yet w ith the reversal of structure th a t is inherent w ithin all reflections. W h en we look into a m irror we are seeing a likeness of our own face, yet the structure is reversed in the sense th a t th e m irror-im age has been folded around th e vertical axis to create a left-right transposition, hence a structural reversal. The catoptric structure does not only apply to the overarching structure of the novel, but also has a part to play in understanding the central characterisation of U ndine Spragg in the text. As a m irror reflects

*#159 TU never tiy anything again till I tiy New York. ’ light, so Undine reflects the m ultitude of surfaces w hich surround her. N o t only does she reflect the surface aesthetics of her surroundings, but also th e attitudes w hich are firmly associated w ith a particular

surrounding. T he very nature of specularity is th a t a m irror can only reflect w hat is on th e surface; it has no literal power to reflect w hat is subterranean to th e surface image. This intrinsic/extrinsic dichotom y lies not only at the heart of our understanding of reflection but also at

the heart of ekphrastic analysis itself. Ekphrasis allows for the extrinsic descriptive detail contained w ithin certain parts of a text to be decoded. This decoding subsequently reveals intrinsic sem antic content w hich enhances our understanding of the central them atic tenets w ithin a given text. In The Custom of the Countiy this intrinsic/extrinsic

relationship lies not only on the ekphrastic level but on a recurring them atic level. M ore obviously, in W harton’s construction of U ndine Spragg, she has created a character th a t has extrinsic surface appeal

through her visual appearance, yet lacks substantive qualities in terms of her intellectual and em otional pathology. T o all intents and purposes U ndine is the personification of th e 'th in steel shell of u tility ’ sym bolising m aterial w ealth w ith a ‘m uddle of m isapplied ornam ent’ (CC, 669), surface attraction being her sole attraction.

Importantly, if the w ealth weakens so does U ndine, hence her constant drive for m aterial w ealth throughout the novel to sustain and enhance her own existence.

In applying an ekphrastic analysis to the prim ary N ew York

settings w ithin The Custom of the Countiy, we do not only gain a more

thorough understanding of a character (or characters) associated w ith a particular setting, b u t we also gain an insight into th e ‘reflected’

* # 1 6 0 'I’ll never try anything again til! I tiy New York. ' topographical site in France. In using ekphrastic analyses and each reader’s connotative associations w ith N ew York City, th e reader is able to decode the collective descriptive detail w hich creates each topographical site, thus attaining a greater level of understanding of the text. As a result, the reader is able to view th e E uropean reflection of the N ew Y ork site and substantiate th e reading of the site and the associated character. A n obvious example of this w ould be to exam ine Ralph M arvell and his W ashington Square hom e and Raymond de Chelles and his Parisian hom e in the Faubourg Saint Germ ain. These two characters and their fam ily hom es are very sim ilar in many ways, as are their own representational values in relation to the social hierarchies of their respective cities. However, a single m ajor reversal in th e structure of th e reflection is th e survival of de Chelles and the destmction of Marvell at the end of each man’s marriage to U ndine Spragg. This inevitably throws up the question, ‘W h y is there this deviation from such a well rendered reflection?’ The answer is th a t th e catoptric structure W harton has used insists th a t w here there is reflection there is also a structural reversal, a reversal w hich brings to the fore an im portant issue. In this particular case W h arto n is com m enting upon both the strength of the foundations upon which old N ew York society and European aristocracy are built, and Marvell’s particular attitude tow ards his own (constantly evolving) society as that of an outsider; M arvell does n o t link him self to th e evolving N ew York society and as

N ew York society evolves, he does not and suffers as a consequence.

I will be focussing upon these particular aspects of the text w ith m ore rigour in th a t I will once again look to Wharton’s application of her design principle harm onizing location and both

*#161 ‘I’ll mvcr try anything again till I tiy N ov York. ’ interior and exterior architecture with character. It is this particular principle w hich drives the whole analysis, and is one which is structured so well in W harton’s text th a t it is an integral elem ent of the literary architecture of th e novel itself. Yet the overarching issue w hich Wharton appears to be establishing for the reader (and for herself) is th a t of th e nostalgia for a N ew York aristocracy and its structures and traditions — of which she herself was once a part — w hich were undergoing a transmogrification into a society bajTÎj connected to its im m ediate precedents. T he fact that this change is perceived along w ith a view of the survivalist European aristocracy as personified by de Chelles, raises m any questions about the relationship betw een new w orld and old world societies. This relationship n o t only viewed in th e reflected E uropean sites b u t also in th e attitudes w ithin N ew York society itself.

HEN R a l p h M a r v e l l t e l l s t h e r e a d e r th a t he ‘som etim es W called his m other and grandfather the Aborigines and likened them to those vanishing denizens of the A m erican con tin en t doom ed to rapid extinction w ith the advance of the invading race’(CC, 669), he is articulating b o th his own and E dith W harton’s recognition of the inevitability of th e upheaval of the final rem nants of old N ew York society as they b o th Imew it. This aclm ow ledgem ent of the shifting hegem ony toward th e invader race of the nouveaux riches, and the social and geographical peripheralisation of the old N ew York society th a t his m other and grandfather (and M arvell him self) represent, lies at the

*#162 TU never try anything again till I try New York. ’ centre of the ekphrastic analysis of th e N ew York topographical sites in The Custom of the Countiy. In U ndine Spragg and her parents we have the literal em bodim ent of this ‘invading race’ who have docked for em barkation ‘in the lofty hotels m oored like a sonorously nam ed fleet of b attle­ ships along the upper reaches of the West Side: the O lym pian, the Incandescent, the O rm olu’(CC, 638) and of course th e Stentorian. Each one of these structures is declaratory in its very name^, and w ith the Stentorian, w ith its m etaphorical voice, ‘m onum ental threshold’ and a ‘façade ... all aglow’, we encounter a m ilieu w hich wishes to be seen, heard and Imown, as does U ndine Spragg. The Stentorian Hotel in The Custom of the Countiy was in fact The Majestic Hotel which was located at W est 72"'’ Street at C entral Park (as is The Stentorian in the novel, w here U n d in e’s bedroom ‘looked along Seventy-second Street tow ard th e leafless tree-tops of the C entral Park' (633)). Ironically enough, th e building w hich occupied the corner opposite The Majestic was the now famous Dakota Apartm ent Building at 1 W est 72'"’ Street. Built at the initiative of Edward Clark, president of the Singer M anufacturing Company, the D akota’s nam e was said to reflect its rem oteness at th e time it was built (1882-84). V ery m uch like Mrs.

M anson M ingott’s house in The Age of Innocence, th e D akota was seen to be in the ‘wilderness’ of the city. U ndine also talks of th e ‘D akota divorce-court’ (862) in C hapter XXV of the novel; w here she had to go to obtain a divorce from Ralph Marvell. The battleship m etaphor also points to the m ercenary and acquisitive attitu d e of the Spraggs as they

‘em bark’ from the w est on th e ‘shores’ of N ew York City. As we have

Stentor was a Greek herald in The Iliad ‘endu’d with brazen lungs/ Whose throat surpass’d the force of fifty tongues’ [V: 978-979], Homer. The Iliad, translated by Alexander Pope (Harinondsworth: Penguin, 1996), 252

*#163 'I’ll never try iinytliing again till I try N o v York. ' previously discovered, Wharton’s use of m ilieu is never gratuitous, particularly w ithin her m ajor N ew York novels. M ore so, it is an integral elem ent w ithin th e works as it pertains to her understanding of th e harm ony betw een setting and character, or indeed the

disharmony, as seen w ith Lily Bart in The House of Mirth. In term s of W harton’s view of the harm ony betw een character, external architecture and interior design, the S tentorian H otel proves

to be ideally suited to U ndine Spragg. T he Looey suite w here U ndine lives ‘showed no traces of human use’(CC, 623), it is an environm ent w hich has no personal im print of its inhabitant, and we could very well state th a t at the beginning of the novel U ndine Spragg has no

personality to im print upon her environm ent. In th e opening chapter of th e novel, we find out that although she has been in the city for two years. U ndine Spragg and her parents ‘had m ade little progress in establishing relations w ith their new environm ent’(CC, 627); U ndine h ad n o t engaged w ith the

environm ent and the environm ent had not engaged w ith her. U ndine

Spragg could be said to be m uch like a m irror w hen the reader is introduced to the character; her ‘passionately im itative’(CC, 633) self constructs a personality through her absorption of th e extrinsic detail w hich she comes into contact w ith at any given m om ent. She m ay also be viewed as a tabula rasa in th a t she has, at th e opening of the novel,

yet to be ‘inscribed’ upon. H er early understanding of N ew York society, w hilst still living in Apex, ‘had been m ade fam iliar by

passionate poring over the daily press.’(CC, 639) U ndine constructs

her personality and life around im pressions gleaned from the press,

her surroundings and everything that passes past her eyes and ears.

Indeed, U n d in e’s ideas on Europe were ‘gathered ... chiefly from the

*#164 'I’ll iiei’er try anything again till I tty Nutv York. ' conversation of her experienced a tte ndant’ (CC, 717) and like a m irror, U ndine ‘could n o t help m odelling herself on th e last person she m et’ (CC, 633). It is U ndine Spragg’s extrinsic aesthetic qualities w hich act as a key into the societies throughout The Custom of the Country, and as previously stated, this seems to be th e very way in w hich th e S tentorian itself functions. U ndine reflects her environm ent, unlike other W h arto n protagonists such as Ellen Olenska, Mrs. Manson M ingott, G erty

Parish, and Julia Peniston w hose milieus reflect character. A s a reflective surface U ndine ‘was w hat the gods had made her — a creature of sldn- deep reactions’(CC, 770); she leaves no im print of her own upon the setting itself. U n d in e’s uniqueness in The Custom of the Country lies in her ability to absorb light and reflect a likeness of a m ilieu in hum an form, a fact which m ay well help support W harton’s own nostalgia- driven agenda as to the inappropriateness of these invaders overwriting, as it were, the old N ew York m ercantile aristocracy of w hich she herself h ad once been a part.

h e h o t e l m i l ie u , in g e n e r a l , is one w hich Wharton uses to T great effect in th a t it is a place w hich houses persons of questionable repute: those who are rootless and ill-bred ... a residence for characters who are undergoing or attem pting to undergo, a change in social standing ... the antithesis of what [Wharton] considered to be the ideal home.^

T hrough this understanding of the hotel in E dith W harton’s novels, we can see th a t U ndine Spragg is perfectly suited to the hotel

*tpl65 'I'll never try einytliing again till I tty Nciv York. ’ environm ent, as she has elem ents of all of th e above in her characterization. G ary Lindberg goes on to w rite th a t hotels had becom e ‘representative of a new w ay of life’® at th e beginning of the tw entieth century, and in The Custom of the Country, w ith its them e of social assim ilation assum ing a central role in th e novel, th e hotel-world

of the S tentorian in particular has an im portant role to play. In an ekphrastic analysis of the Stentorian, one need only look at the physical location of the hotel in order to place it w ithin the topographical hierarchy of th e city: it is placed on th e W est side of the city, w hich is associated w ith apartm ent and hotel living, and more particularly, is distanced from the w ealthy and more sophisticated East side of th e city and its age-old connections to N ew York’s own ‘aristocratic’ com m unities.

It is interesting to note th a t The Custom of the Country was published a m ere dozen years before F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925). Both texts investigate the insurgency of individuals

from th e W est into the East, and show the repercussions of this juxtaposition in such surprisingly different ways. In The Grrat Gatsby, a novel devoid of a moral centre in many ways, ‘th e E ast’ — East Egg

w here T om and D aisy Buchanan live — comes to represent old m oney and old society, and their understated ‘red-and-w hite Georgian

Colonial m ansion, overlooldng th e bay’ w ith its front door a ‘quarter

of a m ile’ from the beach points to the B uchanans having confidence

in their w ealth and position w ithout having to publicise the fact. In

particular, this interior is one w hich maps on to Daisy Buchanan’s ephem eral personality w ith its ‘French windows ... ajar and gleaming

' Koprince. ‘Edith Wharton’s Hotels', 13

“ Gary H. Lindberg. Edith Wharton and the Novel ofMatincrs (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. 1975), 95

*#d66 ‘I'll never try any thing again till I try Nciv York. ' w h ite’ w ith a breeze w hich ‘blew curtains in at one end and out of the other like pale flags, tw isting them up tow ard the frosted wedding- cake of th e ceiling’^ a description w hich in itself foreshadows D aisy’s own im pending moral frivolity and ephem erality. T he ‘W e st’ of W est Egg and Jay Gatsby’s mansion, can so obviously be described as a ‘muddle of m isapplied ornam ent over a th in steel shell of utility. ’ Gatsby’s house geographically and aesthetically opposes th e B uchanan’s and was ‘a factual im itation of

some H ôtel de Ville in N orm andy, w ith a tow er on one side, spanldng

new under a th in beard of raw ivy, and a marble swim m ing pool, and

m ore than forty acres of lawn and garden’'® — this is a house which has an adolescent compunction to show off and attract the butterflies

from across the bay, and points to not only a naivety in understanding the social m echanics at w ork here, but also of Gatsby’s desperation. A lthough finally perceived as amoral by N ick Carraway at the end of the novel, m oneyed old society — like de Chelles in The Custom of the Country — nonetheless survives and strives unlike M arvell. In

W harton, we have a som ew hat m ore cynical (and maybe realistic)

view of this conflict, as the West meets East, and once again has the same representational them e of the nouveaux riches being associated

w ith the W est, and the old m oney being associated w ith the East. As

I’ve previously m entioned, there is (early in th e text) an im plicit understanding th a t th e invaders from the W est have power, m oney

and influence enough to conquer and subjugate the old society. Ralph M arvell is testam ent to the fact that the pow er balance has gone

' F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Great Gat.djy [1925], edited willt an introduction and notes by Ruth Prigozy, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 9-10

Ibid, 8

isp l6 7 I ’ll never tiy anything again till I try Netv York. ’ against th e patriarchs, and that the new m oney w ith the inherent attitudes, is here to stay. As Fifth A venue dissects New York C ity to form the east-west axis around w hich the social hierarchies of W harton’s N ew York novels are constructed, all the m ajor domiciles in her fiction of any social worth’ are consistently placed upon the east side of the city, and those of th e perceived social inferiors, on the west. In The Age of Innocence th e M ingotts, Van der Luydens, and Archers inhabit the east w hilst Ellen O lenska inhabits the w estern reaches of 23'"' Street. In The

House of Mirth, Lily Bart not only moves further away from the centre of the city in a southerly direction, but also moves to the w est where she finds her final resting place in the boarding-house on the w estern periphery of the city and society. Likewise in The Custom of the Country, the west side of th e city is inhabited by the S tentorian, and Ralph and

U n d in e’s m arital hom e on W est End Avenue — actually belonging to U ndine Spragg’s father therefore associated w ith th e Spraggs rather th an th e M arvells — w hilst on th e east are the great houses on Fifth Avenue (the A venue itself is seen socially to be on th e east) which U ndine aspires to and acquires by the end of th e novel.

T he S ten to rian ’s physical location places it low down the social hierarchy in term s of its geographical location w ithin N ew York City.

In reality Wharton modelled the S tentorian on the M ajestic H otel w hich had th e D akota apartm ent building on the opposite corner of W est Seventy-second Street. The fact that th e D akota had been seen to have acted as a ‘symbolic gatew ay’" from the w ilderness of the W est into N ew York civilization places the S tentorian on the very periphery of N ew York C ity’s social heart. T he S tentorian is the

" Stern, Mellins &_ Fishman, Neiv York 1S80, 752 'I’ll never try anything again till I try Netv York. ’ perfect starting p oint for U ndine Spragg w ithin the catoptric structure of The Custom of the Country, as this is m irrored w ith her notional position in th e city at th e end of the novel at 5009 Fifth Avenue: on the socially prestigious east side of the city, and as high up Fifth A venue as you can go.

T he highly ornate S tentorian (and in particular the Looey suites w hich are inhabited by the Spraggs,) is replete w ith ‘gilt armchairs ... highly-varnished m ahogany ... salmon-pink damask ... florid carpet ...

and M exican onyx.’(CC, 623) This is an environm ent w here external adornm ent is paramount and serves to attract the social moths that will gild the hotel w ith th eir presence. U n d in e’s own construction, defined in a sense by her position as a reflective surface w ithin this society, m irrors th e m ilieu w hich she inhabits at th e beginning of the

novel in her own physical appearance w hich is described as ‘vivid’ yet possibly ‘crude’ (like the S tentorian itself), w ith her

black brows, her reddish tawny hair and the pure red and white of her complexion defied the searching decomposing radiance; she m ight have been some fabled creature whose home was in a beam of light. (CC, 635)

U n d in e’s external picture is very m uch like th a t of her ‘polychrom e suite at th e S tentorian’(CC, 826); indeed she m irrors it very well, and offers the reader a first ironic glimpse of her intrinsic nature.

A lthough it is the Spraggs as a fam ily w ho inhabit the

Stentorian, it is a habitation w hich is particularly associated w ith

U ndine. W h en U ndine leaves the Stentorian, it is alm ost inevitable th a t her parents will move to an environm ent w hich b etter suits them ,

hence th eir shift further downtown to that ‘grim abode’ (CC, 865),

the M alibran H otel. T he ekphrastic analysis of th e S tentorian’s

4 ^ 1 6 9 ‘I’ll never tiy aiijnlting again till I tiy New York. ’ location on the social periphery of old N ew York society; its external ornam ent of th e ‘m arble vestibule’ and ‘m onum ental façade’ all aglow; and th e gaudy hyperbolism of th e Looey suites inh ab ited by U ndine all firm ly establish U ndine Spragg’s own id en tity for the reader. She has been a tabula rasa who has, after all, been inscribed by her inhabited environm ent, and is a character w ho has nothing to offer in term s of inscribing her own personality upon an environm ent. O f course this relationship is indicative of th e hotel-world w hich U ndine inhabits, and inhabit it she does throughout the novel as she moves through th e S tentorian and M alibran in N ew York; her honeym oon hotel in Siena; the Engadine Palace in St. M oritz; and the

N ouveau Luxe in Paris. H er com fort in the hotel environm ent is visibly clear w hen Wharton writes that Ralph ‘had risen visibly in her opinion since they had been absorbed into the life of th e big hotels’; only w hen Ralph Marvell is absorbed into U n d in e’s chosen environm ent does she offer some sense of appreciation for her new husband.

M arvell him self observes th a t U ndine, and those ‘duplicates’ who inhabit ‘every scene of continental idleness’(CC, 724), spend

m uch of their time trying to ‘disguise the difference betw een the high

Alps and Paris or N ew Y ork’(CC, 725) to create th a t hom ogenous

‘phantom “society”’(CC, 802) that is the ‘invading race’ of Americans decanted in Europe. This invading race are prim arily the powerful m oneyed class who consistently move tow ard a life of prom iscuous excitem ent in th e public sphere of the hotel, as opposed to the high regard given to a conservative private life by an im p o ten t traditional society such as those of th e D agonets and de Chelles.

##470 ‘I’ll never tty aiiytltiiig agaitt till I tty Netv York. ’

Charles Bowen, a friend and companion of Mrs. H enley Fairford, is cast by Wharton as the seemingly objective voice of the social anthropologist. I say ‘seem ingly’ objective because Bowen, like Ralph M arvell, has a distinctly smug attitu d e tow ard the phantom society of the invading race. This attitude seems to be one borne out of a sense th a t old N ew York society will still flourish accordingly even w ith the advent of a new strain of N ew York society. H e offers a view sim ilar to that of Marvell as he surveys the dining-room of the N ouveau Luxe;

During some forty years’ perpetual exercise of his perceptions he had never come across anything that gave them the special titillation produced by the sight of the dinner-hour at the N ouveau Luxe: the same sense of putting his hand on human nature’s passion for the factitious, its incorrigible habit of im itating the imitation.

[■ • ■] The dining-room at the Nouveau Luxe represented ... what unbounded material power had devised for the delusion of its leisure: a phantom “society,” with all the rules, smirks, gestures of its model, but evoked out of promiscuity and incoherence while the other had been the product of continuity and choice. (CC, 802-03)

Bowen aclaiowledges the fact that these societies are but imitations of the ‘model’ society, and Joseph Ward sums up the moral and cultural vacuousness of the ‘phantom “society”’ when he writes that ‘[t]o live and play in a hotel is to abdicate responsibility for one’s residence and one’s behaviour. Hotel life implicitly extends freedom and condones carelessness.’'^ Lily Bart’s quest to appropriate her own place in The House of Mirth was one based upon the idea that a specific milieu would cement her place and role in society, thus it would also define the appropriate behaviour associated with that position in society.

Undine Spragg’s own preference for the hotel seems to reinforce this

■ Joseph A. Ward. "The Amazing Hotel World” of James, Dreiser and W harton.’ hi: Lyall H, Powers, ed. Leon Edcl atid L ite n u y A rt {Studies in Modern Literature, No. 84} (Ann Arbor/ London; UMI Research Press, 1988), 159

*#171 ‘I’ll never tiy anything again till I try Netv York. ’ idea of social and moral fibre being intrinsically associated w ith the physical m ilieu in w hich W harton’s characters exist. U ndine Spragg is the em bodim ent of the hotel w orld in The

Custom of the Country \

The asserted noise and brilliance offered by these establishm ents is the desired alternative to the quietness and subdued light of the old New York and Paris communities th at mom entarily lure U ndine, but which finally bore her, in spite of her yearning to possess the social benefits of the aristocracies.'^

She also em bodies th a t view of life w hich says that the grms is always grrener on the other side, and w ith m arriage, U ndine seems to see such a union as a key to the other side as it were, and not a movem ent towards the security of a private and quiet dom estic life. T hroughout th e novel U ndine m arries to enter into what she imagines to be th e newest social

strata, only to be disappointed at th e reality, and retu rn once again to hotel life. This she does in all four of her marriages; her first marriage to Elmer M offatt sees her return to her fam ily and eventually the S tentorian in N ew York; her second marriage to Ralph Marvell sees

them barely leave th e hotel society as they ‘settle’ in W est End Avenue only for Undine to end up w ith Peter V an Degen at the N ouveau Luxe and a selection of other European hotels; her third marriage to Raymond de Chelles ends once again as she recaptures Elmer M offatt in the N ouveaux Luxe; and finally, her fourth marriage to Elmer Moffatt — once again — at the end of a novel. U ndine is housed in a ‘new hôteV in Paris. Hôtel in French does n o t necessarily m ean a hotel in the English-American sense. M ore exactly, U ndine’s

new hom e in Paris w ith Elmer M offatt is m ore probably an hôtel particulier, w hich is m ore aldn to a private tow nhouse. Although this

Wiircl. "The Amazing Hotel World'", 158

*#172 ‘I'll never tiy nnytliing again till I tiy Nciv York. ’

‘hoteV is in fact her new hom e in Paris, it is to all intents and purposes a hotel m uch like all the others she has lived in throughout the novel. A lthough Hôtel Moffatt is n o t strictly a hotel, it is in m any respects U n d in e’s own private hotel, and retains many of the qualities of the Stentorian. Located in ‘one of the new quarters of Paris’(CC, 1003) comparable to the location of th e S tentorian in th e Upper West Side of N ew York, U n d in e’s new hom e has an exterior w hich is one of public display:

The trees were budding symmetrically along the avenue; and Paul, loolding down, saw, between windows and tree-tops, a pair of tall iron gates with gilt ornam ents, the marble curb of a semi-circular drive, and bands of spring flowers set in turf. (CC, 1003)

T he exterior architecture and landscape of the Moffatts’ new hom e encourages guests tow ards it; w hilst the S tentorian is conspicuous by its polychrom atic nature and its mass of gilt applied at every turn, the description above is one th a t is redolent of the public entrance to a grand hotel.

T he interior of Hôtel Moffatt is also of th e scale of a grand hotel like the S tentorian w ith an ‘im m ense m arble dining-room’ and a décor w hich is altogether as clinical and wwlived-in as an hotel w ith its

gold arm-chairs ... gold baskets heaped with pulpy summer fruits ... crystal decanters with red and yellow wine, ... and against the walls were sideboards w ith great pieces of gold and silver, ewers and urns and branching candelabra, which sprinlded the green marble walls with starlike reflections. (CC, 1005)

Paul M arvell feels ‘em barrassed’ by the ‘newness and sumptuousness’ of the large m arble dining-room, and the décor itself seems to literally repel any idea of the personal im print and supports th e idea of this interior aesthetic m élange as being sym bolic of w ealth and not taste or necessity w ith its ‘w hite fur rugs and brocade chairs [...] maliciously on the w atch for sm ears and ink-spots.’ (CC, 1004)

*#173 ‘I’ll never try any thing again till I tiy Neiv York. '

T he Hôtel Moffatt is a structure w hich m ay be ow ned by U ndine and Elm er Moffatt, but like th e structure itself, everything w hich ornam ents th e hôtel has been appropriated in order to create an extrinsic image of culture and tradition, very much as Moffatt had done to his W all Street office w hen he first tasted financial success. His office, in a utilitarian and nondescript ‘steel and concrete tow er’ (CC, 701) called th e A rarat building, is a building w ith a nam e w hich is not lost on th e reader w ith the biblical connotation referring to the landing place of N oah’s Ark; to th e place of the new beginning as a new existence is inscribed upon an old one. Moffatt’s office is transform ed by the application of a ‘muddle of m isapplied ornam ent’:

Paint varnish and brass railings gave an air of opulence to the outer precincts, and the inner room, with its m ahogany bookcases containing morocco bound “sets” and its wide blue leather arm-chairs, lacked only a palm or two to resemble the lounge of a fashionable hotel. Moffatt himself, as he came forward, gave Ralph the impression of having been done over by the same hand: he was smoother, broader, more supremely tailored, and his whole person exhaled the faintest w hiff of an expensive scent. (CC, 920)

W e are sure the books have been purchased for extrinsic ornam entation and not intrinsic w orth, and Wharton once again firmly associates environm ent w ith character by noting th a t the application of décor to Moffatt’s office and his person were possibly applied by ‘the same h a n d ’. The office is also likened to a hotel lounge w hich supports the idea that Moffatt too has a predilection for hotel living. This acquisition and application of ornam ent is em phasised all th e m ore in th e Hôtel Moffatt itself.

T he ‘wigged and corseleted heroes on the walls' of the Hôtel M offatt did n o t represent Elmer M offatt’s ancestors; the books in the library ‘bound in dim browns and golds’, like those ‘m orocco-bound

“sets’” in his W all Street office, are there for th eir aesthetic qualities

*#174 'I'll never try anything again till I try Neiv York. ’ and not for th eir intellectual worth as is show n by their visual availability and intellectual unavailability behind th e ‘gilt trellising’ in th e library. Elm er M offatt’s purchase of the de Chelles tapestries, the V andyck painting ‘Grey Boy’, and Marie A n to in ette’s ‘necklace and tiara of pigeon-blood rubies’(CC, 1004-09) all further display the social strategy of the invading race: to apply a ‘muddle of m isapplied ornam ent over a th in steel shell of u tility ’ built upon speculative

financial transactions in th e engine-house of N ew Y ork City, W all

Street. T he ekphrastic analysis of the S tentorian H otel, based upon the reading of locale, exterior, and interior décor, translates to the reader a subtle y et incisive reading of th e character w ho inhabits the hotel, U ndine Spragg. As Wharton herself wrote: ‘th e first page of a novel

ought to contain the germ of the w hole’ and the opening chapter w ithin the Stentorian, establishes a w orld w hich is m irrored

throughout th e novel. This particular p attern concerning the hotel-

world and Undine Spragg serves W harton’s own agenda of attacldng the im perm anence and vulgarity of the pervasive nouveaux riches as they establish them selves w ithin N ew York society. It is not only the brutal acquisitiveness of th e nouveaux riches, b u t th eir parasitical absorption of th e superficial features of th e h o st society which

W h arto n seems to be com m enting upon here. This ‘new society’ is one w hich very quicldy has moved from infancy to full exterior

developm ent w ithout having gone through adolescence, w ith a resultant im m aturity concerning trad ition and morality.

*#175 'I’ll never tiy nnything again till I try New York. ’

e n r y Ja m e s , in w h a t h e h im s e l f would call a ‘topographical H parenthesis’ in his novel Washington Square, depicts the early years of Washington Square as being the ‘ideal of quiet and genteel retirem ent’ w ith ‘very solid and honourable dwellings ... of established repose’,'"' This m ay well have been th e case early in the nineteenth century, but as th e century progressed and com m erce and population grow th fuelled the city’s northward expansion, the established families of Old N ew Y ork’s m ercantile aristocracy would move northward as well. By th e latter quarter of the nineteenth-century W ashington

Square had been surpassed as the m ost fashionable neighbourhood in w hat Edwin Burroughs and M ike W allace w ould call ‘th e social arms race’.'^ As a result, most of N ew York’s major families would inevitably move northward toward Murray H ill and Fifth Avenue. Eric H om berger points out that as early as the 1880s the geographical distribution of the old N ew York ‘P atriarchs’'^ — the self­ elected N ew York aristocracy — was beginning to move away from W ashington Square, but would still lie w ithin the geographical param eters w hich w ould define the N ew York social hierarchy:

thirteen [Patriarchs] lived on Fifth Avenue and an additional seventeen lived on the blocks immediately east and west of Fifth. Three Patriarchs lived on M adison Avenue, two on Lexington Avenue, and two lived on Gramercy Park. Only two continued to live on W ashington Square.'^

The fact that Ralph Marvell and the D agonet fam ily seat is still located in W ashington Square at the tu rn of the tw en tieth century has a very specific m eaning w ithin the context of E dith W harton’s The

'■* Henry James. Washington Square, In: Novels 1881-1886 (New York: Library of America, 1985), 15-16

Edwin G. Burrows &. Mike Wallace. Gotham: A Histoiy of New York City to 1898 (New York; Oxford University Press, 1999), 1083

Eric Homberger. Mrs. A stor’s N ew York: Money and Social Power in the Gilded Age (New Haven &, London: Yale University Press, 2002), 189.

" Homberger. Mr.s. A stor’s New York, 190

##176 ‘I’ll never try any thing again till I tiy New York. ’

Custom of the Countiy. The geographically static M arvell and his

D agonet precedents are in this situation for two particular reasons. First, th e D agonets do n o t have th e financial w herew ithal of many of the other families w ithin th e patrician group of old N ew York society, a fact that is articulated by Ralph Marvell’s understanding th at ‘[m jaterial resources were lim ited on bo th sides of the house’(CC, 671). Therefore th e financial power to move further northward was n o t available to the D agonets. It is also im p ortant to note th at expansion northwards — throughout the nineteenth-century in particular — into new territory on Manhattan Island by the m ercantile aristocracy, was dependant on owning their own m eans of transport (be that by horses or horsepower). It is noticeable th a t the

M arvells/D agonets do n o t have their own m eans of transport, a further com m ent upon their overall position w ithin the financial hierarchy of the patrician society.

Secondly, and most im portant in term s of the central them atic concerns of The Custom of the Country, th e geographical stagnation of

the D agonets and Ralph Marvell establishes th em as a symbol of the indigenous aristocratic race of N ew York. T he em phasis here seems to focus upon what the gilded band of invaders did not have, and that is

pedigree. T he fact that the house on W ashington Square is inhabited

at one tim e in the novel by four generations of Marvells/D agonets

serves to p oint to a tim e w hen society had ‘organized social bastions based n o t on w ealth, or even accom plishm ent, but on heredity.’'® As the house and its location are seen as tired and behind the tim es, so

the values w hich the house on W ashington Square represent are seen as exhausted and indeed fragm enting in the glare of the new mélange

Bunavvs &. W allace. Gotham, 1083

*#177 'I’ll never Oy anything again till I tiy Neiv York. ’ of society. This is a view w hich is m ade all the clearer w hen this particular topographical seat is exam ined ekphrastically. An ekphrastic analysis of Ralph Marvell’s house on W ashington Square entails three particular strands of analysis; location, exterior, and interior. U nderstanding th e overarching ekphrastic effect generated through th e interaction of these three strands creates, in turn, a solid understanding that another triumvirate is created; th at of W ashington Square, Ralph Marvell and Old N ew York society, and that to understand one elem ent is to understand all elem ents. In term s of location, I have already discussed W ashington Square’s historical position as the genteel neighbourhood of the m iddle decades of the n ineteenth century, but what is as im portant as this historical contextualization are the spatial hierarchies at w ork w hen viewing the

M arvell/D agonet house on W ashington Square at th e tu rn of the tw entieth century.

There is no doubt that Washington Square has held a very im portant, yet fluid, position w ithin the spatial hierarchies of New

York C ity since its inception at the beginning of the nineteenth

century. At one tim e, W ashington Square was the pre-em inent neighbourhood w ithin the city, and held a pre-em inent hierarchical position in th a t it was b o th ‘central’ and at th e ‘to p ’ of the city.

Although this neighbourhood would always have central pre-em inence on the east-w est axis, and therefore never be tain ted as socially

dubious as is the case of the neighbourhoods Ellen O lenska and Lily

Bart would in h ab it in The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth, it is along the north-south axis th a t W ashington Square w ould be devalued through tim e.

*#178 'I'll never tiy anything again till I tiy N ew York. '

N ew York society’s inexorable move north through the city in the n ineteenth century, as I have previously m entioned, was one w hich was driven prim arily by commerce and th e fact that by the 1830s, in and around th e exclusive B attery Park area, the ‘m urm ur of trade had becom e a m ighty uproar/'^ This m oved the w ealthier citizens north to the W ashington Square area, w hich in m any respects could be seen as th e last bastion of a N ew York that had not yet started to inhabit th e grid system outlined in The Commissioners’ Plan of 18117® Where this m igration northward in the 1830s would see W ashington Square perceived as being on th e frontier of the city, by 1848 it was to be seen as the heart of the city, and by 1900 it w ould be seen as being firm ly located on the m argins of the city w here

‘society’ was concerned. T he social devaluation of th e area lies in the fact that as tim e moves on and the city expands northwards, the spatial hierarchy of Washington Square changes along th e north-south

axis, and this m ovem ent along the north-south axis of the city is inexorably linked to tim e. T he fact that the M arvells and Dagonets

fail to move throughout the latter part of th e n in eteen th and into the tw entieth century indicates that soon Washington Square will be seen to be literally behind the times.

A t the tu rn of the tw entieth-century th e M arvell/D agonet house

on W ashington Square is still ‘central’ but is lower dow n in the city. O nly a few years later, U ndine Spragg and Elm er Moffatt would be m arried once again, and their own location would also be central on Eifth Avenue, but would undoubtedly be at the top of the city at 5009

‘‘'Jam es. Washington Square, 14

I.N. Phelps Stokes regarded The Commissioners’ Plan as 'marking the end of Old New York and the beginning o f the Modern City.’ The leonograiihy of Manhattan Island, 149S-I909, 6 volumes [1915-28], In: Robert T. Augustyn & Paul E. C ohen. Manhattan in Maps, 1527-1995 (New York; Rizzoli, 1997), 102

*#179 ‘I’ll never tiy anything again till I try New York. ’

Fifth Avenue, up around a non-existent 274®' Street. T he social avarice of both Elm er Moffatt and Undine Spragg locates th eir N ew York address at the absolute pinnacle of society at 5009 Fifth Avenue, a non-existent address, w hich w ould be W h a rto n ’s final im plicit com m ent of such aspiration. This ironic ‘fact’ only serves to underline th e pace and nature of the Moffatt’s acquisition of social currency, and establishes an enormous contrast in the geographies of both W ashington Square and the new frontier at th e top end of Fifth Avenue w here the Moffatts would place them selves. T he geographical gap would also point to the gap in values and pedigree, elem ents th a t would now be buried along w ith the D agonets and be soon forgotten. T he spatial hierarchy of the house as a com m ent upon the

increasingly opaque social position and im portance of the inhabitants of W ashington Square can be substantiated in an analysis of the M arvell house itself. T hrough W harton’s anthropomorphic rendering of th e W ashington Square house, the reader is left in very little doubt as to the fact that the house itself holds w ithin its architecture the

M arvell/D agonet personality:

Ralph Marvell, m ounting his grandfather’s door-step, looked up at the symmetrical old red house-front, w ith its frugal marble ornam ent, as he m ight have looked into a familiar human face. {CC, 668-69)

This extract not only establishes M arvell’s fam iliarity w ith the family

hom e as being like that of an old friend, b u t is also a statem ent w hich

establishes a sharp contrast to the hotels, like th e Stentorian, w ithin w hich U ndine Spragg and her breed flourish. T he exterior of the

W ashington Square house is conservative and ‘frugal’ compared to the gilded behem oths of the stature of the S tentorian and the N ouveau Luxe. Wharton develops this p oint further:

*# 180 TU never try anything again till I try New York. ’

“T hey’re right, — after all, in some ways they’re right,” he m urm ured, slipping his key into the door. “They” were his m other and old Mr. Urban Dagonet, both, from R alph’s earliest memories, so closely identified w ith the old house in W ashington Square th at they might have passed for its inner consciousness as it might have stood for their outward form; and the question as to which the house now seemed to affirm their intrinsic rightness was that of the social disintegration expressed by widely- different architectural physiognomies at the other end of Fifth Avenue. (CC, 669)

T he pedigree of this house and its inhabitants is obvious, b u t vitally, the bond betw een house and inhabitants is m ade explicit. T he exterior of the house and the interior consciousness of its inhabitants seem to merge into a single hom ogenous organism. Thus, early in the novel W h arto n is establishing a central relationship w hich drives our com prehension of not only the them es of the novel itself, but also the m echanics of W h a rto n ’s own fiction.

W here th e S tentorian and its European clones em body the im perm anence and opulence of th e new invader class of Americans, W ashington Square and the M arvell/D agonet house em bodies the traditional conservative values and social prom inence of the patrician families of old N ew York. W harton’s own distaste for the invading classes can be seen in the extracts above. There is a tone of W harton’s own acquiescence of th e traditional Old N ew York ways, yet there is also an understanding of not only the inevitability of the incorporation of th e nouveaux riches into N ew York society, but also the possibility of th e old N ew York society being totally subsum ed and left, as Ralph sees it, as an exhibit ‘at ethnological shows, pathetically engaged in the exercise of their primitive industries.’ (CC, 669)

T he position of W ashington Square w ithin th e spatial hierarchy of fln~de-siècle N ew York, and the staid yet classical exterior of the

M arvell/D agonet house b o th point to the increasing redundancy of the

*#181 TU never tiy dnytliing again till I tiy N ew York. ’

D agonets — and what they represent —w ithin th e social hierarchy of th e city. W h at th e exterior also points to is the intrinsic/extrinsic dichotomy as seen in th e analysis of the Stentorian. W here the S tentorian has a highly ornate and visual exterior (like U ndine Spragg), it has an interior w hich allows no im print of its inhabitants and no personality. Conversely, W ashington Square has no need for exterior ornam ent as the im portance lies in its interior w ealth, and likewise with its inhabitants, interior w ealth ultim ately is valued over exterior aesthetics.

By interior w ealth I do not speak of sumptuous interior décor b u t of personality built of tradition, and of an interior em otional and intellectual life w here sustenance and comfort can be gained. The interior of th e D agonet house is one w hich is subtly lit by lamps as opposed to th e garish electric lamps of the Stentorian, and the interior adornm ent of th e house is also dark and und erstated w ith its ‘faded draw ing-room’(CC, 681), ‘quiet “D utch interior’” (CC, 669), ‘dark mahogany doors’(CC, 669), ‘worn damask’(CC, 756) and the ‘dim portraits of “Signers” and their fem ales’(CC, 681). T he habitat of Ralph M arvell’s sister, Laura Fairford, is also very m uch like the M arvell/D agonet hom e on W ashington Square. Located on ‘Thirty- eighth Street, dow n beyond Park Avenue’(CC, 626) the Fairford house is as peripheral to the fashionable Fifth A venue enclaves as

W ashington Square. Yet the house is still located on the hierarchically im portant ‘rig h t’ (east) of the city. T he interior of th e house is not only notable for its sim ilarity in tone to the M arvell residence in th at it is ‘small and rather shabby’ and is lit softly by ‘green-shaded lamps m aldng faint pools of brightness’, but also, due to th e fact that there

‘was no gilding’ and ‘no lavish diffusion of light’(CC, 642), it is placed

*#182 T il never tty anything again till I try New York. ’ in opposition to the Stentorian. This serves not only to define both traditional and nouveau environm ents, but also to polarise each environm ent’s inhabitants and their incum bent attitudes. N o t only is the interior of th e D agonet residence in W ashington Square described much like a D utch genre painting of a quiet fam ily interior lit dim ly by a few solitary candles, b u t in references to the ‘D utch in terio r’ and the ‘Signers’, W harton establishes the D agonets’ ‘aristocratic’ pedigree. N o t only is reference m ade to their D utch antecedents (as the original inhabitants of N ew

York) but also to ancestors w ho signed the D eclaration of Independence in 1776, facts that im bue the D agonets n o t only w ith tradition b u t w ith status in the foundation of the n atio n itself.

T he entire ekphrastic analysis of W ashington Square in The Custom of the Countiy, constructed of the three elem ents outlined previously, serves to establish the characteristics of Ralph Marvell and his family in the overall context of N ew York society at the tu rn of the tw entieth century. It also serves to offer a contrast w ith the invader race and th eir hotel world. The polarization is im p o rtan t them atically in th a t it tends to foreshadow the inevitable conflict betw een these two elem ents of N ew York society as personified by U ndine Spragg

and Ralph Marvell. It also leads us to view the intrinsic (and extrinsic)

structures of both societies as diam etrically opposed to each other, a fact that would im ply th a t they could not co-exist successfully. Yet Clare V an D egen and her husband seem to offer an example of how

this can function; function it does, but at a cost, as will be dem onstrated later in this chapter.

U nderstanding the ekphrastic elem ents of Washington Square and the D agonet residence, the subterranean narrative they project for

*#183 ‘I'll never tty iinytliing again till I try N ew York. ’ reader now allows us to have a com prehension of its m irror image in Europe; th e ‘fine old m ouldering house’(CC, 938) that is th e H otel de Chelles in Paris.

U ndine Spragg, soon after her marriage to Raymond de Chelles, com m ents that ‘he rem inded her of Ralph’ (CC, 939). This ‘disturbing resem blance to his predecessor’ (CC, 955) is further reiterated w hen M rs. H eeny almost lets slip th a t de Chelles’ infatuation w ith U ndine is redolent of M arvell’s own feelings toward Undine at the tim e of their m arriage w hen she says th a t de Chelles “‘rem inds me of the way ” b u t she broke off suddenly, as if som ething in U n d in e’s look had silenced h er.’(CC, 943) The catoptric effect is obviously functioning in th e depiction of these two characters, b u t this effect is also apparent w hen we view the H ôtel de Chelles. T he location of th e H ôtel de Chelles in the Faubourg Saint G erm ain in Paris establishes the house w ithin the aristocratic suburb of

Paris. T he faubourgs of Paris (and the Faubourg Saint G erm ain in particular) were the neighbourhoods which opened up for the bourgeoisie of Paris in their quest to escape the com m ercialisation of the city as well as the ‘com pressed and sm elly confines of the M arais.’^' T he Faubourg Saint G erm ain was

the stronghold of the Legitimists (that is, the nobility of the ancien regime), the Faubourg in due time had opened up to the newer nobility of the Napoleon and Louis-Philippe regimes. It had also become home to the wealthy industrialists of the middle and late nineteenth century and, after the Franco-Prussian War, to some of the more prom inent writers and artists. Edith Wharton herself lived in its midst from 1900 to 1920, for short periods until 1911, and then on a more perm anent basis after the sale of The M ount, her Lenox residence in western Massachusetts.^^

Alistair Horne. Seven Age.s of Paris: Portrait of a C ity (London: Macmillan, 2002), 141. The genesis of the Faubourg Saint Germain mirrors that of Washington Square.

Anne Foata, ‘Edith Wharton and the Faubourg Saint-Germain: the diary of the Abbe Mugnier' Twentieth Centiiiy Literature, 43.4 (Winter 1997); 394

*#184 ‘I'll never tiy anything again till I tiy Neiv York. '

This suburb m ay well have been the traditional suburb for the aristocratic families of Paris, but by the tu rn of th e tw entieth-century it ‘becam e overshadow ed ... by new breeds of P arisian’^® much like N ew Y ork’s ‘invader race’, and was also an environm ent which was Imown well by Wharton. T he tradition and pedigree of the de Chelles family is also established by highlighting the im portance of heredity w ith the ‘draw ing-room hung w ith portraits of high-nosed personages in perukes and orders’ and the ‘circle of ladies and gentlem en’ looMng like these ‘every-day versions of the official figures above their heads’ (CC, 937). Where Moffatt buys in portraits w hich have no connection to him self or his wife, the de Chelles fam ily portraits are the real thing, and establish th e pedigree of th e fam ily straight away.

In m arrying de Chelles, U ndine is m irroring th e same mistakes th a t she m ade in N ew York in m arrying Ralph Marvell. U ndine Spragg m arries into, and falls in love w ith the idea of w h at each of her husbands represent. T hrough th e extrinsic inform ation she has garnered from gossip and th e press is U ndine m otivated to join the upper echelons of society, and not through an intrinsic Icnowledge or understanding of these m en and their traditions. Both Marvell and de Chelles, once m arried to U ndine Spragg, attem p t to im pose limits upon U n d in e’s chosen social circle; in St. M oritz M arvell tries to

dissuade U ndine from associating w ith Baroness Adelschein, and in Paris, de Chelles attem pts to lim it her association w ith Princess Estradina. Financially, both m en attem p t to curb U n d in e’s insatiable appetite for spending m oney, and both ultim ately fail. Geographically, b o th m en attem p t to settle and locate them selves in w hat U ndine

Spragg could only perceive as social wildernesses: de Chelles moves to

H orne. Seven Ages of Paris, 2 4 5

*#185 'I’ll never tiy anything again till I try Neiv York. ’

Saint D ésert w hich, as the nam e suggests, is a literal wilderness in the eyes of U ndine and w hich keeps her away from th e hotel w orld in Paris w hich offers her such comfort; and Marvell moves to W est End Avenue, seen as a backward step by U ndine as it is even further west th an the Stentorian, thus taking her farther from her desired social berth on Fifth Avenue. In these two particular marriages U ndine Spragg comes to a realization th a t ‘[s]he had found out that she had given herself to the exclusive and the dowdy w hen the future belonged to the showy and prom iscuous.’(CC, 748) T he ‘dow dy’ M arvell/D agonet residence turns out to be an inappropriate ‘setting’ for such a bauble as U ndine Spragg. T he ultim ate end here is th a t U ndine resets the family heirlooms of both Marvell and de Chelles — th e D agonet ring and pendant and the de Chelles’ Boucher tapestries. N o t only are the jewels and the tapestries given new m odern settings to show to the world, but Undine — herself an expensive ornam ent — is given a new settings to be placed in: the H ôtel M offatt in Paris, and the new Fifth

Avenue m ansion in N ew York w hich is a m odern rem odelling of the P itti Palace in Florence.

De C helles’ survival of his marriage to U ndine and M arvell’s death as a result of his marriage to U ndine can be viewed as an im portant p o in t of divergence betw een the two characters. Ralph M arvell speaks from a position outside the ‘aboriginal’ standpoint of his m other and grandfather:

Small, cautious, middle-class, had been the ideals of aboriginal New York; bu t it suddenly struck the young man that they were singularly coherent and respectable as contrasted w ith the chaos of indiscriminate appetites which made up its modern tendencies. He too had wanted to be “m odern,” had revolted, half-humorously, against the restrictions and exclusions of the old code; and it m ust have been by one of the ironic reversions of heredity that, at this precise point, he began to see w hat

*#186 'I’ll iicvtT try any thing again till I tiy Netv York. ’

there was to be said on the other side — his side, as he now felt it to be. (CC, 669-70)

M arvell, in stepping out of his natural environm ent is unable to survive, whereas de Chelles is consistently anchored to his fam ily and an age old E uropean aristocratic tradition w hich anchors it. This attitu d e and de Chelles’ attitu d e to this invading race is delivered in one of the m ost succinct expressions of the differences betw een old and new society w hen de Chelles confronts Undine about her desire to the sell the Boucher tapestries to Elmer M offatt:

"... you’re all alike,” he exclaimed, “every one of you. You come among us from a country we don’t know, and can’t imagine, a country you care for so little th at before you’ve been a day in ours you’ve forgotten the very house you were born in — if it wasn’t torn down before you knew it! You come among us speaking our language and not Icnowing w hat we mean; w anting the things we want, and not knowing why we w ant them; aping our wealcnesses, exaggerating our follies, ignoring or ridiculing all we care about — you come from hotels as big as towns, and from towns as flimsy as paper, where the streets haven’t had tim e to be named, and the buildings are demolished before they’re diy, and the people are as proud of changing as we are of holding to what we have — and we’re fools enough to imagine th at because you copy our ways and pick up our slang you understand anything about the things that make life decent and honourable for us!” (CC, 982)

N o t only is this speech redolent of Ralph Marvell’s rare incursion into a m ode of adm onishm ent w ith U ndine, telling her: ‘“You Icnow nothing of this society y o u ’re in; of its antecedents, its rules, its conventions’ (CC, 728), it is also a précis of th e entire intrinsic

/extrinsic dichotom y w hich lies at the heart of th e novel. De Chelles accurately outlines the precocity of U ndine Spragg and many others like her. Indeed, they cannot speak his ‘language,’ nor any other except th a t of th eir own breed, and they are a breed w ho have built a new society w hich will last, but which is defined by its inherent insubstantiality.

*#187 ‘I’ll never tiy einytliing again till I try N ew York. ’

U ndine Spragg m ay well talk like the de Chelles and Marvells, she m ay ape their behaviour, but she has no depth in her understanding of the im portance of tradition and family, because she has no trad itio n and an increasingly devalued fam ily life. U ndine Spragg’s relationship w ith her m other is distinctly shallow as her m other also has no great intellectual, em otional or cultural depth. H er father is m erely perceived as the financial source for all her w ants. At no tim e in the novel does W harton allow th e relationship w ith her parents to gain m ore th an these single dim ensions. H er attitude tow ard her ow n son is one w hich also lacks warmth or humanity. He is a com m odity to be used, and indeed she does so in th e dealings w ith

M arvell w hich drive him to suicide, and she also sees him as an ‘acquisition’ (CC, 938) which will help w ith her integration into the de Chelles fam ily after m arrying Raymond. T hrough th e entire novel, U ndine strives to create the illusion of a woman of substance, yet her exterior actions and expectations are m erely a result of her passionately im itative’(CC, 633) personality w hich builds these expectations through hearsay and tabloid tittle-tattle. U ndine Spragg’s own nature as a tabula rasa is one w hich defines her defect. As Ralph observes, U n d in e’s ‘very sensitiveness to new impressions, com bined w ith her obvious lack of a sense of relative values, would make her an easy prey to th e powers of folly’(CC, 676), and by th e end of the novel the powers of folly have U ndine firmly w ithin th eir grasp.

*#188

'I'll iwvcr tiy anything again till I tiy New York. ' ¡ ¡ DI E S p r a g g s u f f e r s ‘incessant pin-pricks inflicted by the U incongruity betw een her social and geographical situ atio n ’(CC, 753) w hen she and Ralph Marvell set up their m arital hom e on W est

End Avenue. For a woman whose insatiable aspirational drive has always pointed to a future on Fifth Avenue, W est E nd Avenue is an address w hich is singularly unsuitable. Being m arried into one of the m ajor N ew York families fires her desire to live in a m ajor N ew York address, nam ely. Fifth Avenue. Geographically, being further west th an the S tentorian isolates her even further from th e fashionable Fifth Avenue society w hich she believes she has the right to be a part of through her m arriage to a Marvell.

T he ekphrastic analyses of bo th the S tentorian and the M arvell residence on W ashington Square serves to highlight not only the characteristics of each setting as it pertains to th e characters who inhabit them , but also serves to establish the distinct polarization betw een the tw o social strata. This polarization is one w hich asks questions about the possible com patibility of the tw o strata. The ‘incongruity betw een her social and geographical situ atio n ’ seems to underm ine th e success of such a proposition, yet in the marriage of Peter and Clare V an Degen we do have a union w hich seems to function w ithin such a polarization.

Once again, W harton’s application of her visual scrutiny upon th e location and architectures of a setting w ithin her fiction, provides a detailed ekphrastic reading w hich not only adds im portant detail to the reader’s understanding of the setting itself, and the inhabitants themselves, but also serves to refract th e m aster narrative through the ekphrastic prism with a resultant new understanding of the text as a whole.

*#189 ‘I'll itci’cr try anything again till I try N o v York. ’

T he reader’s first introduction to the V an D egen w orld is one w hich is seen through Undine Spragg’s own im agination:

U ndine had a sharp vision of the Van Degen dining-room — she pictured it as oak-carved and sumptuous w ith gilding — with a small table in the centre, and rosy lights and flowers, and Ralph Marvell, across the hot-house grapes and champagne leaning to take a light from his hostess’s cigarette, (CC, 662)

This could very well be a description of a room from th e Stentorian w ith its mass of visual ornam entation, and th e ubiquitous ‘gilding’ w hich seems to be a part of every environm ent inhabited by the nouveaux riches in this novel. Yet U ndine has drawn this im aginary description from her own picture-house of m em ories taken from ‘scenes on th e stage’ and the ‘glowing pages of fiction’(CC, 662). U n d in e’s ow n persona is one w hich is constructed by the absorption of such surface ornam ent and detail, and it is the reader’s own absorption of such detail in the novel w hich enhances our

understanding of th e V an Degens. Clare V an Degen, at once a D agonet and a woman capable of

‘rash ardours and vague intensities’(CC, 832), was Ralph Marvell’s first love. T hey ‘were of the same blood and had the same trad itions’(CC, 763) yet possibly due to her ow n capricious nature

and ‘rash ardours’, Clare D agonet m arried the vulgar y et w ealthy Peter V an Degen; an action w hich she came to regret b u t could do little

about considering the old N ew York attitu d e to divorce as an ‘unfortunate’ arrangem ent w hich w ould leave ‘a divorced w oman ... at a decided disadvantage’(CC, 685). Peter V an D egen has all the

trappings of the fabulously w ealthy man; his boat, his art, his Long Island house, and im portantly, his Fifth Avenue ‘palace’ and his blue- blooded wife.

*ed90 'I’ll never try any thing again till I tty New York. ’

T he V an D egens’ N ew York hom e on Fifth Avenue is an im portant topographical site to examine, as it will now obviously be indicative of th e relationship betw een those w ho live there. W h at we m ust u nderstand is th a t Clare V an Degen is prone to acting like a V an Degen as she herself acloiowledges w hen she brings a gift for Paul

M arvell on his birthday:

I knew it was the boy’s birthday, and I’ve brought him a present: a vulgar expensive Van Degen offering, I’ve not enough imagination left to find the right thing, the thing it takes feeling and not money to buy. (CC, 761)

This is an aclatowledgem ent th a t she is w ho she is, th a t she has lost a part of herself to what Ralph would call ‘Van D egenism ’(CC, 676), yet her understanding of th e weakness in her ‘V an D egen’ behaviour m arks her o u t as still having the D agonet character at heart, as does her hom e on Fifth Avenue. T he ‘V an D egen lair’ (CC, 672) on Fifth A venue is em inently situated b oth topographically and socially. T he m ansion is central, and high up the prim ary thoroughfare of N ew Y ork C ity (Fifth Avenue), and this is m irrored socially in that not only do the V an

Degens have enorm ous w ealth but also the antecedents of lineage brought to the marriage by Clare D agonet. In term s of the architectures of th e m ansion, it seems to be prim arily of the thoughtless eclecticism w hich defines the nouveaux riches throughout most of W harton’s fiction.

In particular, Wharton’s description of th e ‘polyphonic’(CC, 830) V an D egen drawing-room and the m ansion’s general décor is m uch like th e S tentorian and its ‘polychrom e’ suites. The ‘heavily

decorated’ m ansion — w ith one of the public room s described by

Ralph M arvell as a ‘gilded and tapestried w ilderness’ w ith a

tel9I 'I'll iien r tty atiything tigniti till I try New York. '

‘m onum ental sofa behind a tea-table laden w ith gold plate’(CC, 830)

— actually matches up very well w ith U n d in e’s ow n imaginings of the

V an D egen dining-room . There should be no great surprise th a t th e V an D egen m ansion has sim ilarities w ith the S tentorian and U n d in e’s ow n ideas of the m ansion, as both Undine and Peter V an D egen are cut from the same cloth in th a t they are m em bers of the invading race. V an Degen, like U ndine, has a hom e but seems to be constantly away from it in the m ore suitable hotel-w orlds we see and hear of him frequenting throughout the novel. As U ndine fails to leave an im print on her own environm ents, so to does Peter V an D egen fail to leave an im print on his. T he only sense of any personality im printed up o n his hom e are

the two large portraits of Peter and Clare V an D egen overlooldng the ‘w aste of gilt fu rn itu re’(CC, 830). T he purpose of Peter V an D egen’s p ortrait is to ‘cast ... the satisfied eye of proprietorship’ over the m ansion, and th e purpose of ‘Popple’s effigy’(CC, 922) of Clare V an Degen is to show the w orld that she too, like th e Fifth Avenue

m ansion and opulent furniture, is m erely a chattel w ith w hich V an D egen signals his own position w ithin society. Yet there is one

im portant difference betw een the hotel-worlds of the Spraggs and Van Degens in that Clare V an Degen, m uch like R alph M arvell has done in W est End Avenue, has created a small alcove w ithin the ‘V an Degen

lair’ w hich is distinctly that of Clare D agonet. Although Wharton writes that Ralph Marvell visits Clare V an

D egen’s ‘inner draw ing-room’, th e room has the feel of a boudoir in its

innate privacy from all except Clare V an D egen’s very closest friends

W harton writes in The Decoration of Hou.ves that when ‘a small sitting-room adjoins the family drawing-room ... if given up to the mistress of the house, is virtually a boudoir.’ (DH, 133)

*ed92 T ’ll never try anything again till I try N ew York. '

As such, it has the patina of good taste pervading the room w hich W h arto n sees as being a natural side effect of th e pedigree and trad itio n represented by th e D agonets. W here th e Stentorian and its counterparts are suffused with the ‘harsh w hite glare’ of electric light w hich Wharton thought could ‘vulgarize interior decoration’ and deprive a room ‘of privacy and distinction’(DH, 128), Clare V an D egen’s inner sanctum is defined by the subtlety of th e natural light. T he ‘pale’ and ‘lum inous’ shadows which illum inate the room caress th e ‘old cabinets and consoles’. The ‘vases of bronze and porcelain’ and th e ‘old lacquer screen ... w ith gold leaves floating on it’ show the breeding and taste in their u nderstated delicacy. This is an environm ent w hich has no deleterious glare on th e décor or the in h ab itan t of the room, and although Wharton makes clear her own preferences in decor and character, she does not do so blindly. W harton was an in h ab itant of a Dagonet-type w orld and as such has a fondness for much of it, yet she is still able to see its flaws, and view them b oth nostalgically and realistically. Clare V an D egen’s ‘inner draw ing-room ’ is appreciated by Wharton, but she does define and locate it in a w ay w hich establishes it as a last bastion of the old N ew York society on Fifth Avenue.

Importantly, Wharton once again makes clear th e correlation betw een setting and character as she w rites th a t Clare V an Degen adapts ‘her own appearance to her soberer background.’(CC, 830)

This is an environm ent created by Clare V an D egen purposefully to both comfort and reassure R alph Marvell;

Her way of receiving him made him feel th a t her restlessness and stridency were as unlike her genuine self as the gilded drawing-room, and that this quiet creature was the only real Clare, the Clare who had once been so nearly his, and who seemed to w ant him to know that she had never wholly been anyone else’s. (CC, 830)

*tPl93 77/ never try anytliing again till I try New York. ’

M arvell views th e room w ith a ‘confused pleasure’ w hich can only come from his recognition of an environm ent w hich is redolent of his own in W ashington Square, b u t w ith the additional elem ent of Clare V an D egen signifying the ideal of ‘what could have b een’ and what m ay well be in th e future. I cannot help b u t th ink that Clare V an

Degen has been infected by V an D egenism to such a degree at this point, th a t in her future she m ay well see divorce and rem arriage as a viable possibility, thus clarifying this particular setting as one n o t only of comfort and reassurance, b u t of seduction too. T he ekphrasis of the V an Degen m ansion on Fifth Avenue serves several purposes in our overall understanding of this novel.

First, th e nature of the nouveaux riches’ im print upon this N ew York is once again highlighted as being mere surface ornam entation w ith no substantive structure to it, and is connected directly to Peter V an D egen’s vulgar consumption and acquisitiveness. Secondly, Clare V an Degen, as a m em ber of the patrician D agonet fam ily, is seen to be com plicit in the elevation of Van Degen w ithin society, w ith the resultant loss of much of her own original identity. A nd finally, the

final elem ent of the previous point, the ‘loss of much of her own original id en tity ’, defines a central them e of th e text in its attem p t to ascertain if b o th the traditional and new societies can co-exist w ithin

th e city sim ultaneously and together. T he V an D egen example seems to answ er this by pointing to the fact that the traditional society m ust

give up m uch of its original character to flourish, and Clare V an D egen does so. T he survival of the older society is constantly questioned as we believe, that much like th e city of Troy, this

particular layer of N ew York society is doom ed to be buried underneath the m ore powerful and vibrant invader society.

*ip194

77/ never try iiuytliing again till I try N ew York. ’ ¢ ¢DI E Spragg, although INTELLECTUALLY and em otionally U insubstantial, is able to decode the surface images w hich populate her N ew York life at the tu rn of the tw en tieth century. She recognises specific settings not for their qualities of design or functionality, but for what they represent to her in particular;

It was of no consequence th at the details and technicalities [of W all Street] escaped her: she Icnew their meaningless symbols stood for success, and what that m eant was as clear as day to her. Every W all Street term had its equivalent in the language of Fifth Avenue. (CC, 976)

It is th e language of Fifth Avenue and its bejewelled façades which com m unicate directly to U ndine Spragg’s own consciousness. H er entire being is one w hich is — like the w ater nym ph her nam e suggests

— concerned only w ith surface perceptions and th eir refraction onto her own being. T he catoptric construction of this particular character is one w hich anchors the entire text. N o t only does she personify the

'm uddle of m isapplied ornam ent over a th in steel shell of u tility’(CC, 669) w hich so well defines the insurgent nouveaux riches w ho are being absorbed into th e social fabric of the city, b u t she acts as an exemplar in her own right of the acquisitive parasite w hich Wharton had so often w ritten about.

It is this particular character tra it w hich em phasises the ekphrastic ethos at the centre of Edith W harton’s major N ew York texts. T he visual language of the descriptive detail held w ithin the text, like a hieroglyph, is decoded to reveal a m ore com plex verbal narrative

JKPI95 ‘I’ll never try anything again till I tiy New York. ' w hich in itself enhances our understanding of th e m aster narrative of th e text. Sarah McG inty states th a t [a]s a writer, Mrs. Wharton applied the scrutinizing eye trained on European and American architecture and interior design to the homes and habits of her fictional characters. The “m anners” in her novels of m anners are, in part, the settings that form the stage on which the patterns of behaviour, custom, and habit are enacted.

Wharton has once again constructed a text w ith a Imowing eye on bo th the architecture within and of the text itself. N ot only has the architecture of N ew York been tacitly em ployed to offer

substantiation to individual characterizations such as Undine Spragg, Ralph M arvell and Clare V an Degen, it has also been used in the w ider context of com m enting on these particular characters as

historical archetypes at a specific m om ent in N ew Y ork C ity’s history.

U ndine Spragg and Elmer M offatt are perfect examples of w hat Claire Preston calls ‘Whartonian buccaneers’ intruding upon

‘previously closed social categories.’ Preston goes on to expand on the idea of these buccaneers as being

essentially destroyers, devourers of worlds. The principles of family, heredity, land, culture, or achievement which have determ ined the nature of these élite populations are obliterated by the power of cash, a cancellation clearly figured in the marriages of Clare Dagonet to Peter van Degen, and of Ralph Marvell to U ndine Spragg.

M arvell is an obvious victim of these rapacious buccaneers, and the indications that th e D agonet/M arvell hom e on W ashington Square

(representing one th e traditional patriarchal families of the city) is being slowly peripheralised by th e northw ard expansion of new society

supports Preston’s succinct analysis. M arvell m akes explicit the adam antine bond w hich holds the hom e, fam ily and tradition

Sarah M. McGinty 'Houses and Interiors as Characters in Edith Wharton’s Novels.' Nineteenth Centuty, 5 (1979): 49- 5 0

Claire Preston. Edith Wharton’.s Social Reghter (London: Macmillan Press, 2000), 103 'I’ll never try anything again till I try New York. ' together. U nited they m ay well stand, but united they will fall also, a fact m ade clear by W harton’s depiction of a setting w hich is out of tim e and place w ith th e new ruling hegem ony of those w ealthy insurgents like Peter van Degen. In Wharton’s overarching narrative of change which is constructed through the three m ajor N ew York novels, The Custom of the Countiy is th e novel th a t does away w ith faint im plication and deals w ith th e real visceral conflicts between both host and insurgent societies. W h arto n is casting a nostalgic yet accepting eye over this new social order. She is nostalgic for all that trad itio n entails, and w hat it had m eant to her. Through all the m ajor N ew Y ork texts, there does emerge a subtle patina of acceptance of th e inevitability of change, and change for the worse. T hrough her depiction of the world of Mrs. Manson M ingott in The Age of Innocence w here the European influence on the architectures of her hom e and th e marriages of her

daughters foreshadow the dilution of old N ew York society’s pseudo- aristocratic bloodline, to the gradual acceptance into society of Mrs. N orma Hatch and Sim on Rosedale in The House of Mirth, and finally the brutality of th e W h arto n ian buccaneers in The Custom of the Country, Wharton outlines the changing of the old guard, for the new guard.

T here is no doubt that N ew York society can be at once a blunt instrum ent and a delicate tool, and both of these images apply to The

Custom of the Countiy, T he stark contrast betw een the two m ain protagonists and their respective environm ents of choice is rather

blunt, yet these social gradations are perceived in a m ore delicate m anner as U ndine herself increases her own pow er through her beauty

and guile, and as she begins to socialise w ith those w ith a foot in

JriPl97 'I’ll iio’er tty atiythiiig again till I tty Nctv York. ’ either camp, such as Claude Popple and a selection of other personages w ho are comfortably able to fuse b o th tradition and vulgarity.

*el98 ‘Manhattan is the twentieth century’s Rosetta Stone.’

Rem Koolhaas'

‘New York is or can be regarded as a collage and the point of collage is that unlike things arc stuck together to make, in the best case, a new reality. ’ Donald Barthelme'^

>DITH W harton did not construct her three m ajor New York texts as a trilogy, but a trilogy is how they can be cJ perceived. Each novel’s specific New York hieroglyph can be decoded, and the resultant analysis of the three novels interconnected to form a cohesive socio-historical narrative of the ‘rem aldng’ of New York and its social elite over several decades, an era where W ard M cAllister’s precious ‘Four Hundred’ would be displaced by the new wealth of what was to develop into the ‘Fortune Five H undred’. As im portant as the socio-historical narrative W harton would construct would be her tacit understanding of the condition of

Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 6

' J.D. Be I a my. The New Fiction: Interviews (Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 1974), 51

*tpl99 The Three City Trilogy m odernity w hich the city of N ew York, paradoxically, had at its core

in the decades W h arto n inhabits. T he paradox lies in th e idea th a t the m odernity of the city situates itself in the decline and debasem ent of its own people and fabric, yet this in itself results in a reconstruction of the city into a new er version of N ew York - a palim psestic act of erasure and re-inscription. Marshall Berm an offered further clarity to

this idea in All That Is Solid Melts into A T (1983) w hen he w rote th at

To be m odern is to live a life of paradox and contradiction ... in an environm ent that promises us adventure, power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves and our world - and, at the same time, threatens to destroy everything we have, everything we Icnow, everything we are.^

This idea lies at th e heart of the condition of m odernity in the

m etropolis, it lies at the heart of W harton’s three N ew York novels as these novels have paradox and contradiction at th eir core, and central to all th e paradoxes and contradictions is the city w hich she situates at the heart all three novels - N ew York. T here is no doubt that, to some degree or other, there are several obvious elem ents of proto-modernism in the m echanics of the literary naturalism w hich informs W harton’s N ew York fiction. In

particular th e im portance of environm ent is p aramount to Wharton as it was to Zola, N orris and Dreiser. She w ould use th e city in an act of

nostalgia yet be prepared to highlight th e m ultitude of incongruities of place and character w hich w ould define N ew York and its transform ation. Malcolm Bradbury would call N ew York one of the

‘storm -centres of civilisation’ w here ‘the intensities of cultural friction and the frontiers of experience"^ are m anifest. T he sheer com plexity of the city depicted by W h arto n in term s of its social and spatial

^ Marshall Berman. A ll That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Exiicricncc of Modcndty (London: Verso, 1983), 15

tr tP 2 0 0 The Three City Tri!og)> m echanics offers a backdrop to modernism , and serves to provide the reader w ith a cognitive m ap w hich enables them to underpin their readings of the city. T he N ew York C ity of Wharton’s childhood, accurately portrayed on m any levels in The Age of Innocence, was one of genteel respectability. T he society in this particular novel is one peopled w ith the im m utable spectres of a social aristocracy whose lineage stretched back to W harton’s own ancestors, and was surely th e city w ith which

W h arto n felt most at ease, albeit from the distance of forty years. N ew Y ork C ity’s rise to the pre-em inent com m ercial position in world trade and com m erce during the latter half of the nineteenth

century was such that the city’s social identity naturally evolved in parallel. Yet m any of the old N ew York aristocracy did not evolve. Instead, th e im m utability of these static elem ents of old N ew York society brought on a stagnation w hich would, in the end, result in its peripheralisation and in some cases its destruction. W harton’s N ew

York, and those w ho occupied her particular stratum, would eventually succumb to th e im m oveable force of th e enorm ous w ealth

of the ‘new ’ N ew Yorkers such as the real-life figures of Rockefeller and Morgan, and the A ugust Belm onts, Sim on Rosedales, and Elmer Moffatts of W harton’s fiction.

E dith W harton’s N ew York trilogy charts th e influx of the nouveaux riches into th e city, and their influence and parasitical

relations w ith th e host society. Wharton’s keen m ind understood

exactly this evolutionary process as she herself outlined in A Backward Glance:

Malcolm Bradbury, The Cities of Modernism.’ In: Malcolm Bradbury & James McFarlane, eds. Modernism: A Guide to European Literature IS90-I930 [1976] (Harmondsvvorth; Penguin, 199!), 97-98,

*e20I The Three City Trilogy

N ot until the successive upheavals which culm inated in the catastrophe of 1914 had “cut all likeness from the nam e” of my old New York, did I begin to see its pathetic picturesqueness. The first change came in the ’eighties, with the earliest detachm ent of big money-makers from the W est, soon to be followed by the lords of Pittsburgh. But their infiltration did no t greatly affect old m anners and customs, since the dearest am bition of the newcomers was to assimilate existing traditions. Social life, w ith us as in the rest of the world, w ent on with hardly perceptible changes till the war abruptly tore down the old frame-work, and what had seemed unalterable rules of conduct became of a sudden observances as quaintly arbitrary as domestic rites of the Pharaohs. {BG, 780-781)

H ere W harton outlines the gradual influx of new w ealth into N ew York City, and in her fiction, she tracks this evolution too through her three N ew York novels — The Age of Innocence, The House of Mirth and The Custom of the Countiy — each novel depicting a new and evolving sem blance of N ew York C ity over a few decades. Wharton, not only accurately charted old N ew Y ork’s evolution over a particular half century through these three novels, but also accessed particular genres in order to generate the required narratives w hich would cohere and create a m aster narrative of change, a m aster narrative w hich would define the palimpsestic process w hich w ould see the old N ew York of

W harton’s youth be overw ritten new versions of th e city. W harton’s active career cover ed not only a whole series of im portant historical and political upheavals, but also spanned some of the m ost im portant and formative literary m ovem ents of her, and our, tim e, many of which she w ould actively engage w ith. In particular, literary naturalism w ould play a pivotal role in her three m ajor N ew York novels. W ith The Age of Innocence Wharton chose to w rite a historical novel, as she saw it as the ‘only possible form of fiction’ she could turn to after the upheaval of the First W orld War. Yet this is a

#eZ 02 Tiw Three City Trilogy novel w hich ‘certainly spoke to m odernist sensibilities’^ on some level. This novel is a novel of renunciation, one w here the m ain protagonist N ew land A rcher chases the status quo in a world that moves on and away from him . In The Age of Innocence — w hich w ould m erely insinuate at the pow er and influence of the circum stance, biology and environm ent w hich lay at the heart of literary naturalism — W h arto n w ould reveal the ‘old world’ which had been overw ritten by the tim e The Age of Innocence was published in 1920. W harton’s use of this particular genre allowed her to delineate a w orld w hich, from the post­ w ar perspective, seem ed to be of a m ore ‘in n o cen t’ vintage th an th a t of the w orld she inhabited in 1920, and which tacitly aclcuowledged the loss of values and attitudes w hich she held dear. Yet, as w ith all things Wharton, complexity is never far from the surface and the com plexity of this novel w ould be the idea of m odernity being driven through her im plications of a new reality and a new N ew York. W here W harton's naturalist fram ework is subtly encoded in

The Age of Innocence, in The House of Mirth it lies explicitly in the foreground of the novel. T he construction of the novel is such th a t there is an initial feeling th a t the author has allowed circumstance, biology and environm ent to control all the outcom es in this novel. Lily B art’s fate seems to be preordained on m any levels, driven by the

environm ental determ inism outlined through th e ekphrastic readings of many aspects of the text. These aspects illum inate the inevitable extinction of an organism w hich cannot protect or prom ote itself in

such an environm ent, b u t w ith the added sophistication that Wharton does, to some degree, m ake the characters at least pai'tly responsible

Michael Nowlin, ‘Edith Wharton's Higher Provincialism: Freiieli W ays for Americans and the Ends of The Age of Innocence.' Journal o f American Stmlies, 38,1 (2004): 92

* e 2 0 3 Tiw Thruc C ity Trilog)> for their fates. Yet like N ew land A rcher in The Age of Innocence, Lily Bart is left behind as she does not fully capitalise on her trade value. Finally, in The Custom of the Country, th e n aturalist m odel is concrete in her use of the binary pairs that would ‘recurrently pit the social old guard against the ascendant crass arrivistes.’^ Yet W h arto n enters th e realist m ode in th a t she, at tim es, moves away from the seem ing absolutism of a powerful environm ental and biological agency, towards th e idea of th e self-willed actions of U ndine Spragg driving the narrative forward. Paradoxically, the seem ing objectivity constructed w ithin The House of M irth in particular, is eroded in The Custom of the Countiy w ith such an overwhelm ingly powerful characterisation of U ndine Spragg who, being a powerful force of nature in her own right, seems to have absolute control over her own fate and th e fates of others in the novel. This particular reading, together w ith those of The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth, not only define W h a rto n ’s literary sophistication, but also characterise W h a rto n ’s genuine understanding of how genre supports and constructs th e readings w hich m irror th e overarching narrative of change w hich is generated through the three N ew York novels. N o t only would W harton make these m ore obvious connections to literary naturalism b u t she could not but help integrate the subtle rhythm s of m odernity w hich touched upon buried cultures, new philosophies,

new m orals and museum s that would preserve - in some degree -

against w hat N ew land A rcher w ould see ‘with respect to Ellen O lenska’s fragile beauty, as “the stupid law of change’” {AI, 1262Y

" Cecelia Tichi. ‘Emerson, Darwin, and Tlw Custom of the Couutiy' In: Carol J. Singley, ed. A Historical Guide to Edith W harton, New York; Oxford University Press, 2003: 91

' Nowlin. ‘Edith Wharton's Higher Provincialism’ 93

a e 2 0 4 Tlw Three City Trilogy

HARTON’S ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL discourse W thro u g h o u t The Age of Innocence underpins the fact th a t Wharton was seeing this particular N ew York C ity from a distance, bo th tem porally and spatially.® The Age of Innocence shows the precise dissection of that particular society, at that particular tim e in the

1870s. Of course, the prim ary narrative strand revolves around the relationships betw een N ew land Archer, M ay W elland and Ellen Olenska, yet there is no doubt that the ekphrastic elem ents of this text illum inate a secondary strand as well as the prim ary strand. T he secondary narrative strand focuses on th e changing face of N ew York society itself. W harton’s construction of each topographical site not only comm ents on the human drama which unfolds throughout the text, but also comm ents im plicitly on th e evolution of

N ew York society. As has been noted earlier, Wharton had written th a t in respect to N ew York City, the ‘first change came in the ’eighties w ith the earliest detachm ent of big m oney-m akers from the

W est’. The Age of Innocence is set in the late 1870s, on th e cusp of such a change, yet W harton consistently points to th e future of the society through the ekphrastic elem ents of the novel.

W harton’s opening of the novel, w here she refers to ‘keeping out th e “new people’” from the A cadem y of M usic, and her allusion to the building of th e M etropolitan O pera H ouse a few years later, offer the foundations of W harton’s secondary narrative strand. The idea of an insurgent race is developed very early in th e novel and the

Temporally, Wharton was distanced from The Age of hmocence as she was writing it between 1919 and 1920, While spatially, Wharton had been living in Europe for th e best part of a decade when she wrote the novel.

*e205 The Three City Trilogy foundation of th e secondary narrative is built upon further w ith the extensive ekphrasis of the M ingott m ansion high up on Fifth Avenue. Ffere, W h arto n expresses, through both the aesthetics and locale of the m ansion, the future of N ew York society. She acloiowledges, through her depiction of Mrs. Manson M ingott and her hom e, the fact that the future will require a dilution of the bloodlines w hich had sustained society to that point in the city’s history. T he old N ew York architecture has been crossbred w ith the

European influence as has the interior layout and décor of the M ingott m ansion. Mrs. Manson M ingott’s own daughters’ marriages to families outside The tig h t little citadel of N ew Y ork’ m irror her own profile as a woman who has taken on some E uropean traits herself, as w ith her ‘odd foreign way of addressing m en by their surnam es’. Mrs. M anson M ingott’s aclaiow ledgem ent of her adm iration for Julius

Beaufort and her explicit rem ark that ‘we need new blood and new

m oney’ {AI, 1039) w ithin N ew York society reiterates the view th a t society as it was could not sustain itself in th e herm etically sealed w orld of 1870s N ew York. Through the spatial hierarchies of the city

itself, the M ingott m ansion and its inhabitants are viewed as pre­ em inent and are given a pre-em inent voice in th e novel thus highlighting the reality w hich Wharton herself had aclaiowledged,

th a t society h ad to evolve or die. Mrs. Manson M ingott’s acceptance of the exotic Countess

O lenska into society is another indicator of a new acceptance of

‘impurities’ into old N ew York society, as is th e ekphrastic description of th e C ountess’s house on W est 23''* Street. T his house, like the

M ingott m ansion, is located w ithin N ew York, y et internally the décor

points to a personality w hich has both N ew York and European Tlw Three City Trilogy sensibilities. O pposing this house is th a t of th e van der Luyden’s N ew York hom e w ith its literal fading appeal and im pact, once again presaging the inevitable loss of influence of the patriarchal families on

N ew York society. W here The Age of Innocence hieroglyph is deciphered through ekphrasis to show th e rigid and constrictive qualities of N ew York society (which in tu rn inform s the human drama at th e heart of the text), it also points to a future w here N ew York society will have to open the gates to its sacred inner sanctum, not only to sustain itself b u t to evolve. T he van der Luydens fade away, yet Mrs. Manson M ingott, Ellen O lenska and N ew land's own son Dallas — who marries the B eaufort’s daughter — evolve and survive.

h e A g e o f I n n o c e n c e o ffers a prem o n ito ry glance at a pivotal T m om ent in N ew York society’s evolution, yet there is little doubt that 1870s N ew York was still shaped and controlled by the influences of its patriarchal figureheads. T he inevitability of such an evolution is well established in The Age of Innocence through th e m ultiple ekphrases of the city, b u t in The House of Mirth — the second part of a notional N ew York trilogy — we also have a text w hich, like The Age of Innocence,

functions on two different yet intertw ined narrative levels. In The House of Mirth, in m y m ind the m ost sophisticated of the

three novels discussed, Wharton’s hieroglyph begins to explore a them e of incom patibility. Wharton moves away from the relative harmony of th e old society in The Age of Innocence and invests the New

York society of Lily Bart w ith a strain of discord w hich evokes a city

*e207 Tlw Three City Trihg)r and society in flux, and a city w hich is in th e throes of the transform ing influences of m odernity. Viewing Lily B art’s peripheralisation and eventual destruction brought on by massive centrifugal social forces, the social landscape seems to show throughout the novel the disparate nature of W harton’s characters and th eir seem ing inability to co-exist w ithin each o th er’s environm ents. This society in The House of Mirth is a society which is far from settled. W here The Age of Innocence offers th e possibility of change through th e characters of Mrs. Manson M ingott and Ellen Olenska, The House of M irth views a society w hich is in the m idst of change shown through the constant social peram bulations of Lily Bart herself. The stratification of the society is m anifested in physical term s by Lily Bart’s descent through each social ring of the city until she reaches the m ilieu of a boarding house for transients - a more th an suitable environm ent for a woman whose social ephem erality will be her undoing. Lily Bart, in many ways quite naturally, takes on the m antle established by Ellen O lenska in The Age of Innocence, that of the outsider. W here Ellen Olenska still has family, innate social awareness and a strong survival instinct, Lily Bart has no family, a social awareness w hich she singularly fails to engage w ith and a doubtful survival instinct. T he m ost obvious narrative strand in The House of Mirth undoubtedly focuses upon th e process of Lily Bart’s peripheralisation in N ew York society, yet the secondary narrative strand is activated through th e ekphrases of the milieus w hich B art m om entarily inhabits throughout her journey. As M aureen St. L aurent correctly asserts; 'The House of Mirth is n o t prim arily the story of Lily; it is rather W h arto n ’s Tlw Three City Trilogy representation of her culture through the play of its forces on Lily’s life’/ and as such, The House of Mirth represents a N ew York society at the tu rn of the tw entieth century w hich is in a state of flux. The seemingly solid walls protecting the rarefied environs of 1870s New York are now fluid, and Lily Bart’s journey exemplifies the social fluidity of society as can be shown through th e nature of the habitats and the inhabitants in H e House of Mirth. These now fluid social walls

0 Î fin -de-siècle N ew York allow movem ent in b o th directions, w ith Lily B art m oving out and N orma Hatch moving in. From the very beginning of The House of Mirth Lily Bart is a dislocated soul w ithin N ew York City. In a mom ent of spatial and tem poral stasis at G rand C entral Station, Lily considers her lim ited options. These options are w idened by the introduction of Lawrence Selden to the scene, an ingredient w hich establishes from the outset, the new fluid m echanics of N ew York society. W here the city and m any of its inhabitants adapt and evolve w ith the new order of this society, Lily does not. W here Ellen Olenska, in a sim ilar position of dislocation in The Age of Innocence, is given the benefit of the doubt and sanctuary to some degree through familial connections, Lily Bart has no such protection in a new N ew York society w hich has an individual’s ‘com m ercial’ value as the pre-em inent factor in their overall place and w orth in society. W harton’s characterisation of Lily Bart as a parentless ingénue strips th e character of any possible protection in this society and henceforth, she moves into a social freefall w hich lays bare the dangerous worldngs of th e city’s evolving social m achinery.

'' Maureen E. St. Laurent. ‘Pathways to a Persona! Aesthetic: Edith Wharton’s Travels in Italy and France.’ hi: Katherine Joslin &. Alan Price, eds. Wretehed Exotic: Essays on Edith Wharton in Europe. (New York: Peter Lang, 1993), 177

*e209 The Three City Trilogy

T he paradox w hich lies at the heart of Lily B art is th a t she laiows herself to be a com m odity of some value, b u t refuses to place herself on th e m arket in the right place or at th e right tim e, w hilst taking seem ingly conscious steps to devalue herself. T he paradox of Lily Bart is extended in the role of the hom e in th e novel; Lily Bart can only create a place of her own w hen she m arries, yet she seems unable to m arry due to the fact that she does n o t have a place of her

own. T he new change in em phasis and structure of N ew York society

is em phasised throughout The House of Mirth w ith th e reference to new ways of living. A partm ent living is indicative of a new social independence offered to those w ithout extensive financial bacldng or familial support, and Lawrence Selden and G erty Parish both live in such environm ents. Lily rejects Selden as a husband and G erty as a house-m ate, b o th seen as being unsuitable for her purposes, and in rejecting these possibilities, Lily plays an im p o rtan t role in her own

downfall, a fact which invests W harton’s own brand of literary naturalism w ith some added sophistication and w hich gives the reader a greater sense of th e m oral conflicts at play. Lily’s entire journey through the novel is one of dislocation. N o t only is Lily dislocated from th e apartm ent life w hich m ay have

offered her independence and a future, she is also dislocated from the atavistic m ansion of her aunt, Julia Penis ton, representing the herm etically sealed décor and morality of another age. Also, in moving

further from the centre of society, Lily passes those w ho are moving towards the centre of society. N orma Hatch and her ‘hotel w orld’ is yet another setting from w hich Lily is dislocated. Although Lily is initially at ease w ithin this society, the ultim ate m oral and social divide is such

*tp210 The Three City Trilogy th a t she cannot exist w ithin it. Ironically, it is perhaps the boarding­ house (literally and figuratively her final resting place) w here Lily feels m ost at peace; Lily’s own geographical transience throughout the novel is m atched by the function of the boarding-house as a hom e for

transients. A t the p o in t in her life w here there seems to be nothing left to be lost, the boarding-house is a p oint w here Lily has reached where she feels a certain amount of ‘ease’ w ith her life. This is not just the

term inus of th e novel, nor of the city at its periphery, but also of the

life of Lily Bart. Reading Lily B art is like reading the city itself. T he city, in its state of flux, is neither the old N ew York society of W harton’s own childhood, nor the N ew York society of U ndine Spragg which offers a city of possibilities to anyone w ith ruthlessness, nous and luck. Lily

Bart exists upon the lim en in the purest sense of the term in th a t her position can be constantly defined as being in a state of ‘unsteadiness,

[with a] lack of clarity about exactly where one belongs and what one should be doing, or wants to be doing.’*® Lily B art is a woman of

breeding from th e old society, yet her independent spirit is certainly

one w hich seems to be m ore in keeping w ith another N ew York; not one in th e past or the present, b u t one of th e future, and one in which U ndine Spragg was to reside in w ithin The Custom of the Countiy: a new N ew York w hich had all but erased the worlds of Archer and Bart.

Carolyn G. Heilbrun. Women's Lives: The View From the Threshold. {Toronto; University of Toronto Press, 1999), 3

«P211 The Three City Trilogy

HERE THE SELF-EFFACING COUNTESS OLENSKA ultim ately sides W w ith fam ily and honour in The Age of Innocence, Lily Bart in The House of M irth travels to a place on th e lim en w ith no family to speak of, increasingly flimsy social lineage and no honour in the eyes of society. Yet in U ndine Spragg, in The Custom of the Countiy, we have a character th a t likewise has no honour, a non-descript family, no social antecedents b u t she does have the ‘seed’ m oney and beauty to display herself w ithin N ew York society. In The Custom of the Countiy, Wharton completes her investigation into the evolution of N ew York society over a third of a century, and it is here th a t the barriers have been broken through and the insurgent nouveaux riches becom e firmly established as the m ajor players w ithin N ew York society. This novel is a tale of social ascendancy, but its secondary narrative strand im portantly completes the developm ent of th e ideas established w ithin The Age of Innocence and carried through The House of Mirth; the ideas of a changing N ew York society, and the idea of a N ew York society w hich m ust — in some w ay — absorb as best it can, both th e pressing influences from the robber barons of th e west, and the E uropean influences from the east.

In many ways N ew York’s cultural and commercial pre­

em inence is a result of its geographic position. T he city straddles two continents and is the hub w hich connects Am erica and Europe in term s of trade and ideas. It is in this same position th a t N ew York society in Wharton’s three novels finds itself under pressure to change. T he pioneer spirit of th e west has produced new w ealth which in turn has created a new w ealthy class. It is w ith w ealth that these

people seek position in the aristocratic society of N ew York, and it is

*e212 Tlw Three City TriIog)> w ith position and status that there are pressures from Europe of social position looldng for w ealth (New York being th e place to find it in m any respects). E dith W harton’s aristocratic and ‘p u re’ society of the m id-nineteenth century comes under increasing pressure through each of the three novels, b u t it is in The Custom of the Countiy th a t this pressure is at its greatest. Alfred K azin w ould w rite that Wharton’s ‘class was dying slowly ... and ... was passing on into another existence’** and these three novels were the tales of th e yielding to th e new w ealth, and of the harsh journey to reach a point of reconciliation betw een the patriarchs and the nouveaux riches. In The Custom of the Country W h arto n reaches th a t p oint of reconciliation, or m ore realistically, the point of capitulation of the patriarchs to the nouveaux riches. W h arto n would also be w riting of a city w hich bore little resem blance to th a t described in The Age of Innocence, thus the palimpsestic impulse of

m odernity w ould be at its zenith in The Custom of the Countiy. In The Custom of the Countiy, this socio-historical journey comes

to its end w ith the b rutality of U ndine Spragg’s plague-like presence throughout the novel. H ere W harton succinctly observes the actual results of old N ew Y ork’s reticence in allowing the ‘lords of P ittsburgh’

into the society w hen they were at the citadel door. It is at this point in N ew Y ork’s history that the nouveaux riches were m oving close to becom ing the com m ercially dom inant race. T heir w ealth and

m alleability allowed them to acquire all the trappings of the old N ew York society and this novel, in many ways, sounded the death Imell

Alfred Kazin. ‘Edith Wharton.’ [1942] hi: Irving Howe, ed., Edith Wharton: A Collection of Critical Essays. (Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1962), 91

*tp213 The Three C ity Trilog)> for W harton’s own particular N ew York, and also for W harton’s own tim e in N ew York City. As I have m entioned in chapter four, U ndine Spragg is different from Ellen O lenska, N ew land Archer, G erty Parish, Ralph Marvell and Lawrence Selden in th a t she reflects the environm ents she inhabits w hilst the others exist in environm ents w hich reflect the individuals who live in them. This is a subtle b u t im portant distinction, and it is one which m akes U ndine Spragg a rather unique protagonist. In The

Custom of the Countiy, U ndine is an efficient reflecting surface of all that surrounds her, b u t she also has the knowledge and drive w hich understands that money and position will open up the paths she wishes to follow. Initially in the novel. U ndine perceives th a t she has m oney (via her father) and it is social position w hich she is attracted to through her m arriage to Ralph Marvell. This position evolves throughout the novel as she finally comes to com prehend th a t w ith great financial power she can appropriate social position. Ralph Marvell has the position but not th e w ealth and he is, on the w hole, ultim ately unwilling to comprom ise him self or his position, an attitu d e which results in his own extinction. Clare V an D egen does com prom ise, and does sell a part of herself, and she does survive. Raymond de Chelles also survives by com prom ising and evolving and by selling family heirlooms. In fact in many ways, de Chelles and his environm ent of the Faubourg Saint G erm ain offer a glimpse of a society that has com prom ised to exist w ith as much of its original sem blance intact, and m ay well have been a m odel w hich the W ashington Square D agonets should have noted.

*æZ14 Tiw Three City Trilogy

T he prim ary narrative strand in The Custom of the Countjy is of course based around U n d in e’s rapacious exploits in clim bing the social ladder, b u t the ekphrastic analysis of the text produces a subterranean narrative w hich outlines the final stage in the social evolution of N ew York C ity from the era of W harton’s youth, outlined in The Age of Innocence, to the second decade or so of the tw entieth century in The

Custom of the Country. T he very nature of U ndine Spragg, analysed ekphrastically, is that of a palimpsestic socialite. She is a character w ho is constantly being reinscribed w ith the patterns of the society w hich surround her. W h en m arried to Ralph Marvell, U ndine — on th e surface — falls into the role of beautiful N ew York society wife; w hen m arried to R aym ond de Chelles she likewise fits th a t role — for a tim e. Like the w ater-sprite her nam e suggests, there is an intrinsic ephem erality to her character, an ephem erality w hich befits the archetypal reflector in W harton’s fiction. It is apt that she should be seen in this w ay as N ew York itself is also palimpsestic in its very nature, continually being re­ inscribed through tim e, and it is this connection w hich m ay well provide th e greatest insight into the city.

d it h W h a r t o n ’s v ie w o f N e w Y o r k C it y has been one of Etem pered nostalgia at tim es, yet she, m ore th a n anyone of this age, understood the harsh realities of this society in term s of its

aesthetics and its evolution. T he nostalgic view of th e city is carried principally through the prim ary narratives of th e three novels, w hilst th e secondary narratives gleaned through ekphrastic analyses deliver

*#215 The Three City Trilogy the anthropological vicissitude of N ew York society. W hilst Wharton may not have consciously attem pted to create a trilogy, these three novels certainly do cohere to form a larger picture of a society in flux. In looldng at the ekphrastic analyses in all three novels, there is little d oubt that these analyses are supported by W harton’s own wide interests in anthropology, aesthetics and travel. It is through her non­ fiction texts'^ in particular th a t we are able to discern W harton’s literary credo. This is a credo built upon a recognition of the harm ony and disharm ony w hich exists between landscape, architecture and

‘inm ate’; her Itnowledge of the social m echanism s of N ew York City over the period covered by th e three novels; and her grasp of the

inevitability of evolution and extinction in th e field of human and social anthropology. One cannot underestim ate W h arto n ’s

autobiographical w ritings as, M ichael N ow lin w rites, acting as an ‘evolutionary bridge betw een past and present, or, in the figurative term s of b o th the novel and the m em oirs, betw een pre-historic old

N ew York and modern America.At the core of W harton’s thinldng

once again lies th e harsh co-existence of her acceptance of the inevitable change w hich was th e life-blood of the city, juxtaposed w ith a sense of adm iration, respect and loss of what had once been. U ltim ately, each novel concerns itself w ith th e pressures of

environm ent and circum stance and focuses up o n th e ‘forces (both inner and outer) beyond the control of the characters.This understanding points towards Wharton’s naturalist credentials;

I do not only refer to the obvious prefaces, articles, letters, autobiographical texts and The W riti)ig of Fiction, but also The Decoration of Houses, A Motor-Flight Through France, Italian Villas and Their Gardens, Italian Backgrounds and French W ays and Their Meaning.

Nowlin. ‘Edith Wharton’s Higher Provincialism’ 106

" Barbara Hochinan. 'The Aivakenhig and The House of Mirth-. Plotting Experience and Experiencing Plot.’ In: D onald Pizer, cd. The Cambridge Companion to American Realism and Naturalism: Hoivclls to London, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995: 212

* # 2 1 6 The Three City Trilogy certainly fam iliar w ith the writings of Darw in, T aine and Zola and Spencer,'^ W harton’s im plicit view of a society in decline is carried through this trilogy. These rather esoteric fields are integrated into the readings of her novels in such a way as to be ‘dissolved’ in the w riting of the texts and th en ‘reconstituted’ in the reading of the texts — and in particular reconstituted through ekphrastic readings of the texts. Yet it is vitally im portant to em phasise that Wharton’s adherence to discrete applications of literary m ethods do not stop firmly w ith literary naturalism . Although Wharton has seldom been seen as a m odernist, there can be little doubt that W harton’s three N ew York novels have u ndoubted leanings toward modernity individually, b u t once again, as a collective they define the state of m odernity w hich existed in N ew York in the period she subtly crafts through her three

N ew York novels. In A Motor-Flight Through France we retu rn once again to

Wharton’s autobiographical writing, w hich seems to, once again, articulate W harton’s understanding of the w orld w hich she translates into her fiction w hen she writes:

in those arts that lie between the bounds of thought and sense, and leaning distinctly toward the latter, is there not room for another, a lesser yet legitimate order of appreciation — for the Idnd of confused atavistic enjoym ent th at is made up of historical association, of a sense of mass or harmony, of the relation of the building to the sicy above it, to the lights and shadows it creates about it — deeper than all, of a blind sense in the blood of its old social power, the things it m eant to far-off minds of which ours are the oft-dissolved and reconstituted fragments? '

Wharton’s own personal library contained many works of Émile Zola, Hippolyte Taine and Charles Darwin as recorded in George Ramsden’s Edith Wharton’s Lihraiy (Settrington; Stone Trough Books, 1999). Knowing Darwin, it is reasonable to assume that she knew of Herbert Spencer’s work in applying evolutionary philosophy to the sphere of social interaction.

Edith Wharton. Motor-Flight Through France (New York; Scribners, 1908), 178

*#217 Tito Three C ity Trilogy

H ere we seem to have a concise definition of how W harton’s greatest fiction is constructed and read: constructed w ith a three-dim ensional sense w hich exists w ithin the plastic arts yet delivered through the w ritten word, a process w hich ultim ately requires a key to translate or decipher, a key w hich has its roots in the classical rhetoric of ancient

Greece — ekphrasis. This ‘N ew York Trilogy’ is one w hich defines th e intrinsic character of th e city as the palimpsestic city w hich Wharton could barely recognise by the end of her life. In the three novels discussed, the heartbeat of th e city is discernable in a m anner w hich is redolent of a diastolic - systolic pulse of the city as it continually looks outwards to the world, and th en inwards upon itself, repeating the cycle constantly, but w ith each pulse overwhelm ing th e one before - a distinct precept of m odernity. As the nineteenth century diarist Philip

H one w ould write:

Overturn, overturn, overturn! is this the maxim of New York. The very bones of our ancestors are not perm itted to lie quiet a quarter of a century, and one generation of men seems studious to remove all relics of those who preceded them.

A fitting insight into not only the nature of N ew Y ork City, but also into th e nature of E dith W harton’s ‘N ew York Trilogy.’

" From The Dlaiy of Philip Hone as quoted in William Cole, ed. Quotable Nen> York: A Literm y Companion, (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992), 50

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