Durham E-Theses From world war to consumer culture: an investigation into Edith Wharton and the 1920s Jordan, Elizabeth A. How to cite: Jordan, Elizabeth A. (2003) From world war to consumer culture: an investigation into Edith Wharton and the 1920s, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/4067/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 Abstract Elizabeth A. Jordan From World War to Consumer Culture: An Investigation into Edith Wharton and the 1920s Chapter 1 For decades, many critics assumed Edith Wharton's post-World War I fiction to be valuable only in the shadow of her earlier, and supposedly greater, writing. In this thesis, I intend to explore three of these novels in further critical detail, The Glimpses of the Moon (1922), Twilight Sleep (1927), and The Children (1928). Their combination allows for a solid, comprehensive and multifaceted sample of Wharton in the 1920s. Integral to this thesis are the Marxist reasoning of Fredric Jameson and the utilisation of his semantic rectangle. Chapter 2 At the time of its publication The Glimpses of the Moon was critically ignored. However, the exploration, at length, of the semantic rectangles produced from this novel has directed us to four points of conclusion. First, that The Glimpses of the Moon provides a transition from the tragic historical romance to the modern problematic lifestyle. Secondly, that the novel is displaced in time. Thirdly, the knowledge gained from this new exploration has worth at least equal to novels written prior to 1920. And finally, that the conclusion of this novel has significant ambivalence hidden within the neatness of the resolution. Chapter 3 Wharton's task in this novel, Twilight Sleep, is much more to act as an illustrator of the ambivalence that marked the later 1920s. Each incarnation of the binary between power and subordination reveals a separate area of uncertainty and two dichotomous manners of resolving it. What follows from them is an intense inability or refusal to endorse any of them by Wharton. Without providing answers, Wharton equitably divides failure between the characters and binaries. Rather than success, this novel and rectangle are about failure. Chapter 4 The warring notions of modernity and tradition produced, pragmatically, the conflict between change and stability. As modernity crept into being, social guidelines slowly disappeared, leaving people awash in a sea of possibilities. Wharton was deeply troubled by the uncertainty and transience that characterised once solid worlds. In The Children, she explores the questions posed by debating the merits of change and stability and ultimately expresses her inability to come to terms with either through the ambivalence that marks this novel. Chapter 5 The body of contemporary Wharton critics have managed to identify the factors that precipitated the change in Wharton's post-World War I fiction. This thesis, employing Marxist critic Fredric Jameson's methodology and tools, has attempted to show the critical worth of the 1920s works through examining three selections. Jameson's ability to merge historicism, ideology, criticism and philosophy extends into a synthesized methodology for literary critique applicable to Wharton. Elizabeth A. Jon M.A. Thesis, Uprtfersity of Durham 6 May 2003 Word Count: 45,570 From World War to Consumer Culture: An Investigation into Edith Wharton and the 1920s The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without his prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. - ? JUL 2003 Table of Contents Chapter 1 Edith Wharton and the 1920s Page 1 Chapter 2 Personal Transactions: Economics and Page 23 Communication in The Glimpses of the Moon Chapter 3 The Nothing Novel: Power Struggles, Page 87 Personal Politics and Twilight Sleep Chapter 4 Page 121 The Wanderers: Parenting, Marriage, Divorce and The Children Chapter 5 Page 152 Concluding Thoughts 1 Chapter 1: Edith Wharton and the 1920s Introduction From her first publication in 1891 to her final work, published posthumously in 1938, Wharton never approached the blank page with anything less than a ferocious fervour for perfection and a demanding lust for the creative process - she deftly employed the gamut of tools from meticulous political correctness to brash societal challenge. Wharton possessed the reverence and commitment modern day author Stephen King writes of, yet she also possessed an impatience with those only playing at writing, as does King, "If you can take it seriously, we can do business. If you can't or you won't, it's time for you to close the book and do something else."1 For Wharton, this connection between readers, writers and books was active rather than passive, and at times it was also exclusive, requiring a particular insight to unlock the connection, "Books are alive enough to an imagination which knows how to animate them."2 As the stable New York world of her birth gradually metamorphosed into the turbulent decades of the early twentieth century, Wharton's books grew with this change. For decades, most of her post-World War I fiction was brushed away by the critical world. Using analytical techniques just short of the criteria necessary to fully animate these "changeling" novels, many critics assumed her later work to be valuable only in the shadow of her earlier, and supposedly greater, writing. Her post-war works do show a marked change in nearly every aspect of her fiction; however, such a change is not necessarily to her deficit. Lineally, her novels of the 1920s are the creative cusp of Wharton's career, and as such, these transitionary pieces have received less critical attention. I intend to explore three of these novels in further critical detail, The Glimpses of the Moon (1922), Twilight Sleep (1927), and 2 The Children (1928). Each of these three novels has been chosen from Wharton's 1920s portfolio; each possesses specific qualities that propelled it into consideration here. Sociologically, the three work in concert to expose diverging aspects of modernity. Rhetorically, each novel approaches modernity through a different paradigm. Their combination allows for a solid, comprehensive and multifaceted sample of Wharton in the 1920s. Wharton's path starts as intensely questioning and settles into abject ambivalence near the decade's end. In The Glimpses of the Moon, the earliest novel presented in my thesis, Wharton probes the struggle between modernity and tradition. Funnelled through the binary oppositions between blocked and unblocked transactions, Glimpses addresses economic, social and interpersonal aspects of the early 1920s. This novel's position at the beginning of this decade is unique - Wharton was still actively questing toward reconciling modernity with Old New York, "Publishers wanted another House of Mirth, a modern-day novel of manners that would capture a wide American readership. Edith had signed an $18,000 serial rights contract with the Pictorial Review in 1916 for just such a book ("The Glimpses of the Moon").3 Once Lily Bart began her catastrophic path, it was only a matter of time until her demise was complete. Nick and Susy Lansing, on the other hand, possess a wealth of options not available to Lily. Whereas Old New York guaranteed a specific ending, modernity guaranteed no such thing. As much as Wharton's fiction may have criticised the rigidity of Old New York, the elasticity of modernity was, at best, uncomfortable and, at worst, unconscionable for her. While Wharton does attempt to resolve the characters' dilemma in Glimpses, she ultimately comes to a repressive and questioning finale. Many critics have disparaged Glimpses as a weak novel, but Wharton's work habits suggest the author felt differently. Wharton's biographers record her patterns of writing at specific times each day, "In spring and summer 1921, Edith worked on The Glimpses of the Moon, completing this short novel in mid- September, nine months ahead of her own contractual deadline."4 Had Wharton wanted to work on this novel more, she had ample time to do so, suggesting that the author was satisfied with the novel as she published it. Following chronologically, 1927's Twilight Sleep is the next novel I consider. The author's position in Twilight Sleep is vastly different from her role in Glimpses; Wharton crafts this novel much as a reporter of the Jazz Age. From a trip taken with Walter Berry, she had first hand experience with the social and political milieu it was capable of creating, "they found themselves for five days amid the 'human wreckage' of the Lido season."5 In Twilight Sleep, Wharton records how various facets of the Jazz Age mentality can gently infiltrate a representative modern family. Through each member of Pauline Manford's family, Wharton logs a different facet of the struggle between power and subordination. By presenting the basic levels of power and subordination across gender, occupation and age gaps in one wealthy family, Wharton conveyed the mess she foresaw, "the tragedy's flat tone matched its emotion, a sense of being lulled into disaster."6 At the novel's conclusion, none of the characters have risen to leadership, resulting in the chaos that Wharton feared for all of society, "Edith believed not only that this theme was timely, but also that society would pay heavily for its continued evasion and emotional bankruptcy."7 As Benstock notes, evasion is the central feature of Twilight Sleep.