Edith Wharton enjoyed a complex relationship with early modernism. Her love of French literature and her close relationship with Henry James made her open to experiment as a writer and committed to the seriousness of novel writing as an art. She enjoyed enormous success with "The House of Mirth" and the public clearly wanted more from her in this style. The novel's Naturalism and didactic purpose conformed to her own belief in the moral purpose of literature, so that Wharton's reading of politics, culture, and society led her to abandon modernistic experiment for ethical, rather than aesthetic reasons. "Apart from Modernism" explores the political and cultural influences that helped shape Edith Wharton, and discusses such subjects as her relationship to bohemianism, modernist experiment, her politics, and her idea of the good society through a discussion of her fiction 1900-1915, starting with an exploration of the early novellas and novels such as "The Valley of Decision", "The House of Mirth", and "The Fruit of the Tree", before concentrating in detail on the years that saw the publication of "The Reef", "Ethan Frome", and "The Custom of the Country".
Important issues such as Wharton's reading of gender, Empire, and class form a central part of this discussion. Robin Peel is a Principal Lecturer in English at the University of Piymouth.
- ISBN10 0838640796
- ISBN13 9780838640791
- Publish Date 17 November 2005
- Publish Status Unknown
- Publish Country US
- Publisher Associated University Presses
- Imprint Fairleigh Dickinson University Press,U.S.
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 345
- Language English