Studied by 9 peopleas a 'war novel' that drew deeply from the chasm of the First World War
Sarah Blackwood - the war
a ‘salute to the new age’, and a ‘study of the complex, intimate connections between social cohesion and individual growth’
Cynthia Griggin Wolff - what TAOI is intended to do
“the notion of “perfect” happiness… is nothing but an alluring phantom that leads us to inevitable destruction”
— instead, her characters accept ‘partial (imperfect) happiness
the real challenge is “creating some form of possible happiness”
Cynthia Griffin Wolff - happiness according to EW
after WW1, there was a ‘concern for the survival not merely of individual men and women, but of a culture — an entire society’
Cynthia Griffin Wolff - survival after WW1
the novel is ‘designed to discover those cultural strengths that might enable America to survive the postwar years of the 1920s’
Cynthia Griffin Wolff - America's survival
young women were expected to be beautiful
Cynthia Griffin Wolff, view on women writers
the society is “mutilating” and “potentially lethal” to the spirit of men and women
Cynthia Griffin Wolff, the society
she would never have described herself as a feminist
Hermione Lee
“a satire of old New York… her autopsy over its corpse”
Stuart Hutchinson, the purpose of the novel
May actually has a great deal of agency, but she serves a society that denies that she does
Linette Davis, May
the local representative of evil
Orgel
‘this model citizen . . the abounding energy, the swift adaptability’
Edith Wharton, on Ebenezer Stevens
‘fallen away from its era of bold vigour and active virtue’, provided ‘a generally stifling environment, even for men; and for women, its mores had become suffocating’
CGW on Old NY Society (negative)
many ancient values remained: honor, loyalty, devotion to family’ - but was ‘unimaginative, lethargic and potentially rigid in the exercise of these virtues’
CGW on Old NY Society (positive, but . . )
‘almost pagan worship of physical beauty’
Edith Wharton, Old NY Society and beauty
‘the relationship between self and society was intrinsic and inescapable’ - ‘exclusion from the society . . . was tantamount to some form of death’
CGW, self and society
for a society as overregulated as NY in the 1870s, Europe was both a threat and a treat
Stephen Fender, Europe
the story is crammed with ironies
Stephen Fender
TAOI is about a society that is in itself entirely absorbed in display
Stephen Fender, society
TAOI is a significant transformation of the traditional novel of manners’
Nancy Bentley, novel
'TAOI stages marriage not as a happy ending, but as the start of a complicated set of life experiences'
Sarah Blackwood, marriage
May is a 'lovely human doll whose uselessness aggrandises her owner's social standing'
Elizabeth Ammons, May
'loss of social being is a form of death'
Pamela Knights, social being
the novel is 'a memorial to realism and to an extinct social order; a piece of covert modernism, radically taking apart old forms'
Pamela Knight, the novel
Wharton composes 'both a tribute to and a cutting analysis of the realm of her childhood'
Candace Waid, tribute
Ellen and Archer's passion can 'exist only as it is not merely unconsummated, but unrealised'
Stephen Orgel, passion
'Wharton saw the repression of the self in the old ways and the fragmentation of the self in the new ways'
Judith Fryer, old vs new
Archer and May's marriage is 'bound by the tribal code of the elite'
Max Herzberg, marriage
Archer is “a product of convention”
Elizabeth Ammons, Archer
'replication seems everything'
Pamela Knights, replication
'the price of innocence is diminished humanity for women'
Elizabeth Ammons, innocence
'the little world... is hermetically sealed against contamination'
Blake Nevius, contamination
Phelps - 'the absolute imprisonment in which her characters stagnate'
Phelps, imprisonment
NY is 'prison of silent hypocrisy'
V.S Pritchett, prison
'rigidly ritualised and moribund society'
Candace Waid, ritual
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