FDS Books: On Edith Wharton. (LONG POST!)

A lot of people may know of Edith Wharton, usually from a novel or a movie, but that’s about the extent of it. Feminist is not a term that many would use to describe her, at first glance. However, ladies, Edith Wharton is a writer that should be on your radar. Her life is very much so a tale of abiding to society’s standards when you’re younger, and how things blossom when you stop giving a shit. It also features prominently in her writing.

Edith Wharton: The Case for Leveling Up and Living Your Best Life

Edith was born Edith Newbold Jones in New York City in 1862 to what amounted to a 1%er family. Edith’s was taught by governesses, and like many rich girls of the era, her education was to stop at some point, and she was supposed to become a socially acceptable woman of the era. Well-read was something that women weren’t expected to be. She wrote some poetry when she was younger, and while some of that poetry was published, they were published under fake names, as a proper society girl didn’t do anything like write.

Something to keep in mind: patriarchal culture (even to this day) dictates states that a woman after 30 is worthless and hits “the wall”. This is something to strongly keep in mind later in this post. At the time, it was imperative that Edith be married. An ambitious writer was too masculine and could ruin a young woman’s chances at marriage. As a result, Edith’s mother forbade her from reading until she was married, and young Edith acquiesced. In 1885, Edith married Edward “Teddy” Wharton. Edith was 23. Teddy was 35. At the time, Wharton was considered a bit older to be a wife. Shortly after the wedding, Edith took on the duties of a proper society wife, but Teddy later started suffering from depression. The traveling that she went on with Teddy ceased, and then she became depressed as well, and was also diagnosed with asthma.

After Teddy Wharton’s condition was determined to be incurable (nowadays, we’d call it “Treatment Resistant”), Edith started an affair. In 1902, at 40 years old, her first novel was published, The Valley of Decision. Soon after, she would churn out books, short stories, poetry, novellas, and even non-fiction works, in particular The Decoration of Houses. In 1913, she and Teddy divorced, and she later moved to France. She continued to write, host other writers and intellectuals, and became the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize in 1921 for The Age of Innocence. She became a philanthropist, establishing workrooms for unemployed seamstresses, housing for refugees and schools for refugee children, and sanitariums for people with tuberculosis. She never remarried. She died at 73 doing what she loved – writing, socializing, traveling, and changing the world for the better.

Her novels reflect her upbringing. They’re referred to as ‘Novels of Manners’ and social commentaries. Looking at her life is very much so an FDS success story if you’re a woman that is interested in not having to waste away dealing with LVM, and she drives this home in her texts.

My favorite works of hers are The House of Mirth, The Custom of the Country and The Age of Innocence.

The House of Mirth & The Custom of the Country: Two Sides of the Same Coin

The House of Mirth is a novel whose central character is Lily Bart, a extremely beautiful socialite with a problem: she’s 29 and unmarried (though not for lack of trying). The other problem is that her money is getting low. You would think the way to solve this would be for her to get married, right? Well, here’s the thing about Lily… she’s as selfless and naïve as she is beautiful. She’s also a material girl and spends money as soon as she gets it. She’s very much so a product of her environment. Lily’s beauty is so well-known that men desire her – married men and bachelors alike. Lily is first seen visiting Lawrence Selden, a young lawyer that she later develops feelings for, but can’t be with because he’s not wealthy enough (he’s also something of a cynic – he’s the person that hangs out with the wealthy but mocks them all the while). This is her first error – she is doing this in a building that houses bachelors and is doing this alone. She is later approached by someone who is part of her set, Simon Rosedale. Rosedale is the proprietor of the building, filthy rich, and on the hunt for a wife. Lily, however, shows no interest in Rosedale, despite his wealth and single status. He’s seen as being unpleasant in her set, no one wants to deal with him, and he’s also Jewish. Wharton describes Rosedale with such antisemitic contempt that it would make you want to put the novel down. Keep going though, because she actually makes it a point to reform Rosedale later.

Lily’s set is illustrated in terms of who they are and their follies. Through a series of disastrous errors on her part along with her love for finery, not understanding men's nature, and lacking a ruthless sense of self-preservation, Lily ends up dealing with some downright corrupt characters. With characters like this, from this point on, it’s downhill for Lily. She starts at the top of society, and then plummets to the margins. By the end of the novel, she relies on the goodwill of people like social reformer Gerty Farish, divorcee Carry Fisher and, surprisingly, Simon Rosedale – who still wishes to marry her to save her from her plight and restore her position, and does everything possible to help her.

The Custom of the Country is a little bit different, though the main character could easily be part of Lily’s set. The central character here is Undine Spragg, a social climber from small-town Middle America. Wharton describes her as “fiercely independent, yet passionately imitative.” Her family made a fortune in her town of Apex. Undine has loftier ambitions, and wants to leave Apex for more fashionable options. She and her parents move to New York, and she becomes part of New York hotel society and starts the search for a husband with a good name. Her beauty, flightiness, and ability to attract men attract Ralph Marvell, a sensitive young man from New York society. Undine feels pretty lukewarm to him, but he has something that she needs: a good name. Ralph, unfortunately, has the good name but not a lot of money, which doesn’t wow Undine, who views money as a baseline standard for any man that she’s with. Ralph, however, will do anything for Undine, and will take on work to make money so that his wife is happy. He then learns that money is her motivation, and eventually (among other things), her motivation makes him kill himself.

Later, she marries Raymond de Chelles, a French Aristocrat, because he also has the good name and some actual money this time. After going through some issues to get married, Ralph Marvell’s suicide allows her to get married to the Count. She learns later that her aristocrat husband is more concerned about art and the like rather than money or ambition, and everything feels very shabby to her. Undine eventually gets tired of him too, and then she later reconnects with her first husband from Apex, Elmer Moffatt. Elmer has made exceptional amounts of money. He’s far more like her, and he has something that she always wants – money and power. They remarry, but at the end of the novel, Undine thinks about how her life would be if she later married an ambassador…

Both of these involve female protagonists, but both are in very different places. Lily starts from the top and ends up at the bottom, while Undine starts at the bottom and ends up at the top. They’re two very different personalities but share two things – both are gorgeous and have a place in society. Personality-wise, Lily is very passive regarding her life. She’s very naïve and selfless, which is something that doesn’t wash in a rapidly changing society, and certainly in a society that is harsh towards women of a certain age. She is a character that things happen to. Despite that she is acutely aware that she’s attractive, she basically banks on that alone as her golden ticket, and it doesn’t do her well. She could have married Percy Gryce, but she wasn’t attracted to him. She could have married Simon Rosedale, but she wasn’t attracted to him either – and she has every right to not want to hitch her wagon to men that she’s not into. She never came forward with how she felt towards Selden. She was used by Gus Trenor – her intentions were good, but Gus, being the LVM that he was, hated that she wouldn’t fuck for favors. She was used as a tool by Bertha Dorset, who was a bored pick-me who threw Lily under the bus. Lily had letters revealing that Bertha was absolutely cheating on her husband, but she chose not to reveal them. Her refusal to address the Bertha situation led to rumors, and those rumors led to her being disinherited, and then she goes on to live off the generosity of characters like Gerty Farish, Carry Fisher and Mattie Gormer until the end of the book. Society punishes Lily for being a trophy and not doing what a good trophy should be doing and settling for a man.

Undine, on the contrary, is ambitious. She starts off knowing what she wants, in spite of what Wharton says about her not really knowing herself. Knowing that she loves money and influence and being spoiled is precisely what she wants, and she knows exactly how to get it. Undine is an active, dynamic character, and she moves with the times and adapts. She puts herself in positions to get what she wants.

In general, Undine is portrayed as an unscrupulous character. There are moments where, yes, she can be pretty awful. She is an absent mother and isn’t particularly concerned about the feelings of these men that she marries and discards. She has deeply narcissistic traits, such as talking about how much she "loves a man", gets her supply from them, and then discards them for the next. However, the one thing that we see here is that Undine is a woman having to make her own way in a patriarchy. She is a victim of the very behavior that she is scorned for, which is treating men as status symbols and leaving. She’s a character that I jokingly refer to as a student of the City Girls' school (make him think you love him, take his money then you dip on him). The ire that most people have towards Undine isn’t necessarily even her methods or her ambition, though people do hate ambitious women. They hate Undine because she will do what she has to do to enrich herself in a society that treats women like trophies, their beauty and youth being currency, and when that fades, they get cast aside. Even when they still possess that youth and beauty, they are shut up into a house and made invisible. Their husbands keep them at arm’s length and don’t really communicate with them.

The best line in The Custom of the Country, for me, is this:

Just so; she'd even feel aggrieved. But why? Because it's against the custom of the country. And whose fault is that? The man's again—I don't mean Ralph I mean the genus he belongs to: homo sapiens, Americanus. Why haven't we taught our women to take an interest in our work? Simply because we don't take enough interest in THEM.

Because the women in the worlds of The House of Mirth and The Custom of the Country, and hell, even in our society – we haven’t progressed that much at all – are treated as status symbols, holes, and annoyances to the men in their lives, they have to figure out ways to live their lives keeping this in mind. In the case of Lily, she followed rules. She did what she needed to do to land a man that could keep up her life. Because she wasn’t ruthless enough and tended towards quietly and obediently doing as she was told, she was ruined. The opposite being Undine, who was doggedly interested in constantly leveling up and outdoing herself and her society, and in her pursuit of the bag, she did to the patriarchy what the patriarchy would have done to her – and that pisses readers off immensely. Wharton writes Ralph Marvell, Raymond de Chelles, the Marvells, the Fairfords, and the Dagonets as ridiculous characters, people who can’t grow with the times and deserve to be winnowed out. All they have are their grand delusions and a need to live with “the way things were”. It’s intended to mock the Nouveau Riche, but it also lampoons the pretentiousness of the older monied classes as well.

The Age of Innocence and Men.

The central character of The Age of Innocence is Newland Archer. Newland is getting ready to have an advantageous marriage to the innocent and sweet May Welland, though prior to the wedding, May’s cousin comes to town! That cousin is Countess Ellen Olenska. Olenska generally doesn’t give two shits about social dictates, even though she seeks the safety and security of the dictates of New York society. She’s a soon-to-be divorcee, and during the era that this book is set, divorce was a no-no. However, her decision to divorce her abusive husband has bad news written all over it, and it could be something that affects her family. Newland, at this point having fallen in love with Ellen, tells Ellen how he feels about her, and Ellen responds back that she can’t be with him – it would hurt her cousin, and that he needs to forget about her. He and May move their wedding date up and get married. The entire time that they’re married, Newland becomes surly and uninterested in society, instead pining for Ellen. Ellen now lives in the US, having been disinherited by her soon-to-be-ex husband and her family for her choice to separate. Newland wants to have May as his wife, but Ellen as his mistress, and will do anything for those ends. He continues to obsess over her and later, just before they’re due to consummate their relationship, she goes to Europe. May, during this time, having suspected the affair, becomes pregnant. Newland, who was willing to follow Ellen to Europe, decides instead to remain with May for the sake of their son.

Years pass, and May dies. He then is able to go to Europe with their son so that their son can meet May’s cousin. While Newland could go up to see Ellen, he realize that Ellen is someone that he built up in his head, and says “It’s more real to me here than if I went up.”

This book shows acutely that men aren’t interested in the woman that follows rules or does what she’s told. Men are willing to hurt the docile, submissive, dutiful woman (May is frequently depicted as uninteresting and a normal society girl) for someone that they think is shinier and more fun – no matter how advantageous or how good that the “good woman” is for him. They’re willing to hurt that woman for their own ends, their own pleasures and fantasies and will wreck her life if it means that they get what they want in the end. Newland was ready to do this. He was ready to walk out on May, however, it was social conventions and her being pregnant that made her unable to do so.

Imagine being May – to have to hide her husband’s indiscretion, and to smile anyway because she’s a good society wife, and wouldn’t dare want to throw dirt on her own family’s name. Ellen had the freedom that May lacked. Ellen was punished in the novel for doing things her own way, while Newland was never punished for his desires towards Ellen – he just had to straight up and fly right. He didn’t lose May. He was able to keep his family and his reputation until May’s death, and then he was able to go to Europe, when he had that realization of Ellen being someone that he built in his head, and he didn’t want to ruin that image.

This ought to tell you – a patriarchy does not punish men who hurt women. May’s humanity and feelings were never considered. Her sacrifices were viewed as pure and innocent, like the society that she is supposed to exist in, and what a good wife does in a society that’s antagonistic towards women. Meanwhile, Ellen is disinherited, and while she eventually gets her money back and is able to return to Europe. She is punished for being the wild woman that walked out on a man (even as that man was abusing her), not because she’s getting ready to split up a home. Newland’s affair with Ellen is seen as two star-crossed lovers that want to be together but simply can’t be, because of the annoying trifle of the inconsequential wife. In fact, May is later on treated as the threat to Newland and Ellen's relationship, the reason why the two of them simply cannot be. May is depicted as oppressive, while Newland just wants to be free. But here's the rub - a patriarchy is designed for men to make of it what they will, by their choice. Women are forced to exist within it.

It's this sort of thing that creates characters like Undine Spragg. It’s this sort of thing that leads to downfalls like that of Lily Bart. To blindly follow a patriarchy, where you are simply the background to some man’s foreground, is a death of the soul, if not leading to an actual downfall. The longing of The Age of Innocence and the melancholy of The House of Mirth are very different in tone from the irony and even hope of the end of The Custom of the Country. The last novel ends on an ironically optimistic tone of ‘what if?’

The life of Edith Wharton is the ‘What If’. What if you said “Fuck the Patriarchy”? What if you said “Fuck the Rules” and lived your life the way you wanted? Well, you could temporarily have a difficult time like Ellen Olenska or Undine Spragg. But remember, this was temporary. In the case of Edith Wharton herself, when she stopped trying to impress others and decided instead to impress herself and live her life as she wished, her life flourished, and you see the result of that in her writing.