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treasure of amusement sitting in the lap of method with a felicity peculiarly her own. If one of these is that she too has clearly a saturation—which it would be ever so interesting to determine and appreciate—we have it from her not in the crude state but in the extract, the extract that makes all the difference for our sense of an artistic economy. If the extract, as would appear, is the result of an artistic economy, as the latter is its logical motive, so we find it associated in Mrs. Wharton with such appeals to our interest, for instance, as the fact that, absolutely sole among our students of this form, she suffers, she even encourages, her expression to flower into some sharp image or figure of her thought when that will make the thought more finely touch us. Her step, without straying, encounters the living analogy, which she gathers, in passing, without awkwardness of pause, and which the page then carries on its breast as a trophy plucked by a happy adventurous dash, a token of spirit and temper as well as a proof of vision.

-from Notes on Novelists (1914)

Questions

1. Why would any contemporary reader care about the high-society machinations of Wharton’s novel? Do Wharton’s privileged characters seem American to you at all? Or is it the distance between their lives and those of ordinary people that make ordinary people want to read about them?

2. In spite of the great differences in time and milieu, can you see a young American woman of the twenty-first century, say the daughter of a dentist or a corporate executive, facing essentially the same problems, choices, and temptations as Lily Bart?

3. What causes Lily’s fall? Puritanism, an excess of wealth and leisure, Lily’s purely individual foolishness, a punishing deity, accident?

4. Social conventions crush Lily. Reading this novel, did you find it difficult to understand why Lily wouldn’t speak out—tell Selden how she feels about him, challenge Bertha’s mean betrayal, let it be known what Gus Trenor is up to? Do you find it believable in the context of the novel that Lily acts as passively as she does, and are you sympathetic to her plight?

5. Wharton chose a tragic ending. How do you think the novel could have ended positively? In the context of the novel, do you think Selden might have rescued Lily? That Lily might have adjusted to a life beneath her social station? That she might have eventually married Rosedale?

6. What are some striking instances of Wharton’s use of the telling detail?

FOR FURTHER READING

Biographies

Auchincloss, Louis. Edith Wharton: A Woman in Her Time. New York: Viking Press, 1971. Biography, criticism, and many good photos by a novelist of manners in the Wharton tradition.

Bell, Millicent. Edith Wharton and Henry, James: A Story of Their Friendship. New York: Braziller, 1965. Uses their correspondence to portray their relationship.

Benstock, Shari. No Gift from Chance: A Biography of Edith Wharton. New York: Scribner’s, 1994. The latest but not the best biography.

Clark, Kenneth. Another Part of the Wood: A Self-Portrait. 1974. Reprint: New York: Ballantine, 1976, pp. 206-208. Section cited provides insightful analysis of Wharton’s character by a major art historian.

Flanner, Janet. “Edith Wharton (1862-1937).” Paris Was Yesterday, 1925-1939. 1972. Reprint: New York: Popular Library, no date, pp.171-178. Shrewd but catty memoir by the New Yorker correspondent in Paris.

James, Henry and Edith Wharton. Letters, 1900-1915. Edited by Lyall Powers. New York: Scribner’s, 1990. Guarded politeness between master and disciple who became friends but disapproved of each other’s work.

Lewis, R. W. B. Edith Wharton: A Biography. New York: Harper and Row, 1975. First-rate life of Wharton.

Wharton, Edith. A Backward Glance. 1934. Reprint: New York: Scribner’s, 1964, pp. 204-208. Unrevealing autobiography, but section cited throws some light on the origins of the novel.

———Letters. Edited by R. W. B. Lewis and Nancy Lewis. New York: Scribner’s, 1988. Provides some insight about the composition and reception of the novel.

Criticism