#thehouseofmirth

   I recently (i.e. a month ago) read my first noel by Edith Wharton, “The House of Mirth,” and now I wonder why it took me so long to read anything by her or learn about her. In researching for this blog post, I realize that I quite literally knew nothing, and I regret it. Wharton was an amazing woman who was years and years ahead of her time. She was a feminist before the term existed.

   Born in New York City, Wharton grew up in Europe and was fluent in four languages by the age of 10 was fluent in four languages. She loved writing and wrote poems and short stories throughout her childhood. She also loved reading, and was constantly filching books from her father’s library.

   As a young woman, Wharton rejected the fashionable clothing, deeming it superficial, as it was meant to attract marriageable men and she was not interested in that. At 15 she published her first work, a translation of a poem from the German. However, it was not published under her name because it was considered proper for the times. By the age of 16, she had been published in the Atlantic Monthly, had privately published poems and short stories, and had written a novella. Despite all of this, no one in her world encouraged her to pursue writing. But we all know that didn’t stop her.

   Wharton was a unique woman for her time. Along with her writing, which was considered scandalous, she was socially polemic. She broke off an engagement in her late teens, and much later had an affair which led to her divorce. These things were all considered unacceptable in her day and age, and after her divorce she went to live in France.

   I could keep going on and on about all the ways in which Wharton defied social convention or supported women in gaining equal footing in the world, such as opening a workroom for women in France during World War I, or becoming the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1921, but her most important feminist act was her writing itself.

   Although some (notably Kate Bolick in her book “Spinster”), have deemed her novels anti-feminist for their less-than-satisfactory endings (i.e. the main character does not live happily ever after), I firmly reject this notion. Let’s take, for example, “The House of Mirth,” which follows a rich-but-now-poor socialite trying to make it in the upper class, although she has no means of doing so. She eventually commits suicide (sorry, spoiler) but through her novel, Wharton exposes not only the double standard in 20th century society, but also the social hypocrisy. Women could not survive without men, and had to bend to fit society’s conventions in order to attain a husband, in order to survive. The main character refuses to do this, and society punishes her. Wharton openly criticized the society in which she was born and raised. That’s a badass piece of feminist literature if I ever read one.