The Valley Of Childish Things Literary Analysis

Edith Wharton is an important, though neglected novelist in the history of American literature. Her novels study the status of the women and explore their relationship with men in a male dominated society. Again and again she presents the state of exceptional, rising, ‘New Woman’ of the turn of the century to break out of her compressible role and attempting a venture rebellion. The Age of Innocence is on the theme that deals ironically with the affluent social world of New York. The novel has a theme of entrapment and the struggle of the intruder, both to maintain an adult sense of self in a childish society and to rescue a trapped male from that society. The novel analyses the impact of misery and pain when society establishes the false

The story goes like this; once many children lived together in the valley of childish things, playing and studying the same lesson books. A little girl decided to go out of this world and to see something of the world about which the lesson books had taught her. As none of the other children cared to leave their games, she set out alone to climb the pass which led out of the valley. But outside she met with the world which was bleak and cold, the time passed and she grew into a woman and decided to go back to her childhood companions. On the way she met a man who helped her over the rough patches. Soon she came to know that this man was one of her old playmates. He too had ventured out in the world and was now going back to the valley. But on reaching the valley, she found her companions instead of growing men and women, had all remained little children. They seemed glad to have her back, but soon she felt that her presence was becoming intolerable for them. Then she turned to her fellow traveler, who was the only grown man in the valley, but “she was on his knees before a dear little girl with blue eyes and a coral