Edith Wharton's Writing Style

Edith Wharton Edith Wharton, an American writer, is an influential writer who has impacted our society and the culture of writing. Wharton lived seventy-five years; born in New York and soon raised, settled, and passed away in France. Born as Edith Jones, Wharton was born to a well-off family in which she received an outstanding education. By age sixteen, she had managed to (privately) print a collection of her poems. At age 23, her had experienced the death of her father and a couple failed romantic interests; to avoid late marriage, Edith Jones married Edward Wharton. After her marriage with Edward Wharton, Edith Wharton became a much more focused writer. Wharton began writing poems and short stories for magazine companies such as, Harper’s,

Wharton wrote many of her pieces connecting the protagonist to her home town, New York. Similarly, shortly after moving to New England, she wrote about what she saw around her. For example, Ethan Frome was written from a New England perspective, while pieces such as The Age of Innocence were written with a New York perspective; this simply shows that Wharton is an observant writer. Her writing can relate to Kate Chopin’s style in one obvious way, they both use vague details to explain a bigger idea. In Ethan Frome, “She lingered, pressing closer to his side. ‘Ned Hale and Ruth Varnum came just as near running into the big elm at the bottom. We were all sure they were killed.’ Her shiver ran down his arm. ‘Wouldn 't it have been too awful? They 're so happy!’” (1 31). With a quick reading here, the audience may think that someone died, but Wharton uses this quote is to express that someone has not died, but the situation is worse than death, if that can be possible. Every detail of Wharton’s writing serves an important role, everything has meaning and is well-planned. Some important characteristics to keep in mind while reading her writing are foreshadowing, vocabulary, imagery, and structure. An interesting point is that that Wharton does not always express her emotions through a female mind, although her large concerns are

This writing style makes the author focus on the characters’ surroundings to write about their region based culture, dialect, customs, etc. The specialty of this writing is the authors’ incorporation of places which may not be familiar to them, yet they brilliantly write using important techniques and ideas pertaining to the culture of the unfamiliar land. In this movement, the writer imagines life in the present-day society while taking into consideration local factors. An important factor, yet a drawback to this writing style is nostalgia, it is critical for the author to incorporate what they know from past experiences, but sometimes this gets in the way while attempting to portray