Edith Wharton Ambivalent Society

Freedom of Spirit in an Ambivalent Society – With Reference to Edith Wharton’s Select Novel

K. Kalpana Karthi, Assistant Professor of English, PSG College of Arts & Science, Coimbatore

Edith Wharton’s fiction which emerged during the period of Post-World War I is a social analysis, based on Culture, Class and Morality. Her characters reflect the ambivalences prevalent in the environment, sometimes as antimodernists and often as liberal cultural critics. They stand evident, acknowledging that the past was not utopian and the present and future are mired in unpredictable political and social follies. The paper is attempt to study how her female protagonists struggle in this unstable and oscillating society which evade ethics and responsibility to embrace the easy solutions of scapegoating, evasion, cynicism and denial of truths and facts. Her novels depict how women fit themselves into this society either by rejecting or by accepting the changes to construct their emancipated New Selves. Her women continually fluctuate between similar and contradictory attitudes and evolve to create within themselves a kind of freedom with the aid of culture and which they may share with some kindred souls struggling in the same turmoil.

Her novels try to calculate the expense of spirit that a programmed life of material conquest transmitted for an indefinitely long time. The theme of The House of Mirth is the victimizing effect of a particular environment on one of its more helplessly characteristic products. It confirms the discovery of the nineteenth century, that society, rather than God or Satan, is the ruler of the universe. Lily Bart of The House of Mirth is inducted at birth into this society, and following her mother’s examples and training, she defeats any chance of effective rebellion against any vulgarity of the spirit. Lily Bart’s only assert is her beauty and she is in a compelling need to use this as the ingredient, tactfully, to construct a financial and social foundation for

If she chooses to marry a rich man who is dull witted and lacks originality it will be a life of perpetual misery. Unfortunately life without money will also be equally miserable and she whimsically moves on without making a choice. This movement leads Lily’s progress away from the materialistic society toward a new sense of communion with those who suffer and gain moral stature through their pain. This movement gains her an insight into herself and the ambivalent stand of the world she represents. As Margaret MC Dowell says, “ At the same time Lily moves toward tragedy, she moves toward understanding of herself and others and reveals that she is in essence superior to those who had formerly represented to her all the social graces.” Lily’s death at the end of the novel is the victorious end of the search of freedom of spirit though it is death in materialistic