"Habitable Region": Morality's Place in Three Novels by Edith Wharton
Abstract
The understated drama and wit of Edith Wharton's prose style have long fascinated me. An avid reader of short stories, I found many of Wharton's to be compact masterpieces in complexity of theme and characterization. But her novels--Ethan Frome, Summer, The House of Mirth, The Fruit of the Tree, and The Age of Innocence--captured my interest most completely. In these longer works, I sensed not only a variety and intensity of characterization, but a morality too distinctive to be dismissed as a mere "strain" or "undercurrent." I noticed that often, this ethical tone in Wharton's novels was more than a mute and passive presence; rather, it served to shape theme and to charge certain characters with a singular animation lacking in others.
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- OSU Theses [15752]