Reviewing the 100 Best Novels of the 20th
Century
by Annette Ferran
Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton is a prolific and
reliable writer of the early 20th century who fits the category of
true novelist. That is to say, though each of her novels certainly stands on
its own, and it is possible to have a favorite among them, it is the cumulation
of her insight and style that makes her work significant.
On
the Modern Library’s list are The Age of
Innocence (#58) and The House of
Mirth (#69).
Like
Henry James (who was a contemporary and friend) and Graham Greene, Wharton has
a certain arena of life, a certain thematic thread, and a certain attitude on
which she builds her stories, which make them recognizably hers.
Wharton
was an early feminist—a disposition that would be clear from her novels even if
you were not aware of the biographical detail. Her protagonists tend to be women who recognize the multiple
layers of swaddling hindering them in their quest for identity and a place in
the world. Reading these characters, it is not hard to see why the women’s
liberation movement was bubbling up then.
These
novels are not political polemics, though. They are good reads. They are solid stories told in clean
prose of people in their ordinary lives (albeit from the distance of a century
and with the details of “ordinary” that distance entails). They are witty, realistic, and sensory,
with characters who stick with you, like people you know. The novels have the best quality
a novel can have: You hate to reach the end.
Wharton,
like James, wrote about the higher classes of society. Her realm was New York. The people in her stories are
privileged, or once were, and move in fancy environments, or those in contrast
to their fancy norm. Wharton
writes about this milieu with knowledge but also with the stance of an
outsider. There is compassion in
her attention to detail, but it is layered with wry skepticism. She might seem
to be celebrating this society and its better qualities, but she is also exposing
its absurdities and, more to the point, its dangerous qualities: the psychologically denigrating
expectations it imposes on its women. Love gets cynical coverage in Wharton’s hands. She is a masterful prose stylist and a
masterful storyteller, so the dark side of romantic pairing can sneak up on
you. And of course marriage
eligibility and the necessity of young women to be married are scoffed at.
The Age of Innocence involves a planned marriage between two
people well suited, in societal terms, for each other that is disrupted by the
appearance of a woman who is everything but suitable for society. The Countess Ellen Olenska is an
American who has married a foreign Count, which is good. But she wants to divorce him, which is
bad. There is mutual attraction with a man who is destined for the aforementioned
suitable marriage. Both behave
honorably, but Ellen’s life defies the rules of her society, and so her actual
behavior is irrelevant.
The House of Mirth involves a woman, Lily Bart, who at
nearly 30 is almost too old to marry.
She contrives to keep a suitable partner on the hook while she explores
the possibility of another partner, but the gears keep moving around her,
putting her acceptable destiny and her desired destiny both in jeopardy.
Wharton’s
humor is biting yet artful; her insight is deep and multidimensional. She sees a whole world and has thoughts
about it which she shares through nicely wrought scenes. The opening paragraphs of The Age of Innocence, for instance, are
very funny, painting a picture of the New York opera society and its patrons
that stops just short of parody. These are not comedies, however. Tragedy also permeates the novels, as
it must when the central conflict is self against the world.
Annette Ferran
lives in Philadelphia where she works as an editor for a medical
publisher. She is also the
Associate Editor for 10,000 Tons ofBlack Ink, a Literary Writers Network publication. She has a degree of
dubious practical use, in German, and is a lifelong avid reader of fiction and
lover of lists. She has had a few short stories published, most recently in
RE:AL.
