Gerić, Petra.
(2018).
The visual figures in Edith Wharton’s The house of mirth, The age of innocence and Ethan Frome.
Diploma Thesis. Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu, Department of English Language and Literature.
[mentor Jukić, Tatjana].
Abstract
Vision and the visual play an important role in Edith Wharton’s works. Wharton uses a wide
scope of visual figures – ranging from high art, technology, transportation, nature, even
waste – in order to express her views on art, her skepticism toward modernity and progress,
and her unsentimental view of the past. Wharton uses ekphrasis in The House of Mirth to
express her views on art and whether art should be treated as a material object. Moreover,
her choice of visual figures shows “how much Wharton was negotiating modernity in her
writing.” (Hoeller, p 137) Images of transportation, technology and rubbish found in The
House of Mirth have very negative connotations – something that betrays her skepticism
towards the idea of progress. Moreover, the style used in Ethan Frome is modernist. The
same way modernist writers “(…) achieved a hard-edged quality with images of metals,
especially steel,” (Singley, p 125) Wharton does “with New England granite.” (125)
Moreover, Wharton’s skepticism towards progress is by no means a sign of her favoring the
past. Her ambivalence toward the past is apparent in her use of tribal imagery, and imagery
of tombs, doomed cities and pyramids in The Age of Innocence; the society of old New York
is portrayed as oppressive and suffocating.
The main characters in all three novels possess a certain “tendency toward visual
sensibility,” (Miller, p 15) and an “artistic temperament.” (Miller, p 18) Their “visual
sensibility” is very influential in the way they view themselves, each other and the world
around them I oYen through the lens of visual arts, but also nature, technology etc.
Moreover, Wharton continually draws attention to the discrepancy between their vision of
the world and the reality around them. Therefore, vision and the visual are of great
importance when analyzing the focalizing consciousnesses in Edith Wharton’s fiction.
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