Edith Wharton: Peer Groups and Peerless Women

Abstract

And Edith Wharton arose, a bluestocking of Manhattan, and smote the high-born Philistines with stale baguettes and fictional reproaches. I say “fictional” because Wharton's novels and stories attest to mixed motives: She both loved and hated old-money elites. As to the baguettes, they refer, of course, to her fascination with aristocratic French culture, which she came to regard as the best alternative to life in America. Eventually, her sense of identity and her ability to manage anxiety came to be dependent upon her membership in peer groups anchored in French society. Earlier, Wharton's conflicted identification with a post-Civil War New York social set had played a central role in her life [1]. One of the keys to understanding her fictional themes and characterizations is to be found in Wharton's marginal role in relation to this social set. Another key is Wharton's existence, as a child and as a young woman, on the margins of her mother's consciousness. The mother, as described by one of Wharton's biographers, was a narcissistic, class-conscious woman who had little interest in her daughter, except to marry her off as quickly and strategically as possible [2]. As I will try to demonstrate, Wharton's modus operandi as a writer was to assign to various social sets some of the qualities of an ambivalently valued maternal love object.