2/1/2024 0 Comments Wharton writing challengeAn examination of Wharton's early poetry in Chapter III, including several unpublished archival works, reveals the extent to which religious themes such as sin and redemption continue to figure prominently in her thinking. Thus, her commitment to religious thought emerges as consistent throughout her youth and beyond into her married years. By contextualizing Wharton's autobiographical records, I am able to demonstrate how the seriousness of her spiritual development has been downgraded by a privileging of one anomalous autobiographical fragment. In Chapter II, I utilize Wharton's private library and various forms of Wharton's life-writing to trace the formation of her childhood Christian faith, in order to establish its depth and intensity. By examining both new and overlooked archival evidence, I expose contradictions in the prevailing theories, and make a case for a previously unacknowledged spiritual angst underlying Wharton's anxiety and depression. In Chapter I, I survey the biographical versions of a mysterious twelve-year crisis of Wharton's mental and physical health, which fail to account fully for her complex symptoms. Focusing on previously undiscovered, unpublished, or neglected writing from Wharton's early period, I establish that she was not merely a genteel Episcopalian, with an undeveloped childhood faith that she did not automatically discard her religious beliefs upon exposure to evolutionary science and that her writing depicts a vital spiritual dimension to life. It demonstrates that Wharton's vision of the inner life is informed by a deeper and more lasting engagement with religious belief than has been assumed, often manifested in her expression of moral quandaries, concern for the underprivileged, and endorsement of values of loyalty and duty. ![]() This study discovers the sources of these tenets in an investigation of the first four decades of Wharton's development prior to her widespread fame. Much of the critical commentary on Wharton's work has been predicated on an accepted set of biographical tenets that have contributed to this misunderstanding. What is even less well understood is the religious impulse at the origin of such compassion. What is not commonly recognized about Wharton, however, is her focus on the inner life of the individual, and her consistent compassion for the marginalized. Edith Wharton rose to fame with The House of Mirth (1905), establishing her reputation as a chronicler of New York high-society culture, and won the Pulitzer Prize for The Age of Innocence (1920), further solidifying her image as the Grande Dame of American letters.
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