Edith Wharton: Sex, Satire, and the Older Woman (review)

A brief inquiry into Edith Wharton scholarship will support Avril Horner and Janet Beer's claim that the author's early novels, those published before the late-1920s, receive the lion's share of critical attention. The House of Mirth (1905) and The Age of Innocence (1920) have been much examined and The Custom of the Country (1913) has captured a great deal of attention in recent years, due in part to the timeliness of its subject matter. According to Horner and Beer, of the 282 critical works listed in the Edith Wharton Society's bibliography, a mere eight focus solely on the author's writings published after 1925. Even if there is a "critical consensus that Wharton's final works . . . represent a falling off from her greatest novels," it is still a bit startling to find that little notice has been devoted to such a significant part of Wharton's oeuvre. However, in their collaborative study, Edith Wharton: Sex, Satire and the Older Woman, Horner and Beer assert that the later novels have much to show scholars regarding Edith Wharton's depiction of the dialogue taking place between America and Europe, her experimentation with the techniques of modern literature, and her portrayal of society's shifting understanding of gender and sexuality, particularly in regard to the older women who populate these later novels. Drawing upon a carefully selected array of sources, both previously published and unpublished, Horner and Beer adeptly use chronologically organized chapters to delve deeply into one of Wharton's final novels. This strategy enables the authors to craft a multi-layered argument that supports their book's larger claims, while effectively enabling the reader to trace the evolution of Wharton's conversations.

In order to explain the importance of examining novels that have long been dismissed as second-rate, Horner and Beer are quick to counter Wharton's critics and establish a foundational argument regarding these works' importance to the author's canon. The standard complaints against Wharton's later works—that she represented the old guard and could not stand up against the new generation of modernist writers, such as Joyce and Woolf; and that residing in France left her out of touch with her American subject matter—are well refuted by Horner and Beer. They claim that Wharton was not attempting to write in the high modernist mode, but her work should be considered experimental nonetheless because the author's "refusal to give easy answers or to deliver conventional endings in these late novels necessitates an actively interpretive reader." Chapter 4 of Hudson River Bracketed is particularly adept at mapping Wharton's position in relation to high modernist writers. Horner and Beer point to Wharton's criticism of modernist literature for privileging a thesis before all else, and they draw attention to the author's appreciation for satire, as well as her assertion that modernism is not a clean break from the past as its champions would have readers believe. Recognizing the implementation of satire in Wharton's later works builds a strong case for the merits of these novels. Wharton, they note, considered "stream of consciousness" to be a continuation of French realism, rather than a radical stylistic innovation, and in Hudson River Bracketed (1929), Wharton humorously argues that unchecked modernism risks descending into meaningless absurdity.

Though Wharton's relationship to the writers of her time is critical to reappraising these works, Sex, Satire and the Older Woman's greatest contribution to Wharton studies is, perhaps, its thoughtful exploration of gender and sexuality. The novels examined in this book reflect many of Wharton's own concerns regarding mature female sexuality, particularly society's reluctance to accept desire as belonging to women who have been relegated to the limited sphere of maternity. As Horner and Beer note, Wharton's exploration of this topic is subtle given its taboo nature at the time of her writing, but their careful readings of her novels and...