Edith Wharton and The House of Mirth: The Novelist Writes for the Theater

EDITH WHARTON AND THE HOUSE OF MIRTH: THE NOVELIST WRITES FOR THE THEATER ALTHOUGH PERIODIC GRUMBLINGS from some critics, such as Yvor Winters, have intimated that writing for the theater is perilously close to literary prostitution, a number of American authors have not been able to resist the lure of seeing their fiction transformed into flesh and blood on the stage. Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Henry James, and William Dean Howells were all impelled either to dramatize their own novels or to write original works for the theater. Unfortunately for both the authors and the theater, disappointment has frequently been the reward of such efforts.~ That the novels of these writers are still being read, while the plays have been lost or retired to the library shelf, indicates that the dramas may have carried the seeds of their own destruction, rather than that hostile, unlettered audiences caused the failure of the plays by not recognizing the true genius of the playwrights. Analysis often reveals the would-be playwrighfs fatal misapprehension that a play is little more than a novel brought to life. Even this naive view might not be so deadly, were the writer able to infuse his dramatization with something resembling life on stage. There have been, however, competent dramatizations, seemingly assured of success, which have been resoundingly rejected by theater audiences. One of these, The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton and Clyde Fitch, provides an interesting case history of a novelist's attempt to adapt a popular book for the theater. First published in Scribner's Magazine in 1905, The House of Mirth was soon issued in book form. Robert M. Lovett, reviewing Mrs. Wharton's work, asserts that she gave the public what it wanted: scandal , romance, melodrama, and an expose of the vices of metropolitan society. That the novel had a strong appeal is undeniable, for it placed among the top ten "best-sellers" in 1905 and again in 1906. Readers flocked to the booksellers to get this intriguing piece of fiction. Reactions to the plight of the novel's heroine, Lily Bart, who, penniless, finds herself at the mercy of a rather vicious crew of New York's "400," were naturally varied and made the book the subject of much comment and controversy. When Mrs. Wharton began work on a new novel, her 152 1961 EDITH WHARTON AND THE HOUSE OF MIRTH 153 old friend, Charles Eliot Norton, reminded her that "no great work of the imagination has ever been based on illicit passion," recalling with alarm the incidents in The House of Mirth. Such controversy and consequent popularity came at a time when the motion pictures had not yet made a mass invasion of the New York playhouses, and producers found themselves forced to stage indifferent scripts to keep the many theaters open. With the growth of "best-selling" books, made possible by improved printing and binding methods, mass sales or "book butchering," gigantic advertising campaigns, increase in literacy, rural free delivery, and the good offices of the mail order companies, producers seized upon popular novels as a new source for scripts with a ready-made audience. Wisely reasoning that large sales betokened some sort of interest in the novels, impressarios were quick to bring to the stage such publishing successes as Ben Hur, Quo Vadis, When Knighthood Was in Flower, David Harum, Richard Carvel, Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch, To Have and To Hold, The Clansman, and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. The period from 1900-1906 was probably the high-water mark in popularity of dramatized novels, for seventy-one American and foreign novels were adapted for the New York stage during that time. With the success accorded The House of Mirth, it was only a matter of time before Mrs. Wharton would be approached regarding a dramatization of her book. In A Backward Glance, she recalls: Once The House of Mirth had started on its prosperous career, I was of course beseiged with applications for leave to dramatize it; but I refused them all, convinced that (apart from the intrinsic weakness of most plays drawn from books) there was nothing in this particular book out of which to make a...