Edith Wharton was the grande dame of American fiction for the first three decades of the 20th century. Best known for novels that scrutinized New York society, such as Age of Innocence and House of Mirth, she also wrote two short novels set in western Massachusetts, close to her home in Lenox: Ethan Frome (1911) and Summer (1917), which she referred to as “hot and cold Ethan.” We’ll look at these novels, interesting fiction in themselves, to see some of Wharton’s fictional innovations in the Modernist period, for which she is little credited, and we’ll study some of her dominant themes.
Course Code
501653