This thesis is a study of how the American author Edith Wharton (1862-1937) in a number of novels and short stories written between 1876 and 1937 depicts cultural encounters between Americans and Europeans, mostly Frenchmen. Chiefly concerned with Fast and Loose, “The Last Asset”, Madame de Treymes, “Les Metteurs en Scène”, The Custom of the Country and The Age of Innocence, each of which articulates ideas relevant to the theme investigated, the thesis also contains a supplementary discussion of The Reef, The Glimpses of the Moon, The Mother’s Recompense and The Buccaneers. Borrowing terms and theoretical perspectives from Pierre Bourdieu and postcolonial literary criticism, particularly Homi Bhabha’s theories about inbetweenness, mimicry and otherness, the study contends through detailed analyses of single works that Wharton’s descriptions of Franco-American encounters are dynamic processes through which the parties involved are made aware of their own and “the other’s” distinguishing qualities and, in some significant cases, reach a heightened state of consciousness resembling Bhabha’s inbetweenness. Wharton’s cultural encounters often involve people with different levels of education and different economic and social positions, which justifies the use of Bourdieu’s method of analyzing the relationship between educational and social status in terms of different kinds of capital. While in her early works Wharton merely intimates the contours of the cultural encounter, in mature works such as Madame de Treymes and The Age of Innocence she views it as a highly complex process the many stages of which are intimated through the use of subtle narratological techniques. Throughout her work Wharton makes intricate use of imagery and keywords, some of them testifying to her interest in anthropology, to suggest the manifold dimensions of the cultural encounter, which is seen as both tempting and repelling. Her accounts of the Franco-American encounter are complexly related to the different phases of the American political and social situation described in her novels. The American experience of the meeting of the ‘old society’ and the ‘new’ is rendered even more complex by being seen as the background against which Europeans and Americans negotiate transactions of symbolic and economic capital. In most of her works these lead to tragic or tragic-comic misunderstandings; only in her last, unfinished novel does she describe a full-fledged Euro-American identity, a successful fusion of American and European experiences. / Den här avhandlingen är en studie i hur den amerikanska författarinnan Edith Wharton (1862-1937) i ett antal romaner och noveller skrivna mellan 1876 and 1937 skildrar kulturella möten mellan amerikaner och européer, främst fransmän. Avhandlingen behandlar huvudsakligen verken Fast and Loose, “The Last Asset”, Madame de Treymes, ”Les Metteurs en Scène”, The Custom of the Country and The Age of Innocence, som alla uttrycker idéer om kulturmöten; den innehåller även en kompletterande diskussion av verken The Reef, The Glimpses of the Moon, The Mother’s Recompense and The Buccaneers. Med termer och perspektiv hämtade från Pierre Bourdieu och postkolonial litteraturforskning, främst Homi Bhabhas teorier om in-betweenness (”mellanskap”), mimicry och otherness hävdar studien genom detaljerade analyser av enskilda verk hur Whartons beskrivningar av fransmäns och amerikaners möten är dynamiska processer där i bästa fall båda parter blir medvetna om sin egen och ”den andres” särart, och i vissa fall även når ett intensifierat medvetande som påminner om Bhabhas in-betweenness. Whartons kulturmöten sker oftast mellan personer med olika bildning samt ekonomisk och social position, vilket gör att Bourdieus perspektiv för analys av relationen mellan utbildning och social status som styrd av olika sorters kapital kommer till användning. I sina tidiga berättelser antyder Wharton konturerna av det kulturella mötet, i mogna verk som Madame de Treymes and The Age of Innocence gestaltar hon det som en mycket komplex process vars många skeden antyds via hennes användning av subtil berättarteknik. Alltigenom sina verk tillämpar Wharton ett komplext bildspråk och nyckelord, varav vissa vittnar om hennes intresse för antropologi, som antyder kulturmötets många dimensioner, framställt som samtidigt lockande och frånstötande/avskräckande. Hennes redogörelser av det fransk-amerikanska mötet är komplext relaterat till de olika faser av den amerikanska politiska och sociala situation som beskrivs i hennes berättelser. Den amerikanska erfarenheten av mötet mellan den ”gamla sociala grupperingen” och den ”nya” skildras som mer komplext genom att ses som den bakgrund mot vilken européerna och amerikanerna förhandlar transaktioner av symboliskt och ekonomiskt kapital. I merparten av hennes verk leder dessa transaktioner till tragiska eller tragikomiska missförstånd; bara i hennes sista, ofullbordade roman beskriver hon en fullt utvecklad euroamerikansk identitet, en lyckad sammansmältning av amerikanska och europeiska erfarenheter.

This thesis argues that Edith Wharton’s assessment of American ways and their meaning in her post-war fiction has been widely misread. Its title derives from French Ways and Their Meaning (1919), which she wrote to educate her countrymen about French culture and society. Making sense of America was as great a challenge to Wharton. Much of her later fiction was for a long time dismissed by critics on the grounds that she had failed to ‘make sense’ of America. Wharton was troubled by American materialism and optimism, yet she believed in a culturally significant future for her nation. She advocated – and wrote – an American fiction that looked critically at society and acknowledged the nation’s ties to Europe. Sometimes her assessment of American ways is reductive, and presented in a tone that her critics, then and since, found off- putting and snobbish. But her skepticism about American modernity was penetrating and prophetic, and has not been given its due. In criticism over the last two decades, a case for the place of Wharton’s post-war fiction in canons of feminism and modernism has been persuasively made. The thesis responds to these positions, but makes its own argument that the post-war writing reflects broader shift in American identity and ideology. The thesis is broadly historicist in its strategy, opening with a discussionofthereputationofthesetextsandthatoftheauthormoregenerally. Afterthat entry-point, it is organized thematically, with four chapters covering topics that are seen as key components of American ideology in Wharton’s post-war writing. These include modernity, gender equality, the American Dream of social mobility, and American exceptionalism. The thesis concludes with an assessment of Wharton’s prognostications in the context of twenty-first century America.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Wharton’s heroines are ordinary women who fight to secure material comfort and create selves that satisfy their emotional and sexual needs. These women often find that the two goals are mutually exclusive, since society strictly dictates appropriate behavior. This code of behavior stems from their relation to men: as objects to be won, as wives, and as mothers. In many instances, women are not even aware of their prescriptive roles and confuse their search for self with a search for security. Material comfort does not nurture Wharton’s heroines’ inner selves and they feel a metaphysical dissatisfaction, often seeking to find contentment through divorce or affairs. What they find in either case is that the cure to their ennui is not material, but mental. Wharton’s women seek a transcendent self—a self that is not dependent upon popular notions of respectability; a spiritual state that is independent from any attachment to social imperatives.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Few in the world value books more than writers do. They have an understanding of literature that it is hard for a non-writer to grasp – an awareness of the importance of words and stories, and their place in society. Therefore, when a writer has one of his own characters read a book, it generally means something. To pass over such a detail, to ignore the clues carefully placed, is to deprive oneself of the full meaning of a work. Every action, item, and movement in a novel contributes to the end, to the purpose and meaning of the work. A character in a novel might toss a book aside, think nothing of having an empty library, or merely note a title in passing. But to the writer, and so also to the reader, these actions are of great significance. This paper looks at The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton and analysis the reading material of its hero, Newland Archer, in order to come to a better understanding of this character, Wharton’s narratives in general, and of Wharton herself. Newland Archer is a character who is in significant ways defined by the books he acquires and reads. Each book has been picked with such care it is possible to get a good idea of what type of person Archer is merely by looking at what he reads. It is therefore important to ask what his reading list says about him and why Wharton would have invested so much time in building this list. Wharton has made Archer’s library his autobiography.

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ABSTRACT This study focuses on twenty-one particular texts published in 1925 as contemporaries of The Great Gatsby. The manuscript is divided into four categories—The Impressionists, The Experimentalists, The Realists, and The Independents. Among The Impressionists are F. Scott Fitzgerald himself, Willa Cather (The Professor’s House), Sherwood Anderson (Dark Laughter), William Carlos Williams (In the American Grain), Elinor Wylie (The Venetian Glass Nephew), John Dos Passos (Manhattan Transfer), and William Faulkner (New Orleans Sketches). The Experimentalists are Gertrude Stein (The Making of Americans), E. E. Cummings (& aka “Poems 48-96”), Ezra Pound (A Draft of XVI Cantos), T. S. Eliot (“The Hollow Men”), Laura Riding (“Summary for Alastor”), and John Erskine (The Private Life of Helen of Troy). The Realists are Theodore Dreiser (An American Tragedy), Edith Wharton (The Mother’s Recompense), Upton Sinclair (Mammonart), Ellen Glasgow (Barren Ground), Sinclair Lewis (Arrowsmith), James Boyd (Drums), and Ernest Hemingway (In Our Time). The Independents are Archibald MacLeish (The Pot of Earth) and Robert Penn Warren (“To a Face in a Crowd”). Although these twenty-two texts may in some cases represent literary fragmentations, each in its own way also represents a coherent response to the spirit of the times that is in one way or another cognate to The Great Gatsby. The fact that all these works appeared the same year is special because the authors, if not already famous, would become famous, and their works were or would come to represent classic American literature around the world. The twenty-two authors either knew each other personally or knew each other’s works. Naturally, they were also influenced by writings of international authors and philosophers. The greatest common elements among the poets and fiction writers are their uninhibited interest in sex, an absorbing cynicism about life, and the frequent portrayal of disintegration of the family, a trope for what had happened to the countries and to the “family of nations” that experienced the Great War. In 1925, it would seem, Fitzgerald and many of his writing peers—some even considered his betters—channeled a major spirit of the times, and Fitzgerald did it more successfully than almost anyone.