TRAVELLING IN EDITH WHARTON’S WORLD
TRAVELLING IN EDITH WHARTON’S WORLD
Author(s): Alexandra Alexa OanaSubject(s): Literary Texts, Studies of Literature, Philology, Theory of Literature, American Literature
Published by: Editura Arhipelag XXI
Keywords: travelling; east; Europe; Edith Wharton; leisure class;
Summary/Abstract: Travelling is inevitably an enriching experience, but for Edith Wharton‘s late 19th century New York leisure class, going to Europe was a ritual to be performed with the utmost attention to form. Wharton‘s characters travelled east to Europe for a number of reasons: from the customary honeymooning and the annual trips to Paris to order one‘s wardrobe, to the initiatic tours for young men and the serious business of finding an aristocrat husband willing to overlook a girl‘s ,,new money” which the leisure class was so keen on rejecting back home. This paper aims to discuss the issue of Americans visiting Europe as they are pictured in several of Wharton‘s novels, by emphasizing what they lost and what they gained during this experience. It will show that, no matter the reason, travelling was a powerful instrument for the rich in the game of social conventions and that a trip to Europe could sometimes make or break one‘s fortune.
Journal: Journal of Romanian Literary Studies
- Issue Year: 2019
- Issue No: 17
- Page Range: 399-403
- Page Count: 5
- Language: English