Edith Wharton

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VOICE ONE:

I'm Phoebe Zimmermann.

VOICE TWO:

And I'm Doug Johnson with the VOA Special English program, People
in America. Every week we tell about a person who was important in
the history of the United States. Today, we tell about writer Edith
Wharton.

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VOICE ONE:

A critic once described American writer Edith Wharton as a
"self-made man." She liked the comment and repeated it. Others said
she was a product of New York City. But the New York she wrote about
was different from the New York of those who came after her.

Edith Wharton was born in New York City in Eighteen-Sixty-Two.
New York then was several different cities. One New York was made up
of people who worked for a living. The other was much smaller. It
was made up of families who were so rich they did not need to work.

Edith was born into the wealthy New York. But there was a "right"
wealthy New York and a "wrong" wealthy New York. Among the rich
there were those who had been given money by parents or
grandparents. Then there were those who earned their own money, the
newly rich. Edith's family was from the "right" New Yorkers, people
who had 'old' money. It was a group that did not want its way of
living changed. It also was a group without many ideas of its own.
It was from this group that Edith Wharton created herself.

VOICE TWO:

Like many girls her age, Edith wrote stories. In one of her
childhood stories, a woman apologizes for not having a completely
clean house when another woman makes an unexpected visit. Edith's
mother read the story. Her only comment was that one's house was
always clean and ready for visitors. Edith's house always was.

Edith spent much of her childhood in Europe. She was educated by
special teachers, and not at schools.

If Edith's family feared anything, it was sharp social, cultural,
and economic change. Yet these were the things Edith would see in
her lifetime.

The end of the Civil War in Eighteen-Sixty-Five marked the
beginning of great changes in the United States. The country that
had been mostly agricultural was becoming industrial. Businessmen
and workers increasingly were gaining political and economic power.

Edith Wharton saw these changes sooner than most people. And she
rejected them. To her, the old America was a victim of the new. She
did not like the new values of money replacing the old values of
family.

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VOICE ONE:

In Eighteen-Eighty-Five, she married Edward Wharton. He was her
social equal. They lived together for twenty-eight years. But it was
a marriage without much love.

In Nineteen-Thirteen, she sought to end the marriage. That she
waited so long to do so, one critic said, was a sign of her ties to
the idea of family and to tradition.

Some critics think that Edith Wharton began to write because she
found the people of her social group so uninteresting. Others say
she began when her husband became sick and she needed something to
do.

The fact is that Wharton thought of herself as a writer from the
time she was a child. Writing gave her a sense of freedom from the
restrictions of her social class.

VOICE TWO:

Writing was just one of a series
of things she did. And she did all of them well. She was interested
in designing and caring for gardens. She designed her own house. She
had an international social life and left a large collection of
letters. In her lifetime she published about fifty books on a number
of subjects.

Many critics believe Edith Wharton should have written the story
of her social group. To do this, however, she would have had to
remove herself from the group to see it clearly. She could not do
this, even intellectually. Her education and her traditions made it
impossible.

The subject of Edith Wharton's writing became the story of the
young and innocent in a dishonest world. She did not make a
connection between her work and her own life. What she had was the
ability to speak plainly about emotions that, until then, had been
hidden.

She also was among the first American women writers to gain a
sense of the world as an evil place. "Life is the saddest thing,"
she wrote, "next to death."

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VOICE ONE:

To show that she could do more than just write stories, she Wrote
a book with Ogden Codman, "The Decoration of Houses." It was very
successful. About the same time, her poems and stories also began to
be published in Scribner's Magazine.

In Eighteen-Ninety-Nine her collection of stories, "The Greater
Inclination," appeared. It was an immediate success. When she was in
London, she visited a bookstore. The store owner, who did not know
who she was, handed her the book. He said to her, "This is what
everyone in London is talking about now.

VOICE TWO:

Three years later her first novel, "The Valley of Decision," was
published. Three years after that she published her first great
popular success, the novel, "The House of Mirth."

"The House of Mirth" is the story of a young woman who lacks the
money to continue her high social position. As in so many stories by
Edith Wharton, the main character does not control what happens to
her. She is a victim who is defeated by forces she does not fight to
overcome. This idea is central to much of Edith Wharton's best
writing. The old families of New York are in conflict with the newly
rich families. The major people in the stories are trapped in a
hopeless struggle with social forces more powerful than they. And
they struggle against people whose beliefs and actions are not as
moral as theirs.

VOICE ONE:

This is the situation in one of Wharton's most popular books,
"Ethan Frome," published in Nineteen-Eleven. Unlike her other
novels, it is set on a farm in the northeastern state of
Massachusetts. It is the story of a man and woman whose lives are
controlled, and finally destroyed, by custom. They are the victims
of society. They die honorably instead of fighting back. If they
were to reject custom, however, they would not be the people they
are. And they would not mean as much to each other.

In Nineteen-Thirteen, Wharton's marriage ended. It was the same
year that she published another novel that was highly praised, "The
Custom of the Country." In it she discusses the effects of new
wealth in the late Nineteenth Century on a beautiful young woman.

VOICE TWO:

Most critics agree that most of Edith Wharton's writing after
Nineteen-Thirteen is not as good as before that time. It was as if
she needed the difficulties of her marriage to write well. Much of
her best work seems to have been written under the pressure of great
personal crisis. After her marriage ended, her work was not as sharp
as her earlier writing.

In Nineteen-Twenty, however, she produced, "The Age of
Innocence." Many critics think this is her best novel. In it she
deals with the lack of honesty that lies behind the apparent
innocence of the New York social world. A man and woman see their
lives ruined because they have duties they cannot escape.

Edith Wharton received America's top writing award, the Pulitzer
Prize, for "The Age of Innocence." In Nineteen-Ninety-Three, the
movie of "The Age of Innocence" created new interest in her work.

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VOICE ONE:

In the later years of her life, Wharton gave more and more of her
time to an important group of diplomats, artists, and thinkers.
Among her friends was the American writer Henry James. She liked
James as a man and as a writer. She often used her car and driver to
take him on short trips.

At one time, Henry James was hoping that his publisher would
print a collection of his many novels and stories. Wharton knew of
this wish. And she knew that the publisher thought he would lose
money if he published such a collection. She wrote to the publisher.
She agreed to secretly pay the publisher to print the collection of
her friend's writings.

VOICE TWO:

In Nineteen-Thirty, the American National Institute of Arts and
Letters gave Wharton a gold medal. She was the first woman to be so
honored. Four years later she wrote the story of her life, "A
Backward Glance." Edith Wharton died in Nineteen-Thirty-Seven at one
of the two homes she owned in France.

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VOICE ONE:

This Special English program was written by Richard Thorman. It
was produced by Lawan Davis. I'm Phoebe Zimmermann.

VOICE TWO:

And I'm Doug Johnson. Join us again next week for another People
in America program on the Voice of America.