Chapter 5 - Edith Wharton’s French Engagement

Summary

In this essay, Virginia Ricard argues that Wharton’s view of the place of the individual in society and more particularly the place and role of women was the result of her engagement in French intellectual life. She had read the accounts of French travelers in the United States from Tocqueville to Bourget and had registered their critique of American individualism. This connection did not go unnoticed by French literary critics for whom Wharton‘s novels – and in particular The House of Mirth – became prisms through which to observe American society and the role of women in that society. Yet, as her stance during the Dreyfus Affair shows, Wharton‘s perspective was not simply that of her French predecessors: she developed her own ideas of justice for the individual, of freedom and of progress, while continuing to believe that French society provided the best example of what she called “human communion” precisely because women were essential participants.