Sexual exiles: Edith Wharton, Henry Miller, James Baldwin and the culture of sex and sexuality in New York City

Edith Wharton, Henry Miller, and James Baldwin were expatriate authors who experienced a sense of conflict with the culture of sex and sexuality that existed in each of their New York periods and places. Baldwin wrote of being "trapped in language, of course," and this study proceeds with a discussion of the "conversation" about sex and sexuality that was occurring in each writer's New York time and place. How did these "conversations" constitute a culture or framework of sexuality which imprisoned these writers and thwarted their creativity? This study employs a concept of the social construction of sexuality that has been recently articulated by Foucault, Weeks, D'Emilio and Freedman, Katz and others. In a sense, this is a study of the lives and work of writers that span the "era of sexuality." This study examines at least one expatriate text by each author--Wharton's The Age of Innocence, Miller's Black Spring and Tropic of Capricorn, and Baldwin's Another Country--as attempts by each writer to come to terms with the framework of sexuality that existed in each of their New Yorks. By bringing these writers together, this study shows the particularly complex nature of sexual discourse in New York from the late 19th century through the postwar period--from the beginnings of "sex talk" designed to enshrine a woman's social role; through the advent of consumerism, the pleasure principle and increased immigration; and to sexual liberalism and the emergence of sexual identity politics. This study also addresses what living and writing in Paris meant for Wharton, Miller and Baldwin. How was Paris different from New York in terms of its sexual culture? Did it offer a framework of sexuality within which each writer found a home? Or, were these writers able to exist, for a time, outside of a framework of sexuality and therefore able to confront the effects of such a framework on themselves?...