Feminine Consciousness In Edith Wharton's The Age Of Innocence

As the first female recipient of the Pulitzer Prize in American literature, Edith Wharton (1862-1937) is acclaimed as one of the United States' finest novelists and short story writers. Most of her works are set in the old New York, where Wharton herself was born and brought up, and expose the cruel excesses of aristocratic society at the end of the 19th century. The Age of Innocence, published in 1920, wins for Wharton the Pulitzer Prize. In the novel, Wharton has portrayed a fresh and unique old New York from the perspective of a female. And Wharton's delicately psychological description makes the seemingly ordinary love story more revealing and thoughtful. This thesis attempts to make an exploration into the feminine consciousness in The Age of Innocence through a detailed thematic analysis. Being a representative of male of his generation, Newland Archer's emotional debility, vocational indecision and continuous evasion of responsibilities betoken the deconstruction of male superiority. This also renders female's desire to be equal and independent possible. Meanwhile, a group of New Women emerge, who appear to be more active, energetic and full of vitality. They are struggling to cast off the restrictions imposed on them by the male-dominated society. These new women's pursuit of independence and freedom clearly shows the existence of feminine consciousness in the novel. Among them, Ellen Olenka is thought to be the typical figure. She is depicted as the opposite side of May Welland, who is a nice girl and ideal wife in the eyes of the old New York people. Actually, May is merely a productof the social system, and she possesses no freedom of judgment and no individual viewpoint. Furthermore, the thesis seeks to demonstrate Wharton's feminine consciousness through the examples cited from her biography and life experience. Her writing career is virtually a female writer's arduous and painful experience of getting out of the conventional limits, seizing self-identity and creating a room of her own.