A Tentative Exploration Of Naturalism In Edith Wharton's The House Of Mirth And The Age Of Innocence

Edith Wharton was one of the most famous American female writers living and writing at the turn of the twentieth century. Though her serious literary creation began when she was almost forty years old, Wharton yielded us quite a few excellent works among which there are The House of Mirth created in 1905 and The Age of Innocence created in1920. Highly acclaimed as two classical novels by numerous public readers, The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence also deeply attracted the attention of numerous literary critics who engaged in interpreting her works from various perspectives.This thesis, beginning with Wharton's life story and literary creation background which offers the inner and outer reasons for the naturalistic characteristics, explores the naturalism demonstrated in the main characters of The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence. No matter it is Lily Bart in The House of Mirth or Newland Archer, Ellen Olenska and May Welland in The Age of Innocence, they all respectively illustrate their tragic fate in their own way. Social and economic environment, hereditary factors and uncontrollable force of fate and chance combine to cause Lily's dissatisfactory and incomplete life despite her smartness and persistence. Newland Archer's consciousness of his stifling environment and attempting rebel turns out to be a failure. Ellen's rebellious character and strong desire for freedom doesn't bring her the life she dreams of. In a word, individual will never succeed in finding an expression. Most people can only live like May Welland who is completely the product of environment without any thought of her own.The already existent researches on Wharton's works mainly focus on the themes of"love and marriage,social manners and the conflicts existing in New York upper class society". In addition, critical attention is mainly given to The House of Mirth. However, this thesis, adding The Age of Innocence in the study scope, means to provide a more comprehensive perspective in its exploration of the naturalism demonstrated through the analysis of Wharton's four main and typical characters.Since there is still a broad space for improvement in this naturalism exploration of Wharton's creation, at the end of this thesis, I offer some suggestions concerning the possibilities of further study.