Delicate pursuit: Discretion in Henry James and Edith Wharton

This dissertation explores Henry James's and Edith Wharton's careful treatment of subject matter considered controversial by American publishers at the turn of the century. James and Wharton used discretion in their fictions in order to address risque subjects at a time when it was professionally dangerous to question literary codes of propriety. Situated at the crossroads of the new freedom of expression opened up by French realism and the persisting puritanical standards of their American audiences, James and Wharton sought, in particular, to introduce into American literature the so-called "French" theme of adulterous love. The evasions and circumlocutions that characterize James's fiction and the restraint of Wharton's work are considered in the light of the self-censorship they engaged in to avoid shocking the literary establishment they depended upon.; The thesis is divided into three parts. The first part establishes both the American and the French cultural contexts in which James and Wharton produced their work. It also gives examples of their negotiations with their editors, as they questioned established boundaries of literary decency. Just as William Dean Howells proved to be a restraining force in James's career, so did Wharton's editor at Appleton try to rein her in when she treated subjects like illegitimate pregnancy and prostitution. The second part establishes the importance for these two authors of the literature of French classicism, from which they borrowed themes, rhetorical devices, and ethical norms in order to treat illicit love. A direct link is made between James's "Madame de Mauves" and Madame de Lafayette's La Princesse de Cleves; Wharton's The Reef is also shown to have been strongly influenced by French classicism, in particular the theater. In the final part, I study the evasive strategies these two authors used in writing about adultery. In The Ambassadors, James's device of the observer not only deflects the narrative from the secret plot of adultery but also complicates the reader's moral judgment. Wharton's story of unconsummated, adulterous love in The Age of Innocence critiques the tradition of the French novel of adultery that underlies it.