The Everlasting Lily

Content:Edith Wharton (1862-1937) is one of the most important writers of the early 20^thcentury American, simultaneously she is also one of the writers who arise controversy many times in critics. Although Edith Wharton has been paid very little attention in Chinese research circles, however in its hometown, her works are highly respected, and her status in the history of American literature is also established. My research in this thesis aims to find out Wharton's view to women in her time and at the same time hope to give rise to enough attention for Edith Wharton and her works.In Edith Wharton's novel world, she paid close attention to women and their survival conditions, however, Edith Wharton is not a feminist, and her moral outlook also tends to be conservative. That she is regarded as a feminist is merely because her novel is flooding the feminine characters of all forms, or is because she pays attention to women and their survival conditions, to their hope and pain in this unfair society.Through the study of Wharton's three greatly influential novels The House of Mirth, Summer and The Age of Innocence, this thesis carries on the thorough analysis to the women characters. from the angle of feminine personhood, and concludes that the women in her novels although receive various influences and oppressions from their survival environments, they try their best to unceasingly break through the fetters of the social custom, and finally can be free in achieving their self-realization.In The House of Mirth, the heroine Lily is a woman whose identity is entirely constructed through the commodities, and she is unable to define herself except through the perceptions of others. She is also a woman caught within the prevailing cultural attitudes about middle-class femininity which embraced the idea of women as passive and beautiful, and she is perceived by all around her as no more than a beautiful work of art, a person whose outer shell is stunningly crafted but who lacks...