The Innocence Of Females In The Hieroglyphic World

Henry James and Edith Wharton were two important and productive writers at the turn of the century. James's career is one of the most influential and most prolific in American letters. He is famous for his international themes and Daisy Miller is the first book about international theme that makes him world-widely known. Edith Wharton is the stunning creator of amazing novels of manners. She is regarded as one of America's finest novelists and short story writers and The Age of Innocence is acclaimed as her masterpiece which won her the Pulitzer Prize. Daisy Miller is about the story of an innocent young girl who gets killed by the winter fever in Rome while The Age of Innocence centers around one couple's impending marriage and the introduction of a scandalous woman named Ellen whose presence threatens their happiness. Both of these two novels have attracted great attention and have gone through many times of analysis. There are enormous comments on these two novels by different critics both at home and abroad.This thesis, capturing the historical and textual context of Daisy Miller and The Age of Innocence, is in an effort to study the difference in the concept of innocence in the three main female characters in the two novels--Daisy, May and Ellen. For Daisy innocence means ignorance and spontaneity; for May it means complexity and sophistication and for Ellen it means perfection and ideality. The three different female images skillfully created by James and Wharton lived in the similar environment restrained by strict rules and conventions. However they had completely different destiny and all of them became the victim of the old decadent traditions. Through the discussion of the causes of the female protagonists' innocence, the three different types of innocence is presented in front of us. It is expected that through close-reading and textual analysis the concept of the word innocence can be clearly defined and this thesis will spare no effort to offer another perspective and add richness to these two already impressive writings.