The Way To Self-realization:Rereading Edith Wharton’s The House Of Mirth And The Age Of Innocence

Edith Wharton is regarded as one of the prominent writers in the history of American literature, as well as a controversial woman in her time. At the turn of the late19th and early20th centuries, The House of Mirth (1905) brings her great popularity. The Age of Innocence (1920) makes her the first female writer to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize. The theme of most Wharton’s works is human significance and freedom. This thesis explores the issue of self-realization focusing on Wharton’s way to seek for identity and the transition of her values through her famous novels The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence.The thesis first introduces briefly Edith Wharton’s contribution to American literature, and provides an overview of relevant criticism of her works at home and abroad. By analyzing Lily Bart’s constant frustration in the quest for identity in The House of Mirth, the thesis indicates the oppression from the rigid and hypocritical Old New York upon women and detects Wharton’s anxiety about the lost identity and her radical rebellion in her early stage of writing. The second part mainly focuses on the self-realization that is embodied in the dilemma of Ellen Olenska in The Age of Innocence. The ideal emblem, who fights for the female rights on the boundary of social responsibility and moral regularity, reveals Wharton’s mature and conservative attitude toward the limit of individual rebellion. At last, in looking at the two novels and Wharton’s life experience, it intends to disclose the transition of her values from innocence to experience, from a trapped princess, aggressive firebird to a lonely angel and its relevant reason. Deep understanding of Wharton’s self-realization will illuminate her balance between ideal self and ought self, the mixture of Old New York culture and European culture and its further significance to American literature and culture.