Apart from Modernism: Edith Wharton, Politics, and Fiction Before World War IRobin Peel
Book Review
Peel’s interesting study of Wharton and her works published before WWI reveals Wharton’s difficult transition from the older literary traditions prevalent in New York, where she lived when she was young, to the changing novelistic style in France, where she settled in 1907. Modernism was taking over and Wharton was only partly moving with it. The new kind of writing reflected sympathy and commitment to the theories of naturalism, symbolism, and impressionism. Peel shows that Wharton did not change even though works like Ethan Frome and The Reef (1911 and 1912 respectively) reflect an interest in such a change; she remained loyal to the pre-modernist style that shaped her as a young woman. Peel argues that Wharton was “uneasy” with “the politics of modernism” and she developed a complex attitude toward it—an attitude informed by a developed aesthetic recognition that all art, including literature, has evolved and must evolve if it is to be vital and serious. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. Read more about this title To see a full description of this book, search our online database
Q. Grigg, emeritus, Hamline University
Choice, April 2006
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