By Cindy F. Ovard

In a day when women were to look at and nothing more, they weren't intelligent, they were fashionable, Edith stood out alone. Her first recollection of her early childhood days came when she was five and dressed to go walking down Fifth Avenue with her father. The servant placed a brand new white, satin bonnet on her head and her hands were encased in white woolen mittens. It was this day she realized the importance of dress, and that she herself was a subject of adornment. That was the day Wharton called her real birth to the conscious side of a girl.

Born Edith Newbold Jones on January 24th, 1862. She was the third child and only daughter born to George and Lucretia Jones in the prosperous, social life of New York City. Wharton had two older brothers, Fredric was twelve years old and Harry was sixteen years old. She had little interaction with her brothers since they were so much older and she often felt she was an only child. Girls were taught mannerisms and rituals that were expected from well-bred families. Their duty was to marry and keep a house. They were instructed on how to run a household of servants and a houseful of guests. From very early on Edith knew she didn't want to be kept, she wanted to experience life and what it had to offer her. Her society didn't agree with her, her mother didn't agree with her and would never read any of her writings, telling her she should be more concerned with the social sphere of the world.

Edith's father moved them to Europe in 1866 when she was just four years old. Here Wharton got her taste of European life. They moved back to the New York lifestyle for a short time and just as she was beginning to come out and be noticed by boys her father became ill and they moved back to Europe. His death was a terrible blow to her.

After her father's death her mother moved the family back to New York and Wharton noticed a change in New York. It was not the same old New York as she had known. Her family was considered one of the "lower" classes of society since her father's death. She knew the only way to bring back the New York she had once loved was for the older millionaire class to intermarry with the younger millionaire class.

She became engaged to Harry Steven's in the early spring of 1883, she was 21 and considered long past the marriageable age. Harry's mother didn't like her. She felt that Edith brought her son down. The Jones' weren't well enough off for her son. They didn't rank in the same category and same class as the Steven's. She eventually came between Harry and Edith and the engagement was broken off in the summer of 1883. She didn't seem upset or distraught about her ended engagement. Her friends said she just shrugged if off and said that Harry wasn't a strong enough man to stand up to his mother. She often said his ill health and ill attitude of life in general is what caused his mysterious death shortly after their broken engagement.

Edith met an older friend of her brother Fred's, Edward Robbins Wharton, known as Teddy, from Boston and she became engaged to him the following year and married him in 1885. He was twelve years older and was someone completely opposite than herself and could give her what she felt she lacked in certain areas. Plus she felt Teddy was someone who would let her be herself. Teddy's family proved that point to her on more than one occasion. When they would visit his family in Boston, they would simply ignore her writing and would never ask about it. They always made it a point to tell her it was not "womanly" to write. In Boston she was "to fashionable to be intelligent" (coming from the New York Society) and in New York it was thought "to intelligent to be fashionable" (not being a beauty in New York's eyes). No matter where she lived she felt disapproval. It's no wonder she left New York and never came back. She traveled abroad and made a home in France. She felt more at home in Europe than she did in America.

The story "Fullness of my Life" is about her marriage to Teddy. The dreams and the unfulfilled marriage still weren't enough to have her say she wouldn't choose him all over again. She was trying to persuade herself into loving him, but in the end she realized that it couldn't be done. Teddy's infidelity and money problems led Wharton to look at him in a different light and know that their marriage was not worth saving. She divorced him in 1913. A divorce that was looked down on in many societies, but Edith was tired of caring what other's thought.

She had her dream house built in Lenox, Massachusetts while she was still married to Teddy. She called it "The Mount." There she would sit for hours in her study and write. She loved to be alone in this house. Teddy didn't care much for the house and often complained of the weather. His health forced her to sell the house ten years later. It was this move that she regretted for the rest of her life. The Edith Wharton foundation has since purchased this home and it sits in its grandeur as it did when Wharton lived there.

In her most famous writing "Age of Innocence" many people have speculated that Wharton wrote this from her own biography. The main character May Welland had many of the same characteristics of Wharton her self, but her life is also seen in May's husband Newland Archer. She sees the Old New York society and knows that the class separations are important. Someone may love one, but marry another just because of social pressure. May Welland knew her husband Newland Archer was a good man but caught up in the high society of New York City. May was able to give Newland all this and yet he loved another. May fought through out her life to save her marriage. She sacrificed much for the society of New York. She even fought to save her marriage when she knew her husband loved another woman named Ellen Olenska. She knew that Newland thought she was ignorant in many ways and just tolerated her childish ways.

This characteristic was found in Wharton in the way she thought of Teddy. She didn't have much regard for him. She thought of him as a simple child, much the way Newland thought of May. Newland and his lover Ellen actually never consummated their love, which in turn shows somewhat of Edith's life. Her dear friendships with other men weren't intimate physically due to the fact that of their high society world and the scandal if a divorce happened.

Wharton wrote of May as a beautiful person. She was a person with depth and honesty, one with many feelings and many emotions. While Newland was written as a simple man, who took advantage of May and had no feelings or anyone really, but himself. In a way this was her life with Teddy.

Walter Berry was one great friend that she often referred to as her "soul mate." In her own words "Walter found me when my mind and soul were hungry and thirsty. He fed me until our last hour together."

In her works "Hudson River Bracketed" and "Fruit of the Tree", we see exactly the kind of romantic, loyal passionate man Wharton is looking for. But even in the end the hero ends up not really being what she wanted and she turns them into awful people. Just as in "Age of Innocence" Newland is left alone when May dies in childbirth and walks away knowing he doesn't really want his lover Ellen either.

This is the same case in Wharton's own life. She never remarries, her friendship continues with Walter Berry, even after his many proposals. They remain friends throughout the remainder of both their lives and Edith even said she loved him more than anyone else in this life. He died in her arms in Oct. 1928.

Her life shows in her work. She wrote about society and yet, she wrote of strong women. Women whocould stand up for themselves even when the real society wouldn't let women do that. In her novel "House of Mirth" the main character Lily Bart hid her smoking habit from eligible suitors, because smoking was not a womanly thing. Wharton smoked in public many times much to the charinge of many men. She didn't care what men thought of her. She wasn't looking to be kept by a man. Maybe that is why her work was so important in her day. She wrote of life, she wrote of women, she wrote of strong women. Women in her day loved her writing because it let them see that they could be strong. The women's movement happened not too long after that and is still going on today.

Many of her writings were written after the age of forty and after her marriage. She was able to finally enjoy her life and be friends with people she wanted too associate with. She enjoyed a full life from then on and had many friends. Her writings were her children and she loved each of them.

Wharton won the Pulitzer Prize in 1921 for "The Age of Innocence" at the age of fifty-six and became the first woman to receive a Doctor of Letters degree from Yale University in 1923 at the age of fifty-eight. She traveled to America to receive her Pulitzer Prize, but instantly returned to France. She was in the process of writing her biography "A Backward Glance" when she suffered a stroke and died August 1937. She was buried beside her good, close friend Walter Berry in the American Cemetery in Versailles. The inscription on her headstone reads: "O Crux Ave Spes Unica" which translates: "Hail, o cross, the one hope." An inscription many friends thought showed how truly religious she was even if she didn't clout it.

Henry James wrote: "No one fully knows our Edith who hasn't seen her in the act of creating a habitation of herself." Wharton wrote of life, love and finding ones self. She was a true heroine of her day.

The Greater Inclination 1899
The Touchstone 1900
Crucial Instances 1901
The Valley of Decision 1902
Sanctuary 1903
The Descent of Man and Other Stories 1904
The House of Mirth 1905
The Fruit of the Tree 1907
Madame de Treymes 1907
The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories 1908
Tales of Men and Ghosts 1910
Ethan Frome 1911
The Reef 1912
The Custom of the Country 1913
Xingu and Other Stories 1916
Summer 1917
The Marne 1918
The Age of Innocence 1920 (made into a Major Motion Picture)
The Glimpses of the Moon 1922
A Son at the Front 1923
Old New York 1924
The Mother's Recompense 1925
Here and Beyond 1926
Twilight Sleep 1927
The Children 1928
Hudson River Bracketed 1929
Certain People 1930
The Gods Arrive 1932
Human Nature 1933
The World over 1936
Ghosts 1937
The Buccaneers 1938 (made into a TV mini-series)
Fast and Loose, a Novelette by David Oliveieri 1977 (her first works that were never published)

POETRY

Verses 1878 (her first published work, under her maiden name, Edith Newton Jones)
Artemis to Actaeon and Other verses 1909