She was sufficiently famous that the U.S. Postal Service placed her oh-so-fin-de-siecle likeness on a commemorative stamp a few years back--and I suppose many readers are at least familiar with her name as the author of Ethan Fromme. But how many of us actually know who Edith Newbold Jones Wharton was, what she wrote, and why she deserved to be immortalized on a postage stamp?
This was the attitude with which I approached her 1905 novel, The House of Mirth, which is considered by many to be her masterpiece. My initial thought was, “Her masterpiece, indeed--but how would it rank in the canon of real writers like Willa Cather, Jane Austen or Mark Twain?” The answer, to my surprise, was that this magnificent novel (about “life in the fast lane” among New York City's society set during the administration of Theodore Roosevelt) would be a masterpeice in any writer's catalogue. The beautiful narrative language, natural dialogue, realistic settings and believable situations, emotions, entanglements and resolutions all have the breath of life in them, and--even when I couldn't personally identify with a given character's feelings or situation--Edith Wharton made sure that I cared. What more can one ask of a writer?
Having said this, I will now venture to answer the three questions which I posed earlier in this review: Edith Wharton was a genuinely great American writer, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of over thirty books, at least one of which is a masterpiece by any standards. I would recommend The House of Mirth to anyone who loves truly distinguished writing. Books like this don't drop into your lap just every day.
