Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth as Satirical Commentary on Society

By noting the subtitles of human conditions under the stress of strict societal control, Edith Wharton created literature that is true to the society she portrayed. Mrs. Slade and Mrs. Ansley probably would have liked to cause each other bodily harm, yet their society ruled that such behavior would not be tolerated. Therefore, they buried their feelings and expressed them only in subtle movements and off the cuff remarks, bits and pieces of communication that most people would overlook. However, Wharton realized that these fragments composed the only true communication and therefore composed the real story of Mrs. Slade and Mrs. Ansley.

Edith Wharton’s brief, yet tragic novella, Ethan Frome, presents a crippled and lonely man – Ethan Frome – who is trapped in a loveless marriage with a hypochondriacal wife, Zenobia “Zeena” Frome. Set during a harsh, “sluggish” winter in Starkfield, Massachusetts, Ethan and his sickly wife live in a dilapidated and “unusually forlorn and stunted” New-England farmhouse (Wharton 18). Due to Zeena’s numerous complications, they employ her cousin to help around the house, a vivacious young girl – Mattie Silver. With Mattie’s presence, Starkfield seems to emerge from its desolateness, and Ethan’s vacant world seems to be awoken from his discontented life and empty marriage. And so begins Ethan’s love adventure – a desperate desire to have

All across the world, since the dawn of time, men have taken a dominate role in society in their everyday lives. This role

Born in 1862, Edith Wharton Newbold Jones was brought up within the graceful, wealthy yet conservative, confining circle of New York society, which fostered sexual repression and prided itself on the innocence of its young girls. Edith Wharton herself was discouraged from expressing her emotions or developing her intellect which was supposed to be very unbecoming traits in a woman. This is the reason why she stressed in her fiction the need of growth, and has shown how painful and frustrating this process can be for a woman. This process of growth and development is revealed in her major works, Ethan Frome (1911), and Summer (1917) (Balakrishnan 1).

Novelist Edith Wharton wrote her defining work, 1905's the House of Mirth, on a subject she knew all too well: the style-over-substance realm of New York's upper-crust society during the Gilded Age. Having been raised in this "fashionable" society, Wharton knew both its intricacies and cruelties firsthand. The triumphant rise and tragic fall of protagonist Lily Bart demonstrate both the "sunshine and shadow" of the Gilded Age. The House of Mirth not only exposes the reality of how "the other half live," but also satirizes and condemns their elitist existence.

Through choice of detail and diction, Edith Wharton justifies Frome’s adultery by juxtaposing the warm, charismatic nature of Mattie to the cold, barren one of Zeena. While his wife speaks in a “monotonous” (129) “flat whine” (32) her cousin’s “suffuse[s] him with joy” (44). Despite the fact that both women are frail and sickly, Zeena’s “puckered throat” and “protruding wrists” (47) disgusts Ethan, while Mattie is so “small and weak-looking that…it wr[i]ng[s] his heart” (106). Throughout the novel, Wharton’s choice of detail drastically contrasts the two women, one a vivacious, vigorous beauty, the other a walking, whining corpse. From their physical looks alone, Zeena is hard to love—sterile and dark—while Mattie—fertile and warm—is easy to. The author intentionally feeds this bias, allowing the readers to feel the same temptation that Frome has in the novel. However, he

“A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift, and “Top of the Food Chain” by T. Coraghessan Boyle, both are short stories that explore the concept of satire. Satire can be defined as a kind of writing that ridicules human weakness, vice, of folly in order to bring about social reform. It is a kind of writing to bring about change to society. Even though both are short stories, they easily get the faults of society across to its readers.

Gender order according to our text is labeled as “hierarchal” (2008), stating that “Men dominate women in terms of wealth, power, and social position, but not all men dominate all women” (2008). While this may be true, it is creating a divide between the two genders. This divide is apparent by looking at the pay scales between men and women, and even how the

The process of gender socialization reveals much about how gender identities are formed, but gender is not just a matter of identity: Gender is embedded in social institutions. This means that institutions are patterned by gender, resulting in different experiences and opportunities for men and women. The concept of the term “gendered institutions” means that entire institutions are patterned by gender. In a gendered institution, men and women are channeled into different, and often differently valued, social spaces or activities and their choices have different and often unequal consequences. Gendered institutions are the total pattern of gender relations, which includes the following (Acker 1992): stereotypical expectations, interpersonal relationships, and the division of labor along lines of gender. As well as, the images and symbols that support these divisions and the different placement of men and women in social, economic, and political hierarchies of institutions.

Throughout history, gender inequality has shown to be an issue across the globe, especially in the workplace. Men have always had a greater and more powerful presence in careers of all kinds. Today, in the sports marketing industry, this proves to be true as women constantly battle to make advances within their companies and outshine their male colleagues. The purpose of this paper is to explore the issue of the “gender gap” in the business world, specifically sports marketing for the National Football League and how this issue may be solved: by presenting a sense of self-confidence in professional women.

To begin with three should be an examination of how “the persistence of gender ideologies” has affected equality in the workplace. As Kimmel states, “Since the early nineteenth century, the workplace has been seen as a masculine arena, where men could test and prove their manhood against other men in the dog-eat-dog marketplace” (Kimmel 249). This is still occurring

Characters are made to seem sinister, having an ulterior motive due to this. For example, Lily fakes being interested in the Americana, not smoking and going to church for Mr. Gryce, while Mr. Trenor helps Lily financially in order to sleep with her. The reader is able to identify the difference between a conversation Lily has with Selden and one she has with other characters, due to the lack of need for Lily to keep her good reputation with Selden. Bart herself acknowledges that she doesn't have to ''pretend'' with him or be ''on guard against'' him. In other occasions, the young woman has to concentrate primary on gossip and pretense and strive to manipulate others, by calculating her every word. The irony in this fact is that by acting so, they showcase bad manners; lying, adultery, gossiping, and being passive aggressive, are all behaviours evident in the upper class. In the reader's eyes, this fact makes her relationship with Selden the realest one of the whole book, and comes to the logical conclusion, that he is the best partner for her, him symbolising freedom from materialism, something that she wants for herself. However, Bart is not able to detach herself from her thirst for money and therefore, continues her pursue for a wealthy husband, like Mr. Gryce, who is a symbol for freedom from financial

Social status and structures have definitely shaped the construction and experience of gender inequality. Men and women are constantly analyzed, compared, and grouped together in society. The result of this yields discrepancies in how sexes are viewed by society. Throughout my examination and explanation of gender inequality, I concluded both men and women are victims to gender inequality.

In the various works provided to the class many themes are present in all of them, this paper will be focusing on the authors methods of critiquing social norms. The short story, A Telephone Call by Dorothy Parker paints a harsh reality from the perspective of a highly anxious woman forced into a lifestyle that many would relate to in the 1900s. “My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning exposes the duke and the terrible social norms he reinforces through a poetic format allowing the reader to interpret his strange behavior on their own. Their Eyes Were Watching God, a novel, by Zora Neale Hurston attempts to defy social norms and showcase the positive outcomes of such. Lastly, A Streetcar Named Desire is a play by Tennessee Williams which satirically points out the extremist behaviors that are approved and even rewarded by society. These pieces of literature from different genres still point out the same issues in social norms in regards to the power struggle between men and women and gender roles. Although the perspective changes, as the characters are different or the economy of words is different between the genres the message stays the same.

The economics of intimate partner relationships play a role in patriarchy and the reinforcement of women abuse. Martin (1981) states that meritocracy is a discourse that everyone has equal opportunity in the workforce. It fails to recognize the barriers that prevent people from having the same opportunities as others. For instance, women face many social pressures that prevent them from working in the public sphere such as discrimination, sexism, being pushed down to apply for certain jobs because it dominated by males and may not have the physical requirement like body mass. Martin (1981) argues that capitalism supports patriarchal families and the idea that a woman's place is considered to be in the private sphere, the home, while a man is to be in the public sphere. Martin (1981) states that capitalism is about competition and succeeds when barring disadvantage or vulnerable populations including women from advancing to the top of the hierarchy so that people, predominantly white males, would remain in power. One strategy to prevent women from advancing in their career is to receive minimum wage and less income than men which therefore makes them easily replaceable in the work force. This defines women as temporary workers (p. 41). This leaves women economically dependent on men and gives a reason