Archive | NovelWorlds

In the midst of reading Willa Cather’s most beloved novel, My Antonia, first published in 1918, it becomes immediately clear why this piece of fiction is so often selected as a representative sampling of the Great American Novel. The author draws on her own childhood experience to conjure up life in the stunning, waving Midwest […]

While reading the introduction as well as the first twenty or thirty pages into the book, I noticed the way Anatolia and her family are viewed. While there are positive or neutral descriptions used to describe the Shimeradas there are also some negative descriptions. As a history major, I view this in the historical context […]

One scholar in an article about House of Mirth and New York writes it aptly that, “The House of Mirth is a novel of New York Society, the world [Wharton] never completely discarded though she declared she had given it up.” A brief introduction to Edith Wharton’s life compels any reader of her most popular book […]

In the second half of the 19th century, society shifted from being agriculturally based to reaching the height of urbanization. With the rush toward cities and ports, and away from the country side, industrialized America began to shine in the eyes of its inhabitants. The Gilded Age was glittering on the surface but revealed itself […]

The early chapters of Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth follow socialite Lily Bart’s exploits among the economic and social elite in New York during the turn of the twentieth century. The novel provides as its setting the critical moment when consumerism in America was rapidly expanding and the pursuit of material goods was less concerned […]