Is Edith Wharton Unique

Edith Wharton’s uniqueness as a novelist can be distinctly perceived in two different features, one as a satirist, who aims at the moral follies of the society of the old order and the other, as a compassionate anthropologist, who is able to choose and express its weaknesses and struggles with the delicate and fine sensibility. The protagonist, Lily Bart, is intelligent, attractive, talented, unmarried and poor but is born and brought up in a New York society of wealth and heritage. This society celebrates her not for herself but for her beauty and it is possible to trace Lily’s whole life in the changes of her physical appearance as she gradually gets older. Her beauty is her only asset and she tries to trade on it, but her conscience does
not allow her to make profits out of it. She is a woman who has been trained from childhood to work for her materialistic well being, investing her beauty in the bargain. Lily loses the bargain because of her distinct qualities in terms of intellectuality and morality.