The Disillusion of Marriage: The Failing Quest for Happiness in Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth, Summer, and The Custom of the Country

Within most narratives involving women, they start with the pursuit of marriage and end with a happily married woman. Within her novels, Edith Wharton works to demonstrate the flaws of this understanding and present a question on the possibility of female happiness. By specifically looking at The House of Mirth, Summer, and The Custom of the Country, exposing Wharton‘s stark critique of the nature of women‘s involvement within a patriarchal social structure allows us to understand the damaging effects of female gender expectations. Marriage and motherhood become the expected paths for women and consequently, they are punished when they go outside of these expectations. By then placing the possibility for happiness at the center, marriage becomes simply a faulty tool used in order to achieve happiness. Marriage, in other words, is the means to an end and not the end itself. Through this question of the possibility of female happiness, the continual failures of Wharton‘s female protagonists become critical in understanding the ways in which society pigeonholes women into repressive life paths. By creating complex female characters who don‘t necessarily fit the role of wife with Lily Bart of The House of Mirth and Charity Royall of Summer, the difficulties for women who chose to strive for fully realized independent identities and self-fulfillment, only to find failure present the greatest tragedy in Wharton‘s naturalistic depiction of American society. Finally, her introduction of Undine Spragg in The Custom of the Country, demonstrates how adherence to societal expectations still does not produce happy women.

Grantor dc:publisher

State University of New York at Buffalo

Year dc:date.issued

2018

Author dc:creator

• Schneeberger, Sarah

Contributors dc:contributor

• Bramen, Carrie
• English

• American literature
• literature

Statement dc:rights

• Users of works found in University at Buffalo Institutional Repository (UBIR) are responsible for identifying and contacting the copyright owner for permission to reuse. University at Buffalo Libraries do not manage rights for copyright-protected works and cannot assist with permissions.
• Copyright retained by author.

Language dc:language

eng

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/10477/78043

OAI record oai:identifier

https://ubir.buffalo.edu/oai/request?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=qdc&identifier=oai%3Aubir.buffalo.edu%3A10477%2F78043