Local History

Above photo courtesy of Literary Hub.

In honor of March being Women’s History Month, we are highlighting a handful of important women who made strides in the social, political, and economic climates of our region. 

Edith Wharton was born on January 24, 1862, as Edith Newbold Jones. According to The Mount, the estate of Edith Wharton’s historic home in Lenox, MA, she was born at 14 West 23rd St. in New York City as the third child, alongside two brothers, of George Frederic Jones and Lucretia Rhinelander Jones.

While Wharton’s father was involved in real estate for a living, her mother passed along her Rhinelander heritage as a member of one of New York’s oldest and most famous families, according to the New-York Historical Society’s Women & the American Story site. They clarify, however, that although Wharton’s family had spent over two centuries in the city and her upbringing was rooted in societal tradition, “they were not wealthy in comparison to most other members of the Gilded Age elite. Old families like Edith’s were surpassed in wealth by families who made their money from new business opportunities.”

A literary youth & artistic upbringing

As a result of the Civil War, Wharton’s youth was initially spent in Europe—primarily in France, Germany, and Italy. Here, languages, art, architecture, literature, and writing were all introduced into Wharton’s life, and according to the New-York Historical Society, “she fell in love with European culture.”

With the family’s return to New York in 1872, Wharton was given a governess, Anna Catherine Bahlmann, whose talent is credited as helping Wharton develop her literary interests even further: “Anna recognized Edith’s talents as a writer and expanded her curriculum to include more literature and time to write,” observes the New-York Historical Society. 

At this time, Wharton was also granted access to her father’s library. The Mount estate features a quote from the writer that particularly underscores the importance of reading for Wharton: “‘No children of my own age…were as close to me as the great voices that spoke to me from books. Whenever I try to recall my childhood it is in my father’s library that it comes to life…’”

At 16 years old, Wharton’s first collection of poems, Verses, was privately published, and according to the Poetry Foundation, her poems were published in magazines, including the Atlantic Monthly, by the time she was 18 years old. Indeed, “Edith Wharton’s World: Portraits of People and Places” guest curators for the National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian Institution Eleanor Dwight and Viola Hopkins Winner describe Wharton as “a born storyteller, whose novels are justly celebrated for their vivid settings, satiric wit, ironic style, and moral seriousness.”

Venturing into society & navigating marriage

At 17 years old, Wharton officially became an adult in the eyes of New York society by making her debut at New York and Newport dances and parties, with the expectation of socializing with men and finding one to marry. In the process, she was “observing the rituals of her privileged world, a world she would later gleefully skewer in her fiction,” explains The Mount estate.

At this point, Wharton struggled to find a suitor because of contemporary beauty standards and her family’s lesser wealth, and she soon experienced a deeply upsetting period during which her father passed away and two romantic relationships ended in heartbreak and disappointment. The New-York Historical Society emphasizes the impact of Wharton’s father’s death in 1882; she was very close to him “because he shared her love of reading and European culture.”

Eventually, at 23 years old, the author married Edward Robbins Wharton in 1885. The Boston banker, who went by Teddy and was 35 at the time of their marriage, is commonly cited as a bad match for the author. Dwight and Winner point out, “He was attractive and kindly, a man of leisure from a similar social background and a good sportsman. However, he had none of her artistic or intellectual interests and their marriage was very unhappy.”

Despite this, Wharton’s husband came from a wealthy family, giving the couple the financial freedom to travel back and forth from New York and societal hotspot Newport, Rhode Island, as well as abroad to Europe. Indeed, The Mount estate observes, “Though imperfectly suited for each other, the couple filled their early married years with travel, houses, and dogs.”

As a wife, the New-York Historical Society explains that Wharton took advantage of her role in the household by getting involved in interior design, and with architect Ogden Codman, she co-authored The Decoration of Houses in 1897. This was her first book, and The Mount estate shares that it was “surprisingly successful.”

The Mount & launching an authorial career in earnest

After Wharton’s mother passed in 1901, the writer was left an inheritance, and she used this money to build The Mount, the couple’s home in Lenox, MA. Describing the house, which was situated on 113 acres, The Mount estate says that Wharton designed and built “a home that would meet her needs as designer, gardener, hostess, and above all, writer. Every aspect of the estate—including its gardens, architecture, and interior design—evokes the spirit of its creator.”

The New-York Historical Society analyzes that societal expectations played a role in Wharton’s late start at becoming a published author. They write, “Her mother was always critical of Edith’s desire to become a writer and believed that it was not proper for a woman to work. After her mother died, Edith published her first novel. She was 40 years old.” Dwight and Winner add that Wharton herself had internalized and struggled with this conflict between the role society expected of her and her passion for writing in a career capacity.

Following her first published novel, the 1902 book The Valley of Decision, Wharton wrote many classics, in addition to short stories and magazine articles, during the ten years she spent living at The Mount. Drawing upon her experiences witnessing and being a part of New York society, Wharton’s writing reflects how “[h]er world of old money looked down on the newcomers and their ostentatious display of wealth,” as Dwight and Winner put it. They assert that “Wharton was both a participant of fashionable society and an observer of its kaleidoscopic changes” in the places in which she lived and frequented. 

In this way, Wharton had a first-hand wealth of knowledge that she integrated into her works in a critical, satirical, and humorous capacity, as in The House of Mirth (1905) and Ethan Frome (1911). Eventually, as a result of infidelity on both sides, mental health struggles, and general incompatibility, Wharton and her husband got a divorce, and the author permanently moved from Lenox to France. 

Making a true impact & doing what she loved, where she loved

In Paris, Wharton was able to relish in the community now fully accessible to her. Dwight and Winner illustrate that “she found intellectual companionship in circles where artists and writers mingled with the rich and well-born, and where women played a major role.”

Although WWI started just a year after Wharton moved to Paris in 1913, the author stayed in France, choosing to “devote herself to creating a complex network of charitable and humanitarian organizations,” according to The Mount. 

Having developed a wealthy and famous status as a recently divorced woman and successful author, she took it upon herself to help with a plethora of key causes: not only did she create and fund workrooms, convalescent homes, hostels, and schools for those in need of employment, healthcare, shelter, and education, but she served as a journalist on the front lines of the war, and she was granted the French Legion of Honor for her work in 1916.

After the war, Wharton moved to the French countryside in 1918. She wrote The Age of Innocence (1920) here, and was the first ever woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for the book the year after it was published. She was also awarded an honorary doctorate degree from Yale University in 1923, the receiving of which was the second of only two times she returned to the United States after moving to France.

For the rest of her life in France, Wharton spent time writing extensively, traveling, tending to her gardens, socializing, and enjoying her two houses, one north of Paris in Pavillon Colombe, and another in the south of France in a restored convent called Château Sainte-Claire. In Pavillon Colombe, Wharton died on August 11, 1937, at the age of 75 years old. 

As Dwight and Winner underscore, “[t]he social and material world in which she lived, and which she depicted in her fiction, has all but vanished, but numerous art objects and literary artifacts have survived.” Reading Wharton’s stories and truly diving back into the society in which she existed—all portrayed through her unique and sharp lens—makes this fact clear, reminding us of the relevance of such tales now a century later.