Private Spaces and Public Places: The Novels of Edith Wharton, E. Glasgow and W. Cather

FAIN: FT-13803-78

Judith Fryer
Miami University (Oxford, OH 45056-1846)

As part of a larger study of American women writers and their shared experience of writing in the early twentieth century, the applicant will study the novels of Edith Wharton and her use of "space" and "pattern" as metaphor for a search for a private space in which to write. These works present a progression of examining and rejecting prevailing social patterns. As an urban writer, Wharton saw the city not only as a metaphor for modern man, but as a place offering refuge from the social milieu, a means of withdrawal for the artist seeking out alternative social roles.