| Reflecting the intersection of gender theory and the history of the profession of authorship, this study uses an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on feminist theories, psychoanalytic theory, and composition studies to evaluate the impact of gender on Edith Wharton's reactions to editorial criticism, her evolving self-image as a professional writer, and the strategies she developed to protect her creative processes from editorial intrusions.;Drawing on correspondence, galley proofs, and other unpublished material in special collections at Princeton and Yale Universities, as well as Wharton's published works, this study suggests that gender affected Wharton's relationship with her editors and publisher at Scribners both in their reaction to her as an author and in their response to her materials. Her early career was disrupted by Scribner's Magazine editor Edward Burlingame's inability to understand the gender analysis underlying her stories. In particular, Wharton's editors at Scribners were resistant to elements of naturalism in her writing. Her characteristic blending of sentimentalisn with naturalism at the end of her early novels and novellas is suggested to have been an accommodation to the editorial needs at Scribner's Magazine. A comparison of Wharton's 1902 review of a George Eliot biography with an essay published by W. C. Brownell, her book editor at Scribners, reveals Wharton's essay to have been a defiant gesture which refused Brownell's assertion that Eliot's work was damaged by her extensive reading in the sciences. The tension inherent in Wharton's attempt to accommodate Charles Scribner's later request for strong male characters may lie behind the creative slump immediately following The House of Mirth.;Works by Wharton which are discussed include The Decoration of Houses, The Touchstone, The Valley of Decision, Sanctuary, The House of Mirth, The Fruit of the Tree, Madame de Treymes, Ethan Frome, The Custom of the Country, Summer, The Age of Innocence, The Glimpses of the Moon, A Son at the Front, and The Writing of Fiction, as well as many of the short stories. |
