Edith Wharton’s Imaginary Of Transnational Intimacies

Edith Wharton was one of American writers with acute transnational sensibilities at the turn of the twentieth century.Her substantial travelling experiences and long expatriate life in Europe not only facilitate her to foster transnational sensibility,but also exercise influence upon her literary creations,which are markedly transnational.However,Wharton has been persistently considered as a writer of "old New York,"largely due to her almost unsurpassed consummate skills of depicting the customs and manners of the upper-class in old New York.As an American classic writer,Wharton and her literary works have received scanty scholarly attention from the study of transnationalism.Given this,observing from the transnational perspective,the present study reconsiders Wharton and her works in transnational rather than national framework.By specifically focusing on Wharton’s imaginary of transnational intimacies,especially transnational marriages,the study attempts to probe the transnational connotations embedded in her works as well as Wharton’s transnational notion and stance,providing a bird’s eye view of how Wharton inherited the transnational tradition of American classic literature by extensively engaging in transnational imaginaries or depicting variegated transnational activities in her literary creationsWharton’s works encompass a variety of transnational practices,ranging from the transnational political,economic and cultural activities of Americans around the globe,to Wharton’s transnational imaginary.Situated in the historical contexts of the second half of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century when the world was increasingly globalizing,based on Wharton’s three stories,"The Introducers," "The Last Asset," and "Les Metteurs en Scene," a novella,"Madame de Treymes" and four novels,The Custom of the Country,The Age of Innocence,The Children and The Buccaneers,the study explores Wharton’s imaginary of transnational intimacies embedded in these works.It explores two types of transnational intimacies:one is the transnational marriages between the wealthy American women and the European nobilities;the other is the interracial intimacies between Western men and women in subjugated nations.The study first explores the political and economic nature of transnational marriages from three aspects.Based on Wharton’s three early stories,it firstly examines how transnational marriage market works and evolves along with the upturn of transatlantic marriages;then,the study explores the economic nature of transatlantic marriages by scrutinizing how Americans purchase their social status with enormous fortunes in the marriage market;the last section further investigates the revenue of enormous wealth which strongly supports Americans’ titled marriages.The study argues that the aggrandizing American imperial and colonial expansion in the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century,provided a fundamentally political guarantee for Americans’variegated transnational economic activities abroad,while the burgeoning American industry and the expanding colonial economy abroad,proffered strong logistical support for Americans’ transnational marriages.Nevertheless,despite America ascendance as a world political and economic power,it was still far from being a cultural hegemony.The United States has been continually nurtured and heavily influenced by European culture and civilization.As European immigrants or their descendants,Americans hold high regard for European culture and civilization.From this perspective,the Americans who marry the European nobilities can be largely seen as a phenomenon of cultural return to their old homelands.The study argues that the Euro-American transnational marriages are strongly cultural.For one thing,European nobilities take advantage of their cultural superiority and deploy culture as a form of "cultural capital" to exchange for Americans’economic capital in the international marriage market.For another,transnational marriage provides the platform on which American riches and European nobilities have intimate transnational cultural contact,interactions and even confrontations.They hold different notions,values and ways of thinking.By observing how American women live in another culture and society after their marriage,Wharton explores how American women confront with their European counterparts but nevertheless gain refinement and cultivation in European high society.The third section of the study focuses on Wharton’s imaginaries of transnational intimacies.With Euro-American imperial.and colonial expansion,West men have ample opportunities to have sexual interface with women in subjugated regions or nations.Wharton projects the extramarital love affairs of Newland Archer and Madame Olenska in old New York onto the interracial intimacies between American men and Japanese women,suggesting the potential threat from the cultural and racial other;in The Buccaneers,American businessman Mr.Closson and British nobleman Thwartes establish interracial intimacies with native women in Brazil.Due to the asymmetrical mutual power relations in terms of politics,economy and race,the interracial intimacies are strongly colonial and racial in nature.Wharton’s transnational interracial imaginaries were closely related to Americans’imperial and colonial expansion in the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century.The political and economic power of the United States provide strong financial support for the Euro-American transnational marriages,and grant Americans the privileges to undertake transnational economic activities around the world.Wharton’s imaginaries of Americans’transnational economic activities,transnational cultural interactions,or interracial intimacies,strongly manifest Americans’ transnational identity,reveals the transnational feature of her works and her keen transnational consciousness.Her imaginaries of transnational intimacies,or her depiction of transnational practice,constitute a significant part of the transnational American classic literature.