Condemned To Be Free

sEdith Wharton(1862-1937) has achieved indisputable accomplishment and status in the history of American literature. She is the first woman writer who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, an honorary Doctorate of Letters from Yale University and a full membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters.The Wharton criticism is roughly divided into two schools. Naturalism and feminism. Naturalists think that Wharton, a lady born into the New York elite class, depicted the social landscape of the "old New York" in the 1870s as an "insider". On one hand, she wrote about the conventional and hypocritical old New Yorkers, on the other hand, she focused on the conflict between individuals with spiritual crisis and a mammonist society during that particular era of American history, such as the conflict bewteen the rich but vulgar newcomers from mid-western America and the "aristocrats" of old New York, and the predominating battle the elite class waged against its own rebels. Meanwhile, there are some naturalists who believe that Edith Wharton was too much a lady herself to write anything that could transcend her own class. The feminists set eyes on the feminist traits in Edith Wharton's works, although the writer never declared herself a feminist, her writings did care about the living conditions of women in a male-dominated society. Some feminists explored Wharton's personal life, such as her childhood, her marriage and her family, to look for feminist tendencies; some others read Wharton as a female writer. However, with the publication and research of her diary and letters, people find that Wharton is indeed not a standard feminist.But there is still much potential in Wharton criticism, because it does not matter whether we use naturalism or feminism, those are just different stand points looking at the same works from the same writer. In recent years, some new fields of Wharton study has emerged which proved that it is possible to turn our study into other directions.This paper tries to introduce Sartrean existentialism into Wharton criticism in the hope that by changing our viewpoint, we may have new discoveries. But certainly, it is not this paper's intention to prove that there is actually a Sartrean influence on Wharton. Rather, we might interpret Wharton from a Sartrean perspective.The paper will apply basic Satrean existentialism principles such as freedom, choice, responsibility and the Other to the analysis of the fates of Wharton's characters in her Summer, The Age of Innocence, The House of Mirth and The Custom of the Country. Sartre's idea is that existence is prior to essence, and since we human beings are condemned to be free, then we can say our freedom is prior to essence. Sartre believes in a freedom that is absolute, which means a person is free no matter what condition he/she is in. In that case, "not to choose" means choose not to choose. But this absolute freedom condemns people to be in anguish about the unavoidable responsibility coming together with the freedom to choose. Sartre also stresses on individuality. For Sartre, everybody looks at others as objects by presuming that he himself/she herself is the only conscious being. But other people are also conscious beings who have the rights to turn anyone except themselves into objects to "be looked at. One's freedom is always inscribed within the freedom of the Other, "Hell is other people". What this paper intends to prove is : First, struggle or not, all the characters in the case studies choose freely while circumtances only help them to move further down their own roads. If it was not for their free choices, the outcome might be very different. Second, even though the radical action of suicide was rejected by Sartre, it is not the activity itself that my study focuses on but the reason why and how things turn out to be so? In simple words, it is all because of the "freedom". Otherwise, if they choose to compromise, their ending might not be that miserable. Last, Wharton's exquisite weaving of the social fabrication in...