Edith Wharton in the art and 'act of making a habitation for herself'

"Edith Wharton in the Art and 'Act of Creating a Habitation'" argues that before Wharton could produce her fictional oeuvre she needed to integrate her "two souls"---home-maker and writer. She needed to stop seeing them as mutually exclusive, and realize that combining her passions would make her healthy. This thesis advances four main claims: first, that Wharton was indeed split between the desire to write and the need to create a home that protected her creativity. I claim that the architecture of the 1893 Columbian Exposition and the Fair's advocacy for the New Woman supported Wharton's assimilation of souls. Second, I claim that writing The Decoration of Houses helped her discover her authoritative voice and three principles---reverence for the past, gender balance, and sanctuary---which she identified as essential to her life and which she promoted as cures for the conspicuous consumption of Gilded Age America. Third, I claim that by building a house for herself based on the identified priorities in The Decoration of Houses her lived experience in that house taught her how Neo-classical proportion created the balance that accommodated realism in her writing. I claim that Wharton consistently drew upon her architectural and interior design background to impress upon readers of her fiction that home is the most crucial civilizing influence in our lives, thereby promoting her manual and The Mount to critical foundations for all her subsequent literary endeavors. Literary analyses of "Mrs. Manstey's View," "The Fulness of Life," "A Cup of Cold Water," The Touchstone, The House of Mirth, The Age of Innocence, The Children , and Hudson River Bracketed focus on Wharton's uses of architecture and design principles. Analysis of The Book of the Homeless reveals that World War I and Wharton's relief work reinforced her dedication to the role of home in our lives. This study uses a Material Culture analysis to read The Mount as a functioning artifact capable of revealing the domestic opportunities it provided which become a source of Wharton's creative inspiration.