Edith Wharton He passed away on this day in 1937 in Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt, France. A fundamental author of the first half of the XNUMXth century, her most remembered work is The Age of Innocence, published in 1920 and for which he received Pulitzer Prize, being the first woman to win it. we remember her taking a look with a brief biography and by the Ministry of Home Affairs of the Government of Spain with the selection of some of his novels more important.
Edith Wharton
Edith Newbold Jones was born in a wealthy family during the American civil war. belonged to the Anglo-Saxon upper class, something that influenced the atmosphere and the creation of characters in his novels. Her subsequent visits to Italy and Paris also led her to rub shoulders with members of the highest European aristocracy. She married for convenience with Edward Wharton, a banker whom she divorced in 1913. She began by publishing various stories, until her first novel appeared in 1902, the valley of decision, but it was not until his second title, The house of joy, when he established himself as an author.
In his works the temas and atmospheres related to upper class society. Its main hallmark is the development of strong female characters and at the same time trapped between their own desires and the demands of that corseted society. Part of his style and had the influence of the writer Henry james, whose friend she was. And besides her narrative side, Wharton was a renowned landscape designer and designer of interiors. He also wrote travel books and his support and contribution to the Allied cause in World War I earned him the distinction of the Legion of Honor.
His best known work, The Age of Innocence, had a luxurious film adaptation in 1993 by Martin Scorsese. Michelle Pfeiffer, Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder are its protagonists.
Edith Wharton — Selection of novels
The house of joy
lily bart stays orphan at nineteen and is welcomed by an aunt into one of the oldest families in New York society. Ten years later, Lily still hasn't married or done anything to become independent. So, being beautiful, smart and classy, she looks oforced to marry, which also implies entering a world of conventions fierce that is governed by manipulation, disaffection, deceit and blackmail.
My aunt is full of conventional axioms, all invented to govern behavior typical of the fifties. I always get the impression that living up to them would mean wearing brocade and caped sleeves. And the other women—my best friends—well, they use or abuse me, but they don't care what happens to me. I'm already too much seen and people are getting tired of me and start saying that I should get married.
The Age of Innocence
Un peerless portrait of New York high society of the 1870s, It was in its time the most requested novel in public libraries and also a bestseller in bookstores. And, in fact, it is a classic of American literature in general.
The protagonists are three very well defined and differentiated characters: Newland Archer, a promising lawyer belonging to one of the great families of New York, is the fiancé of the sweet and conservative May Welland, who is in turn cousin of the Countess Olenska, recently arrived from Europe after separating from an obscure and unfaithful Polish nobleman. Archer's principles, which he is aware of having had dubious morals until then and wants to act sincerely with his future wife, will be shaken when he falls in love with Countess Olenska.
New York was a metropolis perfectly aware that in the big capitals it was not "favourable" to arrive early to the opera; and what was or was not "favourable" played as important a role in Newland Archer's New York as the inscrutable and ancient terrifying beings that had dominated the fate of his ancestors thousands of years ago.
Children
Martin Boyne, a middle-aged man with a dull life, decides to put an end to his nomadic life as an engineer and share his maturity with Rose Sellars, his youthful love and who is now a widow living in Europe. On the ship that is to take her, Boyne meets the seven children of some old friends of hers, the Wheaters, which under the leadership of Judith, the eldest, want to settle down in a quiet place and stay together despite their parents' opposition. boyne stays fascinated by Judith's energy and decides to tutor them too, so all your plans change.
When a man loved a woman, she was always as old as he wanted; and when he stopped loving her she became too old for spells or too young for technique.