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Domesticity beyond Sentiment: Edith Wharton, Decoration, and Divorce

Domesticity beyond Sentiment: Edith Wharton, Decoration, and Divorce Abstract Fraiman's essay challenges the usual conflation—generally unquestioned in discussions of nineteenth-century U.S. culture—of domestic preoccupations with sentimental views of family and femininity. It does so by turning to Edith Wharton, whose devotion to houses and interior design was evident both in her first publication, The Decoration of Houses (1897), and in her home the Mount, built in keeping with Decoration 's vision. Yet Wharton's house-love, far from celebrating sentimental attachments, may be seen as the opposite: an expression of unhappiness in her marriage, anticipating her eventual divorce in 1913. The Mount was carefully designed to provide Wharton with her own quarters, segregated from her husband's as well as from the public rooms below. Withdrawing there to write, she developed as a professional novelist not by fleeing the domestic but rather by claiming a second order of privacy within the private sphere. The Decoration of Houses offers another example of domestic space reimagined to resist rather than embrace familial ties. Fraiman links the book's fifty-six photographs of immaculate, museum-like rooms to a fantasy of home purged of literal and emotional mess—purged, indeed, of people altogether. The book's seeming hostility to family life is all the more striking in contrast to a rival design manual, Clarence Cook's The House Beautiful (1877), whose sentimental sketches of husbands, wives, babies, and tea kettles insist that marriage and domesticity are happily inseparable. Examining Wharton's revisionary, extramarital domesticity, Fraiman invites scholars on the Left to own this much maligned category as one available for various ideological ends. CiteULike Complore Connotea Delicious Digg Facebook Google+ Reddit Technorati Twitter What's this? « Previous | Next Article » Table of Contents This Article doi: 10.1215/00029831-1339845 American Literature 2011 Volume 83, Number 3: 479-507 » Abstract Full Text (PDF) Classifications Article Services Email this article to a colleague Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in Web of Science Download to citation manager Citing Articles Load citing article information Citing articles via Web of Science Google Scholar Articles by Fraiman, S. Related Content Load related web page information Social Bookmarking CiteULike Complore Connotea Delicious Digg Facebook Google+ Reddit Technorati Twitter What's this? Current Issue September 2011, 83 (3) Alert me to new issues of American Literature Duke University Press Journals ONLINE About the Journal Editorial Board Submission Guidelines Permissions Advertising Indexing / Abstracting Privacy Policy Subscriptions Library Resource Center Activation / Acct. Mgr. E-mail Alerts Help Feedback © 2011 by Duke University Press Print ISSN: 0002-9831 Online ISSN: 1527-2117 var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-5666725-1"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png American Literature Duke University Press

Domesticity beyond Sentiment: Edith Wharton, Decoration, and Divorce

American Literature , Volume 83 (3) – Sep 1, 2011

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Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
Copyright © Duke Univ Press
ISSN
0002-9831
eISSN
1527-2117
DOI
10.1215/00029831-1339845
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Abstract Fraiman's essay challenges the usual conflation—generally unquestioned in discussions of nineteenth-century U.S. culture—of domestic preoccupations with sentimental views of family and femininity. It does so by turning to Edith Wharton, whose devotion to houses and interior design was evident both in her first publication, The Decoration of Houses (1897), and in her home the Mount, built in keeping with Decoration 's vision. Yet Wharton's house-love, far from celebrating sentimental attachments, may be seen as the opposite: an expression of unhappiness in her marriage, anticipating her eventual divorce in 1913. The Mount was carefully designed to provide Wharton with her own quarters, segregated from her husband's as well as from the public rooms below. Withdrawing there to write, she developed as a professional novelist not by fleeing the domestic but rather by claiming a second order of privacy within the private sphere. The Decoration of Houses offers another example of domestic space reimagined to resist rather than embrace familial ties. Fraiman links the book's fifty-six photographs of immaculate, museum-like rooms to a fantasy of home purged of literal and emotional mess—purged, indeed, of people altogether. The book's seeming hostility to family life is all the more striking in contrast to a rival design manual, Clarence Cook's The House Beautiful (1877), whose sentimental sketches of husbands, wives, babies, and tea kettles insist that marriage and domesticity are happily inseparable. Examining Wharton's revisionary, extramarital domesticity, Fraiman invites scholars on the Left to own this much maligned category as one available for various ideological ends. CiteULike Complore Connotea Delicious Digg Facebook Google+ Reddit Technorati Twitter What's this? « Previous | Next Article » Table of Contents This Article doi: 10.1215/00029831-1339845 American Literature 2011 Volume 83, Number 3: 479-507 » Abstract Full Text (PDF) Classifications Article Services Email this article to a colleague Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in Web of Science Download to citation manager Citing Articles Load citing article information Citing articles via Web of Science Google Scholar Articles by Fraiman, S. Related Content Load related web page information Social Bookmarking CiteULike Complore Connotea Delicious Digg Facebook Google+ Reddit Technorati Twitter What's this? Current Issue September 2011, 83 (3) Alert me to new issues of American Literature Duke University Press Journals ONLINE About the Journal Editorial Board Submission Guidelines Permissions Advertising Indexing / Abstracting Privacy Policy Subscriptions Library Resource Center Activation / Acct. Mgr. E-mail Alerts Help Feedback © 2011 by Duke University Press Print ISSN: 0002-9831 Online ISSN: 1527-2117 var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-5666725-1"); pageTracker._trackPageview();

Journal

American LiteratureDuke University Press

Published: Sep 1, 2011

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