Claudia Pierpont on Edith Wharton’s Writing Style – Jeremy Sipe

I was particularly intrigued by the first chapter of Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. Wharton lays out the setting with such fluidity and elegance, talking about the extravagance of the New York City “high-life” and using a very descriptive writing style. Written from a third-person perspective, the biography is very objective and also has very strong narrative qualities. Wharton uses a very delightful and humorous tone, especially when remarking upon Mrs. Manson Mingott’s “monstrous obesity” in addition to criticizing societal expectations/norms. Wharton’s establishment of the setting in the first chapter provides the reader with a strong sense of the time period and the attitude/mindset present in that particular time period. She also uses phrase quotations very liberally, which conveys a slightly sarcastic attitude. For example, Wharton writes, “But, in the first place, New York was a metropolis, and perfectly aware that in metropolises it was ‘not the thing’ to arrive early at the opera; and what was or was not ‘the thing’ played a part as important in Newland Archer’s New York as the inscrutable totem terrors that had ruled the destinies of his forefathers thousands of years ago.” In this context, her use of quotations to describe what is socially acceptable illustrates Wharton’s sarcastic criticism of the time period.

I believe that Claudia Pierpont accurately analyzes Edith Wharton’s writing style in The Age of Innocence. In her biography of Wharton from American Rhapsody, Pierpont spends a lot of time discussing Claudia’s personal life. She describes, in great detail, how Wharton grew up, what her childhood was like, what illnesses she was suffering from during the publications of each of her literary works, etc. Pierpont observes that Claudia’s upperclass upbringing is not very characteristic of “the life of a writer.” She also talks about the time in Wharton’s life when she suffered from hysteria and how her experiences shaped her writing when she got better.