"Edith Wharton and the Unsatisfactory Man", published in 1991 in Great Britain in hardback with dustjacket by Vision Press, 208pp, ISBN 0312035659, as part of their Critical Studies series
Condition Notes: Good+ clean & tidy condition, well looked-after with good condition dustjacket (it has the odd slight mark to the exterior, but it remains in overall good condition)
About this book: Writing at the outset of the 20th Century, Edith Wharton was preoccupied in her work with the quest for woman's independence and freedom. She loathed the hypocritical ethos of New York upper middle-class society, which expected women to be ignorant of sexuality and prepared for subjugation. Her heroines are remarkable, if sometimes tragic individuals. But her male characters are nearly always unsatisfactory: they fail to commit themselves to women they love, are disloyal and weak, and require childish indulgence. Only the father figures are reliable, yet they cannot offer the passionate fulfilment. David Holbrook locates the springs of Edith Wharton's subtle art in her intense childhood attachment to her father. As others have observed, he was the focus of her erotic fantasies; but is it possible that he actually abused her, therby leaving her with the difficulty of preserving the 'good father' while finding all other men unsatisfactory? Why did she write what amounts to a piece of pornography about a father who seduces his daughter and later commits suicide? What was her final estimation of her affair with Morton Fullerton, a promiscuous and bisexual adventurer? To what extent does her ambivalence about this affaire lie behind her greatest work The Reef? Why does she remain so fascinated with relationships that smack of incest? This close study of Wharton's major works poses a number of questions about her beliefs and convictions.Wharton tackled problems raised by other major writers (H. James; DH Lawrence), but from the viewpoint of a woman who knew passion and all its treacheries. In all her novels she conveys what women seek in life and how men fail to understand them and their motivation
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