Morality, Ethics, and Transgression in Edith Wharton's Short Fiction

Abstract

This essay examines the recurring motif of transgression in Edith Wharton’s short fiction, which demonstrates the author’s career-long development of an aesthetic that foregrounded the often unresolved conflict between individual morality and the morality of prevailing social convention. Although Wharton clearly explored transgression and its attendant issue of morality in her novels, it is in her short stories that she examines a wider range of morally and ethically challenging situations, particularly those involving sexual transgression—in fidelity, divorce, forbidden desire—and sexual morality. Focusing on two representative short stories—“The Long Run” (1912) and “Roman Fever” (1934)—this essay argues that in Wharton’s short fiction, we can see a fairly radical imagination at work, especially in stories like these, in which Wharton implicitly places value on transgression, aligning herself with those who defy convention, whatever the costs. Such a sensibility reflects Edith Wharton’s understanding that transgression was an essential step in the process of social change. These stories suggest that Wharton saw transgression as an unavoidable force, necessary for breaking out of whatever binds and stifles the human soul: social institutions, internalized and external expectations, custom. Yet in all of her stories of transgressive acts, there is always a return to a moral position, implied if not actual, and based on personal responsibility and ethics. These stories illustrate Wharton’s guides to ethical behavior: responsibility, awareness, knowledge--not appetite.