The Attack on Realism: Edith Wharton’s In Morocco and ‘Roman Fever’

Abstract

Marilyn French, in her introduction to Edith Wharton’s short story collection Roman Fever, remarked that ‘these stories are thus not just social commentaries but penetrating moral analyses’.1 One could go further to say that these stories, like Wharton’s novels and travel writings, are not just social commentaries or moral analyses, but works of art. While much secondary criticism has been devoted to the social and moral aspects of Wharton’s writings,2 a look at her works as artistic achievements is instructive. She marshalled complex narrative strategies, exploited carefully crafted imagery along with extended metaphor, developed Jamesian emphases on views and perspectives, and, in general, challenged realist notions of objectivity, representation, and transparent language.3 This challenge involves techniques of reversal, comparing life and nature to art, for example, de-emphasising foreground to focus on background, and attending to frames more than to content. Wharton used sophisticated ‘props’ such as setting, lighting, colouring, and the Romantic technique of ‘stripping the veil of familiarity’ from things — ‘tearing the gauze into shreds’ (in Wharton’s own words in ‘Autres Temps … ’).4