The Dialectic of History and Technology in Edith Wharton's A Motor-Flight through France

Abstract

In A Motor-Flight through France (1908), Edith Wharton juxtaposes the artefacts of history with the products of modern technology. Her appreciation for how the automobile allows her better access to both historical and natural spectacle contrasts with her disdain for how new technologies eclipse the past, a tension reflected in the narrative as a dialectical relationship between technology and history. Wharton's narrative representation of the automobile is the means by which these opposed forces move toward synthesis in her travel account. Her use of the automobile, both as a physical vehicle of travel on the road and as a figurative vehicle of meaning in the text, reveals the significant impact that travel technologies had on travel writing and women's travel in the early twentieth century. Wharton's automobile not only shapes her travel experiences and narratives, including later travel accounts such as In Morocco (1920), but also allows her to imagine new travelling identities available for automobiling women.