The Frenchwoman Dépaysée: Edith Wharton and Gabrielle Landormy

Abstract

Abstract In a series of late unpublished letters that Wharton wrote to Elizabeth Gaskell (Lily) Norton between 1924 and 1937, an Edith Wharton character gone astray appears in the form of Gabrielle Landormy, a young Frenchwoman whose transnational wanderings between France and the United States made her, in a term that Millicent Bell applied to Wharton herself, dépaysée, or “out of [her] element, adrift and astray.” Gabrielle Landormy worked for Wharton during World War I but throughout the 1920s and 1930s drifts between France and the United States as an object of irritation and concern. This article, based on hitherto-undiscussed sources, traces Landormy's movements and Wharton's reactions to them as revealed in the letters and other documents, to demonstrate that Landormy's case calls into question the ways nationality, the transnational body, and troublesome questions of sexuality and autonomy can be addressed, especially by those who, like Wharton, would prefer to have women conform to a national ideal.