Wharton’s Living City in “Bunner Sisters”

Abstract

Abstract Edith Wharton’s early novella, “Bunner Sisters,” shows the author’s engagement with ecological thinking from early in her career. Despite her sometimes negative comments on cities, Wharton’s fiction reveals the appeal that the urbanscape held for her imagination. An ecocritical approach, informed by urban ecology, traces in “Bunner Sisters” Wharton’s understanding of the city as a dynamic entity made up of multiple interdependencies that include both animate (human and non-human) and inanimate matter. Wharton’s ecological awareness illuminates the sisters’ relationship to their surroundings through their forays into green spaces and engagement with flowers. In Evelina’s case, especially, it illuminates the seductive and detrimental effect of social ideals concerning the marital status of women. More broadly, the sisters’ urban context looks forward to best practices in urban planning. With remarkable prescience, Wharton’s New York in “Bunner Sisters” functions along urban principles aimed at maintaining vibrant cities that align with those espoused by late twentieth-century urban activist Jane Jacobs and subsequently adopted by urban planners and designers.