Female Consciousness in Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence开题报告

 2023-01-17 07:01

1. 研究目的与意义

Edith Wharton was one of the most influential female writers in American at the end of 19th century who wrote many works of different genres, such as novels, poems, autobiographies, critic essays, traveling diaries and proses on house decoration.As a female writer, Wharton took woman#8217;s suffering in a male-dominated society and the way to woman#8217;s emancipation as her main concerns, which could be reflected in her characterization of the heroine Ellen as a #8220;new woman#8221;in her classic work-The Age of Innocence.In the late 19th century, the United States was in an economic boom as a result of the Industrial Revolution, the abolition of slavery and Western Movement. However, it was still a conservative society in politics and culture, which could be represented in the characteristics of the social background of #8220;Old New York#8221;in Tne Age of Innocence. Although the economy in #8220;Old New York#8221;developed in a fast speed, woman in the society was in the position of #8220;the second sex#8221;,Traditional Roles of woman had done great harm on woman#8217;s pursuit of freedom. In addition, social etiquettes which were signs of politeness acted as ways of further imprisonment of woman in the house. Consequently, women with pioneering ideas were in retrospection of patriarchal ideology embodied in these conventions which formed hindrance for woman#8217;s emancipation. therefore,#8220;New Woman#8221;emerged in the special historical period.This paper will be dedicated to the interpretation of the heroine Ellen Olenska as a#8220;new woman#8221;in #8220;Old New York#8221;. Her efforts of challenges to the traditional roles of woman, traditional marriage morality and social etiquettes will prove her a #8220;New Woman#8221;who has the courage to pursue her own freedom and literation in the patriarchal society of#8220;Old New York#8221;.

2. 研究内容和预期目标

In The Age of Innocence, the background of a patriarchal society-#8220;Old New York#8221;was the representation of the late 1800s. as a result of Industrial Revolution, there was fast economic development in the society. However, woman was never given the chance to enjoy economic independence like man. Besides, many social conventions existed in #8220;Old New York#8221;. The role as #8220;perfect wife and mother#8221;exerted great harm on woman#8217;s search for economic and psychological independence and limited her horizon as a human being because of her occupation with the family. Traditional marriage morality tolerated and forgave man#8217;s disloyalty and blamed woman#8217;s mistake and infidelity, which encouraged man#8217;s betrayal of marriage and brought more pain to woman. In addition, the core of so many complicated etiquettes in #8220;Old New York#8221;that woman should live for the good of family instead of for herself made woman#8217;s life more pathetic and dependent.As a representative of #8220;New Woman#8221;in #8220;Old New York#8221;,Ellen Olenska was courageous to break the unwritten rules that resigned the life of upper-class woman. she challenged the fixed woman#8217;s roles in #8220;Old New York#8221;-the innocent girl and ideal wife and mother in the house, and tried to be a woman of rationality. Freedom of judgment, and a woman who was not confined in household chores. She also questioned the dominant marriage morality in #8220;Old New York#8221;, which was particularly embodied in her dealing with her husband#8217;s extra-marital affaire. Ellen did not succumb to the persuasion of the family as well as the social tolerance toward her husband#8217;s mistake. Instead, she dealt with the case with reason and rationality, bringing her out of the imprisonment of traditional morality. While she was uncounted with the complicated and suffocating social etiquettes, Ellen Olenska broke the rules with her free choice of social circles, her individual dressing style as well as her activity in social occasion.Ellen Olenska was the #8220;New Woman#8221;in #8220;Old New York#8221;who set up an example for woman in the process of self-liberation.1. New Woman1.1 Historical Background of the Emergence of #8220;New Woman#8221;1.1.1 Industrialization and Urbanization1.1.2 Changed Family Structure1.1.3 Improvement of Woman#8217;s Education1.2 Major Characteristics of #8220;New York#8221;1.2.1 Challenge to Traditional Roles of Woman1.2.2 Doubt over Traditional Marriage Morility1.2.3 Breaking Traditional social Etiquettes1.3 Historical Significance of #8220;New Woman#8221;2. Restraints of Social Conventions to Women in #8220;Old New York#8221;2.1 Restraint of Poor Economic Status to Woman#8217;s Independence 2.2 Hindrance of Fixed Roles of Woman for Woman#8217;s Development2.2.1 The Role as #8220;innocent girl#8221;2.2.2 The Role as #8220;Perfect Wife and Mother#8221;2.3 Restraints of Traditional Marriage Morality to Woman#8217;s Freedom2.4 Constraint of Complicated Social Etiquettes to Woman#8217;s Activeness in Social Occasions2.4.1 Preference of Dignity of Social Circles to Limit Woman#8217;s Circles2.4.2 Preference of Grandness and Appropriateness of Woman#8217;s Dressing on Social Occasions2.4.3 Preference on Woman#8217;s Passivity on Social OccasionsPreference of Woman#8217;s Silence on Social Occasions 3. Ellen-#8220;New Woman#8221;in #8220;Old New York#8221; 3.1 Ellen#8217;s Declination of Traditional Roles of Woman in #8220;Old New York#8221; 3.1.1 Declination of the Role as #8220;Innocent Girl#8221;3.2 Declination of the Role as#8220;perfect wife and mother#8221; 3.2.1 Ellen#8217;s Rationality 3.2.2 Declination of the Role as Decoration and Property of Husband 3.2.3 Involvement of Public Activities3.3 Ellen#8217;s Critical Attitude toward Traditional Marriage Morality 3.3.1 Fighting against Husband#8217;s Extra-marital Affair 3.3.2 Sympathy over Mrs.Beaufort#8217;s Leaving Mr. Beaufort3.4 Ellen#8217;s Neglecting Traditional Social Etiquettes in #8220;Old New York#8221; 3.4.1 Neglecting the Fixed Social Circles of Upper-class 3.4.2 Distinctive Dressing 3.5 Breaking the Rule of #8220;Silence#8221;4. Conclusion 5Reference

3. 国内外研究现状

In the late 1930s and 1940s, major critics were very critical about Edith Wharton#8217;s fiction in terms of her importance as a writer, the social scope of her subject matter, the pessimistic treatment of conflicts between society and the individual, the inferiority of her late novels to early ones, her imitation of henry James, etc. Q.d.Leavis considered Wharton as an unimportant novelist in that she had not offered any positive solution in her novel. Alfred Kazin criticized Wharton for her excessive concern with her told society while ignoring the poor class or the parvenu. According to some critics, Alfred Kazin, for example, Edith Whaton#8217;s later novels to her early ones due to her shrink from the social order in these works. Percy Lubbock#8217;s portrait of Edith Wharton was essentially a tribute to Henry James. From 1950s,the interest in Edith Wharton has revived. Blake nevius, in Edith Wharton: A Study of Her Fiction diminished her stature by placing an exclusive emphasis on Wharton#8217;s being a novelist of manners.it was the first complete work on studying Wharton/in this book he said her work is #8220;A quiet, continuing testimony to the female experience under modern historical and social conditions, to the modes of entrapment, betrayal and exclusive devised for women in the first decades of the American and European twentieth century. #8220;He further argues that Edith Wharton is worth our permanent attention for three reasons. First she explores for us an important historical phenomenon, namely, a newly moneyed class ascended to the upper class and mixed with #8220;old New York #8220;at the turning of the 20th century. This unharmonious mixture leads inevitably to conflicts of social values between #8220;New New York #8220;and #8220;Old New York#8221;. Second, next to Henry James, she is the most successful writer of novel of manners in American Literature evidenced by the publication of such famous novels as The Ae of Innocence. And so on. Like Henry James, she tends to put the story in the background of the rich traditional society. Third two profound concerns of running through her novels suppress the disadvantages which the narrow range of her subjects result in.In the 1970s, Wharton#8217;s novels were studied from biographical, psych biographical and feminist perspectives. R.W.B. Lewis, representative of the biographical approach, wrote an influential biography on Edith Wharton based on the Beinecke Library collection of Wharton#8217;s letters and manuscripts. he emphasizes that Wharton drew on her life for her fiction in her later years. He tends to identify most of the protagonists in Wharton novels with Wharton herself. In the 1980s, Wharton#8217;s literary reputation expanded with the development of feminist criticism. Elizabeth Ammons work Edith Wharton#8217;s Argument with American, views Wharton#8217;s novels against other contemporary feminist texts.in discussing the protagonists of Wharton#8217;s novels, Ammons acknowledgements Wharton#8217;s attack on the patriarchal repression of women. She also suggests that Wharton#8217;s progressive argument with American declined in her later novels in that she allowed her women characters to be content with domestic life. According to Ammons, while aspirations trapped by marriage and the lack of the alternatives, marriage and the lack of alternatives, marriage and domestic life were women#8217;s best means of self-fulfillment.Wharton#8217;s writing is exquisite, sometimes humorous and insinuative. Many of her novels choose New York urban atmosphere as the settings for the stories. Although New York has provided various scenic settings for authors like Henry James, William Dean Howells, Stephen Crane and Theodore Dreiser, only Wharton makes it a novel#8217;s a chief feature. #8220;Wharton is something of a critical utopian ethnographer, decoding New York society for her public, placing the unquestioned norms of her culture under scrutiny.#8221;(Bauer,1994:47)However, Wharton#8217;s writing materials are not limited to New York stories.in her novels there is often a kind of pessimistic tinge, which is a common feature linking the disappearing aristocratic etiquette in The Age of Innocence and the rock-bottom county life in Ethan Foremother protagonists in her works are most likely affected and confined by impersonal factors like social custom, ritual and culture within certain circumstance, and end in tragedy. The three novels, The House of Mirth, Ethan Formed and The Age of Innocence, share some distinct tragic features. They all have destructive and tragic settings for their protagonists, such as the indifference economic environment, the cruel natural environment and the intolerant ethic environment. Also, the protagonists bear some tragic qualities like loneness, flabbiness, speechlessness, incapableness of serious and significant actions, being marginalized from the mainstream and so on. The most obvious thing they have in common is the tragic ending. The protagonists in the three novels finally find their own ways out of their dilemmas by suicide, self-deformation or self-exile respectively.Wharton#8217;s Pulitzer-prize winning novel The Age of Innocence set in the 1870s New York is a mirror to that society full of lavishness, convention and starchiness, superficial vanity and deep inanity. The age subjected to rules of etiquette set every event subject to ritual.in England, the period in the late 19th century was under the reign of Queen Victoria and was thus know was the Victoria Age. Since this Age s now for its rigidly conventional attitude towards women and sexuality,#8220;Victoria#8221;isused as an epithet with the same conditions in non-British context. The period in the late 19th century and early 20th century in American also witnessed Victorianism: the belief that women are sexual and social subclass was the norm of American home and social life.at the same time, the world had progressed to a point that the #8220;woman question#8221;was seriously raised to challenge the Victorian attitude towards gender and sexuality. Under the Victorian cultural and legal codes in America, a woman was dependent on a man to the extent that all her creativity was either channeled into making utilitarian goods or raising children. She had little chance to receive education or to become a poet, or interior doctor, or lawyer, or take up any self-fulfilling career. Society allowed only the male to major decisions, both public and private.in those days, a woman had very few legal rights. Only in half of the states were woman allowed to vote in school elections. Legally a woman alone could not sign a contract. The cultural codes about gender were stubborn that the emergence of a style of new woman aroused fear In men, as was often the case, by women who had accepted the dominant social codes as the truth. A women#8217;s Beauty was greatly admitted, of course. But if she was believed to have slipped from the restraining influence of her married life, she would be transformed into the ancient archetype of Eve, feared by good society. There is probably no phrase much more hackneyed than that of history redevises, yet it is the only that at all describes this very usual book. critics endeavored to interpret this this novel from many aspects and have reaped great achievements. Lewis, Wharton#8217;s biographical writer, once tried to interpret her works from the perspective of her experience; David Holbrook ever made remarks on her unsatisfactory male protagonist in his book Edith Wharton and the Unsatisfactory man; marfrant B. McDowell once stated that what Mrs. Wharton particularly explored in her works were women#8217;s longing for power in masculine society. some other critical aspects evidence that Edith Wharton was neither in theory nor in practice a feminist, her major fictions, taken together, constitute perhaps the most searching feminist analysis of the construction of feminist produced by any novelist in this century. This is true of Edith Wharton#8217;s masterpiece The Age of Innocence

4. 计划与进度安排

2022.10.26~2022.10.30: receiving the notice that informs me of setting my direction of literature.2022.11.1~2022.11.23: finding and defining my thesis, drafting a preliminary bibliography and decide the title.2022. 12.1~2022.1.1: preparing the thesis proposal, writing literature reviews, thinking about the significance of this thesis.2022.1.19~2022.3.19: writing first draft which includes adopting diachronic research and literature analysis. The research method of this paper includes comparative, analysis, exemplification and so on. 2022.4.21~2022.5.6: revising the first draft again and again, at least for three times, and handing in weekly reports.2022.5.7~2022.5.10: finalizing the draft and waiting for result 2022.5.13~2022.6.12: preparing defensing my thesis

5. 参考文献

[1]Alfred Kazin.America:Criticle and Personal Writings[M].New York:Harper Perennial,1942.[2]Ammons,Elizabeth.Conflicting Stories:American WomenWriters at the Turn into the Twentieth Century[M].New York :Oxford Up,1991.[3] Sand ,Andrea J.. Wharton#8217;s The Age of Innocence[J]. Explicator, 2003, (1):23-25. [4] Fisher, Benjamin F.. Edith Wharton: Sex, Satire and the Older Woman[J]. South Central, 2012, (3): 193-194.[5] Helmetag, Charles H.. Re-creating Edith Wharton#8217;s New York in Martin Scorsese#8217;s The Age of Innocence[J]. Literature Film Quarterly, 1998, (3): 162[6]Joslin, Katherine. Women Writers: Edith Wharton[M]. New York: St. Martin#8217;s Press, 1991.[7]Magnone, Lena. Warsaw-New York. Eliza Orzeszkowa#8217;s Dwa Biegung and Edith Wharton#8217;s The Age of Innocence[J]. American Literature, 2011, (10): 77-101.[8] Jay, Margaret Jessee. Trying it On: Narration and Masking in Edith Wharton#8217;s The Age of Innocence[J]. Journal of Modern Literature, 2012, (1): 37-52.[9]Price, Alan. The Composition of Edith Wharton#8217;s The Age of Innocence[J]. The Yale University Library Gazette, 1980, (1): 22-30.[10]程心. 21世纪以来西方伊迪丝#8226;华顿研究评述[J]. 当代外国文学，2011, (2): 25-28.[11]潘建. 美国作家伊迪丝#8226;华顿研究评述[J]. 外国文学研究, 2002, (1): 43-48.

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