SOURCE: Emmert, Scott. “Drawing-Room Naturalism in Edith Wharton's Early Short Stories.” Les Cahiers de la Nouvelle/Journal of the Short Story in English, no. 39 (autumn 2002): 57-71.

In the following essay, Emmert elucidates the distinctive form of Wharton's literary naturalism, which he refers to as “drawing-room naturalism.”

In her biography of Edith Wharton, Cynthia Griffin Wolff discusses the ways in which the nineteenth-century upper-class girl was encouraged to deny her feelings, particularly sexual ones. As a young girl of that class, Wharton was pressured into early self-denial. One of the primary lessons Wharton learned was that “[s]ociety had decreed that ‘nice’ young women didn't really have feelings to be explained: if you did have feelings—well, then, obviously you weren't ‘nice.’ Lady-like behavior demanded the total suppression of instinct.” As a reaction against her repressed upbringing, young Edith Jones turned to books and to “making up” stories. Her...