by Edith Wharton

Born in New York in 1862 to elderly parents, Edith Wharton was raised in a family replete with socially prominent relatives. Wharton traveled abroad and married during a time of transition for women in America. The urban-based Industrial Revolution brought sweeping social changes in her day, some of which altered women's lives. Although traditional standards of femininity continued to be upheld by the upper classes, the role of women was in flux around the turn of the twentieth century. House of Mirth, Wharton's second novel, would deal with the changing status of women around this time. A scathing critique of the "marriage market," the novel also depicts the broad spectrum of social tensions that surfaced as a newly rich class of industrial stockholders penetrated New York City's older, traditional monied aristocracy.

Events in History at the Time of the Novel