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A bard of Western Mass.

EDITORIAL | Editorial | Edith Wharton at 150

THIS STORY APPEARED IN

January 01, 2012

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MASSACHUSETTS DOESN’T lack for literary heroes, and doesn’t need to import any from New York. But it’s worth noting that Edith Wharton, who is most renowned for her lacerating insights into the New York upper classes, made her primary home in Massachusetts for the crucial years of her emergence as a writer. And a closer look at her oeuvre suggests that all those Wikipedia types may have been too quick to label her a bard of Manhattan society. She had a defining vision of Massachusetts, too. Perhaps that perspective has been less noticed because her literary gaze landed so intently on the snow-covered hills and placid summer lakes of Western Massachusetts, rather than salons of Boston.

It’s exciting, therefore, that the prime celebration of Wharton’s 150th birthday this month will be engineered by the Edith Wharton Restoration in Lenox, Mass., which is based at her beloved home, The Mount. By the date of her 150th, Jan. 24, the hills around The Mount will probably be cloaked in white, while the fireplaces of nearby farmhouses dance with the wind, like the tongues of gossiping country folk. That picture of enforced isolation, of lives circumscribed by the social rules and judgments of the village, was brought to life in “Ethan Frome,’’ set in the fictional village of Starkfield, Mass.

Despite the celebration of Wharton’s seminal New York novels - including “The House of Mirth’’ and “The Age of Innocence,’’ which was recently declared by New York Magazine to be the greatest in the city’s history - it is “Ethan Frome’’ that appears on the most reading lists for high-school English courses, and her dissection of life in rural New England is every bit as compelling as her depiction of New York society. In fact, her novel “Summer,’’ set in a Massachusetts village somewhat resembling Williamstown, offers a more nuanced take on the attitudes she explored in “Ethan Frome.’’

Wharton’s life story no doubt accounts for some of her current-day fans. There were acclaimed female novelists in America before the high-born Wharton, but she was arguably the first to aim for the very top of the literary roost, where Henry James and William Dean Howells held sway. James’s admiration of Wharton was real, but the all-male establishment wasn’t fully accepting. She was left to follow the path of many women writers in outselling most of her male contemporaries. She eventually earned great acclaim in her time, and her reputation has not only remained, but risen considerably.

The explanation for all this renewed attention is in her dozens of books, almost all of which are back in print. The acuteness of her vision is as visible today in the towns of Western Massachusetts as it is in the upper reaches of New York society.