Edith Wharton

Moments of Happiness Ever since humans wanted more than just the basic needs in life, they have questioned what could a make a person ultimately happy. Aristotle defines happiness as, “prosperity combined with virtue” (774), while Victor Hugo says, “The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved” (774). Overall philosophers for centuries have strived for an answer and differed in opinions. This quest or strive to figure out happiness has puzzled people to such confusion that…

1 A: The Passing of Grandison by Charles. W Chesnutt B: One of the first sentences in “The Passing of Grandison”, Chesnutt was strong to show Dick Owens’ actions, and that they were only performed to satisfy a woman. This story is exceptional because there is no relevance between the characters in the story. Normally there is some connotation in the genders, age and races of the characters in stories, but in “The Passing of Grandison” there is none whatsoever. The only correlation between the…

During the late 19th and early 20th century, women faced many hardships and challenges. Women were trying to earn their right to vote, gain equal rights with men, step away from society’s standard, etc. Four stories written by four different authors of this time show a little insight into a major challenge that women faced during the turn of the 20th century – marriage. During this time period, marriage was a representative of social class ranking and was also taking the freedom away from women…

because, similar to the use of an interpreter, the difference becomes more apparent. The behavior demonstrated by those who discriminate against the DHH worlds is relatable to the way that Ethan Frome, from Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome, was treated differently because he had an obvious deformity. Wharton writes, “a lameness checking each step like the jerk of a chain” (3). Frome’s accident left him with an…

between Fitzgerald and his wife. Hemingway familiarized Fitzgerald to Sylvia Beach and Gertrude Stein, and the two visited Edith Wharton at her salon in July 1925. Fitzgerald, increased his drinking behavior and was often frustrated by his inability to write. On the same day, when he was drunk he made outrageously inappropriate remarks. For instance, when he first met Edith Wharton, whose writing he had long admired, he told her she needed to “live a little.” His offensive comment caused her to…

Candace Bushnell is an American television producer and novelist best known for writing a series of chick lit novels. Her best known works are the Sex and the City novels which were adapted from the columns by the same name that she wrote for the New York Observer between 1994 and 1996. Candace was born to Camile Salonia and Calvin L. Bushnell in 1958 Glastonbury, Connecticut. Her father was something of a celebrity in her town having been an inventor of the Air Cooled Hydrogen Fuel Cell that…

Literature and Composition 27 March 2015 Social Classes: Corrupt or Family Fixed “The people who take society as an escape from work are putting it to its proper use; but when it becomes the thing worked for it distorts all the relations of life” ( Edith Wharton, the House of Mirth). The author of Romeo and Juliet is of course the late and great William Shakespeare. The play Romeo and Juliet has remained extremely popular throughout the centuries, but strangely, producers in the seventeenth…

In the novel Ethan Frome whom is written by Edith Wharton, isolation plays a big role in why and what the character’s do in the novel.* Zeena is the character that is isolated in the novel. Through out Zeena’s life during the novel, she goes through two major changes. She experiences herself stuck within isolation and does not know who to get herself back. She is not the only person who realizes that she is not the same. Many people including her own husband Ethan notices it. But Zeena is a…

Have you ever read a novel or poem that had characters in them that allowed the characters to show strength during the face of adversity? I have read two novels and a poem where that is the case. The first one is the novel Ethan Forme written by Edith Wharton. Zeena showed strength when she knew her cousin Mattie and husband Ethan were getting way to close with their relationship. But Zeena did not give up. She stayed strong and things worked out for her in the end. In the poem “I Heard A Fly…

expressed in the banquet speech of his literature Nobel Prize “… the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself […] only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat…” The first one of these two books was Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton. In this book the author examines with precision the thoughts of a man fighting with himself between choosing personal selfish happiness or pleasing the people of his town. We can see here the pressure that society can exert over individuals…