Gender Roles and Class Relations: Neurasthenic Representations in Edith Whartons’ The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth

Abstract

This paper examines the neurasthenic condition of Edith Wharton’s characters, Ellen, Lily and Aracher, in The age of Innocence and The House of Mirth. Those characters show rebellious attitudes to the social values and conventions of the nineteenth century American society. Our characters showed strong desires and ambitions to change the social values, gender roles and class relations. They did not accept the modern social system; while trying to live differently, they drained their nervous energy and became neurasthenic and ended up secluded and rejected as an act of retaliation. Lily and Ellen decided that they could not fit in and refused to submit to the culture’s belief that a woman should remain within the boundaries of her house. Therefore, they ended their lives.  Lily killed herself and Ellen decided to live alone, in her apartment in Paris, and leave the New York society.  On the other hand, unwillingly, Archer conformed to the social conventions of the time and suppressed his feelings for the sake of cultural acceptance.  In fact, he remained living in his past where he fantasized a life with Ellen in a world outside New York society.