Edith Wharton: An Heiress to Gay Male Sexual Radicalism?

Abstract

Edith Wharton is often read through a lens of highly gendered and class-ridden stereotypes: as the prim heiress-authoress, observer of manners in American salons and European drawing rooms. In fact, this rather condescending misreading obscures her true radicalism: when one looks more closely at influences which both surrounded Wharton and which she herself actively pursued, one sees strong connections in her work to gay male writers who were developing a sexually radical vision of transcendental consciousness. Walt Whitman, of course, was the prime advocate for this forward-looking sensibility. His influence on contemporaries, notably John Addington Symonds, laid the groundwork for later arguments in favour of sexual diversity and revolution. This chapter maps key texts of Wharton’s against this radicalising movement, and shows Wharton to be a sexual subversive, not a genteel critic, of received mores.