“A Light of the New America”: Womanhood, Motherhood, and Modernity in Edith Wharton’s The Mother’s Recompense, Twilight Sleep, and The Children

Abstract

Recent studies have showed that Edith Wharton’s late, post-war fiction was an attempt to confront the New America of the 1920s. The Mother’s Recompense (1925), Twilight Sleep (1927) and, The Children (1928) all deal with the Jazz Age hedonism, particularly focusing on modern women’s identities and aspirations. This thesis explores the impact of the Jazz Age’s flamboyant customs on womanhood and motherhood through the examination of ambiguous modern female voices. Particular attention is given to the flapper-mothers and the consequences of maternal negligence. Characterized by permissiveness and moral laxity, Wharton’s solipsistic women characters mindlessly follow their ambitions, but ultimately fail to reconcile their need for self-expression with familial duties. Wharton’s 1920s novels demonstrate that despite the reduced gender gap that characterized the era it was still impossible for women to occupy multiple roles successfully.