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FDU PRESS
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| Scholarly Review |
 | The Architectural Imagination of Edith Wharton: Gender, Class, and Power in the Progressive Era
ISBN# 0838641067
Reviewed by: Jean C. Griffith, Wichita State University
Studies in the Novel, Vol. 41, No. 2 |
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In The Archetectural Imagination of Edith Wharton, Annette Benert examines Wharton's fiction in the context of the author's interest in architecture and design, and more generally, within the social and political functions the built environment served during the decades in which Wharton wrote. With chapters that follow her career chronologically, the book charts a trajectory for Wharton's interest in architecture that "begins and ends in fierce attachment to traditional values, moves from delight in Italy to despair for France, and centers in the brilliantly crafted structures and spaces of the early New York novels." Although Benert may overstate the fact that the author's "architectural imagination" has been ignored by other critics, she has nonetheless contributed a more thorough examination of a crucial interest of Wharton's than previous scholars have.
Benert's book is worth reading by those interested in Wharton's use of the built environment. (It) provides readers with many insightful interpretations of Wharton's works, both fictional and nonfictional, and many cogent analyses of how physical spaces galvanized Wharton's social and political concerns.
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