Mad Plunges Against Fate: Marriage and Divorce in the Fiction of Edith Wharton

"The great argument," Edith Wharton declared in The Writing of Fiction, "requires space" (76).  She was writing of the importance of fitting one's theme to its appropriate fictional form, whether short story or novel.  If one considers her argument in relation to her fiction, it becomes easy to pick out some of her particular "great arguments."  Marriage and divorce play significant roles in her body of work, from The House of Mirth to The Age of Innocence.  This thematic concern becomes understandable in light of Wharton's history:  according to the editors of The Norton Anthology of American Literature, she was married for twenty-eight unhappy years before seeking a divorce "on grounds of her husband's adultery" (829).  Also understandable in light of her history is her particular treatment of marriage and divorce.  Consistently throughout her novels, Wharton presents marriage as oppression, and divorce as liberation.