I haven’t ever really thought that Edith Wharton’s life might be considered to be a tragic one. Outside of her childhood, her existence was fairly filled with contentment, and during her earlier years her only pressing problem was her domineering mother. Her mother’s refusal to encourage Edith or allow her to develop her talents in anything that deviated from the restrictive societal norms in place presented a few tricky obstacles for her, but nothing that was permanently insurmountable. When Edith spent the greater part of her childhood in Europe she lived a charmed life of privilege that was anything but tragic and she was able to maintain a comfortable lifestyle that continued to the very end. She died of old age in first class comfort and luxury after receiving several accolades that surpassed the achievements of most other women writers during that time period. Her inevitably troubled marriage to Teddy Wharton wasn’t exceptionally tragic either. Together they were both able to travel freely and indulge their mutual passion for decorating their various well appointed homes, hosting the bright literary and artistic talents of the age. Edith inherited a respectable amount of money and Teddy Wharton was likable enough. He never suppressed her from pursuing her talents nor was he outwardly abusive. Instead, he encouraged her to do what she wanted which was contrary to many of the other Victorian or Edwardian husbands she might have been tragically saddled with. They built their wonderful estate “The Mount” together and lavishly decorated it with the best of everything. They also had their toy terriers to amuse them instead of children and there weren’t any severe or overly complicated tensions in their relationship. It was an old fashioned marriage of convenience that was actually not that uncommon during that era. Teddy may not have been her intellectual equal, but she had her own friends and companions wherever they went. Henry James and Bernard Berenson made for some of her favorites but Teddy never got in the way. Teddy Wharton only became a pressing liability when he started to openly embarrass her in society, but even then she was able to obtain a divorce without much resistance. She stashed him away in a home instead of it being the other way around. After that she was able to liberally follow her dream of moving permanently to France where she lived a purposeful life filled with comfort and genteel beauty. She had plenty of down time to cultivate her spectacular gardens and she was able to write the best work of her career. Her love life may have been stilted but she had a few illustrious, intense affairs that offered her happiness with the opposite sex, if only in brief interludes. I agree that Edith Wharton had to overcome many struggles and challenges that were par for the course for any woman of her class throughout her lifetime, but I respectfully disagree that her life was in any way tragic. She was afforded the privilege of never having to suffer from financial hardship. She didn’t care much for young children and she never expressed remorse over not becoming a mother. She had close relationships with her sister in law Minnie Jones and Minnie’s daughter, Edith’s godchild, the noted and celebrated landscape architect designer Beatrix Farrand so she had a few close friendships with some women not mentioned here but for the most part she gravitated toward predominantly male friends, which made up the bulk of her most constant companionships. Her sex life wasn’t particularly sad or lacking for a woman in her position and she did have a few known affairs during her mostly platonic marriage. I don’t believe she was at least ever consciously a lesbian because she seemed to intensely identify with passionate, heteronormative love in most of her written work. Her journals and letters display a recurring penchant for becoming seriously involved in exclusively heterosexual romantic pursuits and there is evidence that she fell very hard for the few men mentioned in this video. However, she was openly contemptuous of her known lesbian contemporaries like Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas as well as the lesbian writer Willa Cather. Cather was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for “My Antonia” which may have sparked some career based jealousy, but she wasn’t ever drawn to her. She was very good friends with another well known lesbian of the day, Elsie de Wolfe, but their relationship was primarily based on their mutual passion for the decoration of houses, without any obviously sexual undertones. Rather, she was never supportive of suffragists nor was she vocally in agreement with women’s rights. She didn’t support any up and coming female writers either, yet she openly entertained and encouraged young talents like F.Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. She was a finished product of her very traditional background and therefore fairly morally conservative in spite of liberating herself from the confines of her class. My personal impression of Edith Wharton’s sexuality is that she was basically straight, but I could be wrong. She might have simply not allowed herself that much leeway or freedom in straying from the values that her family impressed upon her during her youth. However, I tend to think that under the premise that she was able to have extramarital affairs and divorce before that was socially acceptable, leave her native country behind, seemingly forsaking her nationality only to become a permanent resident of France (which was a very controversial move in its own right) then I think she would have probably permitted herself to explore lesbianism had she ever entertained strong sexual feelings for another woman. She generally did exactly whatever she wanted to do and there can be very little tragedy in that! But I love that she is being remembered and I hope that she is currently being introduced to new audiences as her writing captures the Gilded Age in all of its subtle nuances better than any 21rst century available sources can.
@@fabulouswomeninhistory Well, I didn’t really. I just pointed out in a long diabtribe exactly why I don’t think Edith had a tragic life, because I don’t think a woman who was an iconoclastic powerhouse in her own right, deserves to be unfairly pigeon holed as a tragic figure. Suggesting that she was a tragic figure really strips her of agency and I think it is inherently more interesting to celebrate her as a powerful example of a strong, purposeful and passionately independent woman.
@@snoopenny I have no doubt that she suffered from bouts of depression. However, if everyone who suffered with depression were deemed to have “tragic lives”, then a huge percentage of the population would be labeled as such. How many people have bouts of depression perched upon “The Mount” in stately mansion, with impeccable gardens and a maid servant to collect all of their handwritten pages dropped onto the floor as they write from their bed? How many people get to escape the confines of oppression in the best neighborhoods of Paris or in the flower laden paradise of their manse in the south of France? How many people never have to scrimp or pinch to get by as they struggle to become proficient in their art? Do you know how foolish calling Edith Wharton’s life “tragic” sounds to a huge swath of the population? Furthermore, if there was anyone who refused to allow depression to interfere with their trajectory in life, it was Edith Wharton. She refused to permit personal issues to get the better of her. Edith persevered through difficult challenges . She was a staunch character and a fabulously accomplished trailblazer, with wealth and privilege enough to be afforded all of the advantages that most people are never privy to. It’s not even to say that “money isn’t everything “ because not only was she consistently solvent, she also had a very rich inner life. It may even be argued that her bouts of melancholia actually contributed to her creative genius because it gave her insight into human suffering. She was able to tap into emotions that she could never have otherwise adequately understood. Her Gilded Age lifestyle was hardly rough sailing, and her successful career as a woman author was decidedly triumphant rather than being what I would term tragic.Lily Bart in “The House of Mirth” is someone who experienced a “tragic life” driven to extinguish herself when saddled with excessive limitations. Not only was Edith extremely fulfilled by her work, she was also extremely independent, and the world was her oyster. Just because a distinguished woman has bouts of depression and has been thwarted in a few love affairs, doesn’t translate to being victimized by a tragic existence, nor should it.
I read everything i could by Wharton when I was a teen. (Plus Dostoyevsky, Tolstoi, Henry James). The range of her writing was astonishing from Ethan Frome, and Age of Innocence all the way to books on gardening, travel and interiors.
Excellent. If you want to revisit any of her works, I left a link to get them free since they are now in the public domain. Find that link on my channel's community page and thanks for joining the conversation!
She is the only American writer I admire as a “romantic” myself. She is as brave as George Sands, pen name for Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin de Francueil (1848). I believe they would have been great contemporaries if Edith Wharton was alive in mid 1800s. The great epoch of best French writers.
Frankly, I don't think it's important is she was lesbian or bisexual; she was one of America's greatest writers. Her Ethan Frome or her unfinished Buccaneers are works of art. I know both novels by heart, yet I still re-read it once in a while.
She's one of the greatest American writers. The Custom of the Country is less well known than House of Mirth or Age of Innocence, but it's worth reading - a devastating portrait of a truly heartless social climber, only out for herself, Undine Spragg. "Undine, how could you?" I'm less interested in the details of Wharton's private life than in her incredible literary output, really prolific, and all of it excellent.
I would not be surprised if she experimented, but she seems to have been more interested in males as partners. A woman like Wharton, with her history, experience and society, may have wanted to “follow the lead” of her bisexual partner, that is what women were trained to do, follow the lead of her partner”, and was no doubt searching for the partner that fit, thus the experimenting. I don’t think it is very hard to discern her long term and final choice, she was buried next to him.
She was about to finish writing the book, The Buccaneers the ending of the book until her death, so a ghost writer or someone else took over for her even tv movies or miniseries made it up the ending.
I recently watched the mini series on RUclips (I never finished the book) and it is her most awkward work because you can tell that someone took over for her posthumously. The latter part of the story seems underdeveloped and I was a little taken aback by how abruptly it ended, but I still enjoyed it for the most part.
Great Video. All those people in that time period had major serious issues . How they made it from day to day is a wonderment. It was ultra tuff in those days before the turn of the century. Hell is tuff here 100 years later and people still don't fare much better. History just keeps repeating. War and rumors of war.
Being gay is not an issue (for me). Her life and her writing is wonderful. I read her books when very young. It put me on the path of writing and reading. She had the style and the ability to teach us how to do this.
A brilliant, gifted writer. And has there ever been a person with a gifted artistic nature who did NOT feel they were an 'outsider'? It is a theme of almost every autobiographical coming-of-age novel ever written ... ! For that matter, many people who are NOT of a gifted artistic nature grow up feeling they are outsiders as well. Just an observation.
@@2msvalkyrie529 Not "everyone" - but many people. Conclusions: life is tough? not everyone who appears content actually is? I don't know - you tell me.
Interesting video. Tremendous progress has been made in treating mental illness over the past fifty years. The accepted way to refer to what used to be call “manic-depression” is bipolar disorder. Fortunately, it is very treatable today.
Please don’t speculate about people’s sexuality and reduce your work to gossip. But for that needless stain on the biography’s credibility this is an interesting video.
I don't think that Edith was gay. I think that she was so starved for love her whole life that human contact of a sexual nature was something she felt the need to compromise on. At this point in her life the compromise was to be with woman, free, unencumbered and without. all the restraints and disappointments of the past. I guess you would call that bisexual but I do think she preferred the company of men in her bed over that of woman.
Edith was born in the 19th century - 1862. The illustration of her as "debutante" is captioned as 1862 - the year she was born? This video doesn't seem to be well researched.
Thank you for your video. 😁 I think women had a sense of identity crisis during this time in history. I loved the Glided Age on HBO! However, as people express, so many problems even for the very wealthy. 😉 I guess human beings are pretty complicated!😄
What does it matter whether Edith was gay or not. Who actually cares? Certainly not me. What is far more important is the superb body of work, novels, poems and other topics that she wrote.
Oh but of course, here we go. She, too, had to be bisexual. What a surprise. Is there still a historical figure somewhere who according to recent American scholars was not bisexual? And by the way, are we sure there aren't obvious clues to her gender fluidity here or there? It's incredible. There must be something.
SEASON 2 IS HERE !!! ⭐⭐⭐ The Gilded Age Season 2 Revealed! New Plot Lines With Even More Drama Ahead! Teaser/Trailer ► ruclips.net/video/jix7QY-iMIE/видео.html
Contrast this with Mary Crawley who, after the Gilded Age had ended, still wanted nothing more than to marry well and maintain her position at Downton Abbey. Some people want to be traditional. I appreciate it was a struggle for Edith to achieve her goals, but she was fortunate to have been born into and married into a position that aided her. She still lived a life of privilege during her marriage - she wasn’t cooking and cleaning, etc. so she had time for writing. Gilded Age, Gilded Cage, but it’s hard to be sympathetic about her literary struggles.
Edith Wharton is one of my favorite authors. I don’t doubt that she could have been a lesbian, something so taboo in her social class. As “liberated” as she was, I believe she could have suppressed it. Such an interesting woman, who was never ultimately truly “free.” I believe she is one of America’s greatest authors.
She was a great writer. I have read her - absolutely adored, ‘Ethan Frome.’ I would be so interested in her erotic writing being published. Her women characters had chutzpah, spunk, balls, whatever your call it, they are real women.
I don't think she was gay. She tried to find happiness, including making lesbian friends. I just finished her Ethan Frome, and i think she really understood how a man felt about a woman. She can't be a lesbian.
The term, "coming out" brought a bit of trepidation for a moment.. I must remember that "coming out" meant something entirely different than what it means today!
That was an important event in the life of a young woman of the aristocracy of that era. And in some circles it continues. It entails a lavish ball where the lady is presented to society where she will meet young men with the intention of marriage.It’s very dramatic with the debutant as she is referred to being involved in charitable causes in addition to learning how to curtsy she practices dance with her partner. Major cities in the US and abroad have coming out balls with the International Ball being among the largest. Ivanka Trump was presented, Caroline Kennedy declined to be presented to society, while her mother Jacqueline was Deb of the Year when she came out
Please choose the phrase: "...wanted something different out of life." When the phrase "...wanted something more..." is used, it suggests that women who care for a family have settled for less.
There was this way with the wealthy of that time for men and women to play on the same side more common than we today would like to think so because of the forced Victorian virtues of a person led the wealthy to sneak around and take long trips that did not seem to understand the average person so pretty much 79% of them back then was playing on the same team once in their life at least if not more and in public or in private inner circles some still did not know but sex was a driving force then and everyone was getting busted for it even the prince of England was same sex sex and dukes it goes on and on and yes true true true
Why is sexual orientation seemingly always addressed? It’s demeaning to bring a private life into the public life. It’s no one’s business, didn’t make her richer, better looking, a better writer, happier. I don’t need such potential scandal. Butt out of anyone’s sexual life.
Have no clue about her sexual orientation. Rather stunning if true that her marriage wasn't consummated! Totally platonic. Something decidedly wrong there. Maybe she didn't want children?
Maybe it was her husband who was gay or bisexual? With his clinical depression (as is mentioned in many biographies), or Bi-Polar, his libido probably wasn’t very high. Young women were so ignorant about sex so how would she become sexualized? Some people overlook that times then were very different than today when they make these assertions. Just because someone from back then says something doesn’t mean it’s true. People lied then too. I prefer the 30 minute biography video on Ms Wharton than this one.
Edith Wharton didn't live a life of misery and unhappiness. She was too tough minded for that. Her marriage wasn't the greatest, but her life was a busy and vibrant one. She lived an unconventional life but was no bluestocking feminist like others in her generation.
I agree. Unhappy in love, but omygoddess, she won the Pulitzer Prize and had a string of successful novels, short stories, gardening books, etc. She was independent after shedding Teddy and lived the life she wanted.
Re Edith Wharton as Gay - I have no problem with that, but it sounds like a lot of speculation to me. Why don't you, at least, read the book first. I'll still think of hher as straight for now, until I hear otherwise, supported by fact.
I wish they will stop calling these men in this video handsome because they were not attractive only their money and status was attractive. Ijs I guess attraction is in the eyes of the beholder.
RIdiculous and tasteless ( EW wouldnt approve) to speculate on whether she had a lesbian affair. Absolutely impossible to know given there are no letters. News alert: Women have frienships! including close supportive friendships, and it doesnt mean they are lesbians. Wharton did not shy away from controversial subjects in her books, infidelity for example was frequent. Yet there is not a hint in any of the 15 Wharton novels I have read that she had a sympathy or interest in homosexuality. Her passionate obesssion with her last male lover would suggest otherwise. Stupid to speculate.
Well, Wharton did have an affair with a man that was presumably sexual in nature. Also, we don't know if her affair(s) with women had a sexual component or were just romantic in nature. So, I don't really see her as being asexual, but I could be wrong. ~ Anastacia in Cleveland
Don’t deceive yourself that would be lying to yourself and that’s not healthy. There isn’t much different in her life that isn’t relevant today. Womens progress is slow.
I don't think there were so many gay people in the world as now because they didn't know about feeding chickens anti biotics to make them fat. Not until after anti biotics were discovered did hormone changes affect world populations with plastics and chemicals. I don't think she was gay.
Now that is not a theory that I have ever heard about antibiotics making people gay! Gay people have been around since the dawn of time and in as great a number as today. You just didn't hear about it in closed societies but today we live in a more open and inclusive world (to some extent anyway); hence the sense that there are more gay people than ever before! In spite of that, thanks for joining the conversation.
Ah NUTZ. Homosexuality has always been around,as has rape and sexual battery. STOP being naive!!! Signed,decidedly straight asexual!! BEEN there,done that, don't want to no more!!😣😣😷🤔🤔🤔😐
I haven’t ever really thought that Edith Wharton’s life might be considered to be a tragic one. Outside of her childhood, her existence was fairly filled with contentment, and during her earlier years her only pressing problem was her domineering mother. Her mother’s refusal to encourage Edith or allow her to develop her talents in anything that deviated from the restrictive societal norms in place presented a few tricky obstacles for her, but nothing that was permanently insurmountable. When Edith spent the greater part of her childhood in Europe she lived a charmed life of privilege that was anything but tragic and she was able to maintain a comfortable lifestyle that continued to the very end. She died of old age in first class comfort and luxury after receiving several accolades that surpassed the achievements of most other women writers during that time period.
Her inevitably troubled marriage to Teddy Wharton wasn’t exceptionally tragic either. Together they were both able to travel freely and indulge their mutual passion for decorating their various well appointed homes, hosting the bright literary and artistic talents of the age. Edith inherited a respectable amount of money and Teddy Wharton was likable enough. He never suppressed her from pursuing her talents nor was he outwardly abusive. Instead, he encouraged her to do what she wanted which was contrary to many of the other Victorian or Edwardian husbands she might have been tragically saddled with.
They built their wonderful estate “The Mount” together and lavishly decorated it with the best of everything. They also had their toy terriers to amuse them instead of children and there weren’t any severe or overly complicated tensions in their relationship. It was an old fashioned marriage of convenience that was actually not that uncommon during that era. Teddy may not have been her intellectual equal, but she had her own friends and companions wherever they went. Henry James and Bernard Berenson made for some of her favorites but Teddy never got in the way.
Teddy Wharton only became a pressing liability when he started to openly embarrass her in society, but even then she was able to obtain a divorce without much resistance. She stashed him away in a home instead of it being the other way around. After that she was able to liberally follow her dream of moving permanently to France where she lived a purposeful life filled with comfort and genteel beauty. She had plenty of down time to cultivate her spectacular gardens and she was able to write the best work of her career. Her love life may have been stilted but she had a few illustrious, intense affairs that offered her happiness with the opposite sex, if only in brief interludes.
I agree that Edith Wharton had to overcome many struggles and challenges that were par for the course for any woman of her class throughout her lifetime, but I respectfully disagree that her life was in any way tragic. She was afforded the privilege of never having to suffer from financial hardship. She didn’t care much for young children and she never expressed remorse over not becoming a mother. She had close relationships with her sister in law Minnie Jones and Minnie’s daughter, Edith’s godchild, the noted and celebrated landscape architect designer Beatrix Farrand so she had a few close friendships with some women not mentioned here but for the most part she gravitated toward predominantly male friends, which made up the bulk of her most constant companionships.
Her sex life wasn’t particularly sad or lacking for a woman in her position and she did have a few known affairs during her mostly platonic marriage. I don’t believe she was at least ever consciously a lesbian because she seemed to intensely identify with passionate, heteronormative love in most of her written work. Her journals and letters display a recurring penchant for becoming seriously involved in exclusively heterosexual romantic pursuits and there is evidence that she fell very hard for the few men mentioned in this video. However, she was openly contemptuous of her known lesbian contemporaries like Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas as well as the lesbian writer Willa Cather. Cather was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for “My Antonia” which may have sparked some career based jealousy, but she wasn’t ever drawn to her. She was very good friends with another well known lesbian of the day, Elsie de Wolfe, but their relationship was primarily based on their mutual passion for the decoration of houses, without any obviously sexual undertones. Rather, she was never supportive of suffragists nor was she vocally in agreement with women’s rights. She didn’t support any up and coming female writers either, yet she openly entertained and encouraged young talents like F.Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway.
She was a finished product of her very traditional background and therefore fairly morally conservative in spite of liberating herself from the confines of her class. My personal impression of Edith Wharton’s sexuality is that she was basically straight, but I could be wrong. She might have simply not allowed herself that much leeway or freedom in straying from the values that her family impressed upon her during her youth. However, I tend to think that under the premise that she was able to have extramarital affairs and divorce before that was socially acceptable, leave her native country behind, seemingly forsaking her nationality only to become a permanent resident of France (which was a very controversial move in its own right) then I think she would have probably permitted herself to explore lesbianism had she ever entertained strong sexual feelings for another woman. She generally did exactly whatever she wanted to do and there can be very little tragedy in that! But I love that she is being remembered and I hope that she is currently being introduced to new audiences as her writing captures the Gilded Age in all of its subtle nuances better than any 21rst century available sources can.
Thanks for joining the conversation!
@@fabulouswomeninhistory Well, I didn’t really. I just pointed out in a long diabtribe exactly why I don’t think Edith had a tragic life, because I don’t think a woman who was an iconoclastic powerhouse in her own right, deserves to be unfairly pigeon holed as a tragic figure. Suggesting that she was a tragic figure really strips her of agency and I think it is inherently more interesting to celebrate her as a powerful example of a strong, purposeful and passionately independent woman.
@@serenawilliams6138 Thank you. Your informed and nuanced take is a valuable counterpoint to the view promulgated in the video.
You are discounting her bouts of depression, which betrays that all was good. Her privileged life does not cancel her emotional suffering.
@@snoopenny I have no doubt that she suffered from bouts of depression. However, if everyone who suffered with depression were deemed to have “tragic lives”, then a huge percentage of the population would be labeled as such.
How many people have bouts of depression perched upon “The Mount” in stately mansion, with impeccable gardens and a maid servant to collect all of their handwritten pages dropped onto the floor as they write from their bed? How many people get to escape the confines of oppression in the best neighborhoods of Paris or in the flower laden paradise of their manse in the south of France? How many people never have to scrimp or pinch to get by as they struggle to become proficient in their art? Do you know how foolish calling Edith Wharton’s life “tragic” sounds to a huge swath of the population?
Furthermore, if there was anyone who refused to allow depression to interfere with their trajectory in life, it was Edith Wharton. She refused to permit personal issues to get the better of her. Edith persevered through difficult challenges . She was a staunch character and a fabulously accomplished trailblazer, with wealth and privilege enough to be afforded all of the advantages that most people are never privy to.
It’s not even to say that “money isn’t everything “ because not only was she consistently solvent, she also had a very rich inner life. It may even be argued that her bouts of melancholia actually contributed to her creative genius because it gave her insight into human suffering. She was able to tap into emotions that she could never have otherwise adequately understood. Her Gilded Age lifestyle was hardly rough sailing, and her successful career as a woman author was decidedly triumphant rather than being what I would term tragic.Lily Bart in “The House of Mirth” is someone who experienced a “tragic life” driven to extinguish herself when saddled with excessive limitations. Not only was Edith extremely fulfilled by her work, she was also extremely independent, and the world was her oyster. Just because a distinguished woman has bouts of depression and has been thwarted in a few love affairs, doesn’t translate to being victimized by a tragic existence, nor should it.
I read everything i could by Wharton when I was a teen. (Plus Dostoyevsky, Tolstoi, Henry James). The range of her writing was astonishing from Ethan Frome, and Age of Innocence all the way to books on gardening, travel and interiors.
Excellent. If you want to revisit any of her works, I left a link to get them free since they are now in the public domain. Find that link on my channel's community page and thanks for joining the conversation!
❤️
I love Edith Wharton - we’re in Henry James territory; only you can READ Edith Wharton!
🙏🏽🌹🙏🏻
Amazing! She was very great, a marvelous intellect, and really a genius. Who could forget the tragedy of Lily Bart?
Rather harsh..? They were both nice old ladies......?
No I don’t think she was gay. She was highly intelligent and creative, and lacked an equal. Not all needs are sexual.
Thanks for your thoughts.
I hate when people try to put their hang ups on people from the past.
I don't think it matters whether she was gay. What does matter - she is one of the greatest American writers.
Unlike Jane Austen, Edith Wharton was not kind to her heroines. Her heroines largely suffered sad endings.
Thanks for joining the conversation!
She is the only American writer I admire as a “romantic” myself. She is as brave as George Sands, pen name for Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin de Francueil (1848). I believe they would have been great contemporaries if Edith Wharton was alive in mid 1800s. The great epoch of best French writers.
I can't ever forget poor Lily Bart.
Frankly, I don't think it's important is she was lesbian or bisexual; she was one of America's greatest writers. Her Ethan Frome or her unfinished Buccaneers are works of art. I know both novels by heart, yet I still re-read it once in a while.
11:32 the book cover of “The Professor” by Charlotte Bronte!
She's one of the greatest American writers. The Custom of the Country is less well known than House of Mirth or Age of Innocence, but it's worth reading - a devastating portrait of a truly heartless social climber, only out for herself, Undine Spragg. "Undine, how could you?" I'm less interested in the details of Wharton's private life than in her incredible literary output, really prolific, and all of it excellent.
We have a reader! A rare breed so thanks for stopping by!
I would not be surprised if she experimented, but she seems to have been more interested in males as partners. A woman like Wharton, with her history, experience and society, may have wanted to “follow the lead” of her bisexual partner, that is what women were trained to do, follow the lead of her partner”, and was no doubt searching for the partner that fit, thus the experimenting. I don’t think it is very hard to discern her long term and final choice, she was buried next to him.
Good analysis. Thanks for joining the conversation!
Agreed
Why should her life be considered “tragic”? The woman got to live life on her own terms without a man dominating her. Sounds good to me.
She was about to finish writing the book, The Buccaneers the ending of the book until her death, so a ghost writer or someone else took over for her even tv movies or miniseries made it up the ending.
Yep. So true. Thanks for joining the conversation!
I recently watched the mini series on RUclips (I never finished the book) and it is her most awkward work because you can tell that someone took over for her posthumously. The latter part of the story seems underdeveloped and I was a little taken aback by how abruptly it ended, but I still enjoyed it for the most part.
Great Video.
All those people in that time period had major serious issues . How they made it from day to day is a wonderment. It was ultra tuff in those days before the turn of the century. Hell is tuff here 100 years later and people still don't fare much better. History just keeps repeating. War and rumors of war.
Thanks for your thoughts.
Being gay is not an issue (for me). Her life and her writing is wonderful. I read her books when very young. It put me on the path of writing and reading. She had the style and the ability to teach us how to do this.
A brilliant, gifted writer. And has there ever been a person with a gifted artistic nature who did NOT feel they were an 'outsider'? It is a theme of almost every autobiographical coming-of-age novel ever written ... ! For that matter, many people who are NOT of a gifted artistic nature grow up feeling they are outsiders as well. Just an observation.
Hmmm......so , basically , everyone feels like an " outsider "....??! What conclusions do you draw from that ?
@@2msvalkyrie529 Not "everyone" - but many people. Conclusions: life is tough? not everyone who appears content actually is? I don't know - you tell me.
Who cares what her sexuality was?? She was a great American novelist.
Interesting video. Tremendous progress has been made in treating mental illness over the past fifty years. The accepted way to refer to what used to be call “manic-depression” is bipolar disorder. Fortunately, it is very treatable today.
Oh absolutely. Meant to reference it as that but didn't correct it before when to rendering the video. THanks.
I don't care if she was gay or not. I care about her books.
Excellent video, new sub! Thank you
Please don’t speculate about people’s sexuality and reduce your work to gossip. But for that needless stain on the biography’s credibility this is an interesting video.
Thanks for your thoughts.
I don't think that Edith was gay. I think that she was so starved for love her whole life that human contact of a sexual nature was something she felt the need to compromise on. At this point in her life the compromise was to be with woman, free, unencumbered
and without. all the restraints and disappointments of the past. I guess you would call that bisexual but I do think she preferred the company of men in her bed over that of woman.
Thank you. The only book I read of Edith's was, "The Age of Innocence".
Tomorrow I will post where to get all her books for free. Look for it in the community thread and thanks for joining the conversation!
I also read House of Mirth. Fabulous book
I loved the movie and have seen it many times! 😍
I really enjoy your videos/stories! How, though was Edith a teenage debutante in 1862, when she was born in that year?
Should have read 1882. Production error. Thanks for joining the conversation!
@@fabulouswomeninhistory : awww, thank you. I didn’t mean to be THAT person, but, I enjoy your info so much, that I got confused! 😉😂❤
I have heard of her, but never read her books. Excellent bio. I did see the film Age of Innocence years ago. Dull film.
Thank you! Enjoyed this!💖💯
Glad you enjoyed it!
Edith was born in the 19th century - 1862. The illustration of her as "debutante" is captioned as 1862 - the year she was born? This video doesn't seem to be well researched.
My favorite is 'the custom of the country'.
Thanks for your thoughts.
I love that book. Undine Sprague is so deliciously common and banal!
@@serenawilliams6138 She sure was. She'd hate to hear that haha.
We share the same anniversary! That's interesting, and I'm a writer too.. very interesting indeed!
Considering her many successful accomplishments, her sexual preferences are a boring side note, not worthy of mention
Thanks for joining the conversation!
Thank you for your video. 😁 I think women had a sense of identity crisis during this time in history. I loved the Glided Age on HBO! However, as people express, so many problems even for the very wealthy. 😉 I guess human beings are pretty complicated!😄
Yes, I think so too! Thanks for joining the conversation!
Much more readable than Henry James, who was a friend she admired. James is verbose. Wharton never is.
Thanks for your thoughts.
I agree, I love Edith Wharton. But, I gave Henry James another try, and really enjoyed Portrait of a Lady, and others.
You are so right. Hardly anyone perserveres with James/ Everyone reads Wharton.
What does it matter whether Edith was gay or not. Who actually cares? Certainly not me. What is far more important is the superb body of work, novels, poems and other topics that she wrote.
Oh but of course, here we go. She, too, had to be bisexual. What a surprise. Is there still a historical figure somewhere who according to recent American scholars was not bisexual? And by the way, are we sure there aren't obvious clues to her gender fluidity here or there? It's incredible. There must be something.
Thanks for your thoughts.
Never heard the Janet Flanner rumor....It's true, the men in her life were gay or closeted. How could you leave out her closeness w Henry James?
Wharton was in her 60s when Flanner arrived in Paris. The rumored affair is tosh!
Another great video👏🏻👏🏻
Thank you 🤗
Some of the paintings are 18th Century, not late 19th-20th.
Wharton was awarded the Pulitzer in 1921, two years before Willa Cather.
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Contrast this with Mary Crawley who, after the Gilded Age had ended, still wanted nothing more than to marry well and maintain her position at Downton Abbey. Some people want to be traditional. I appreciate it was a struggle for Edith to achieve her goals, but she was fortunate to have been born into and married into a position that aided her. She still lived a life of privilege during her marriage - she wasn’t cooking and cleaning, etc. so she had time for writing. Gilded Age, Gilded Cage, but it’s hard to be sympathetic about her literary struggles.
Edith Wharton is one of my favorite authors. I don’t doubt that she could have been a lesbian, something so taboo in her social class. As “liberated” as she was, I believe she could have suppressed it. Such an interesting woman, who was never ultimately truly “free.” I believe she is one of America’s greatest authors.
Who cares if she was gay?
Really!
Gay visibility says it matters! Thanks for joining the conversation!
She was a great writer. I have read her - absolutely adored, ‘Ethan Frome.’ I would be so interested in her erotic writing being published. Her women characters had chutzpah, spunk, balls, whatever your call it, they are real women.
Awesome! Thanks for joining the conversation!
I don't think she was gay. She tried to find happiness, including making lesbian friends. I just finished her Ethan Frome, and i think she really understood how a man felt about a woman. She can't be a lesbian.
Her choices were not required. She could have made different choices, other women did.
Thanks for your thoughts.
The term, "coming out" brought a bit of trepidation for a moment.. I must remember that "coming out" meant something entirely different than what it means today!
That was an important event in the life of a young woman of the aristocracy of that era. And in some circles it continues. It entails a lavish ball where the lady is presented to society where she will meet young men with the intention of marriage.It’s very dramatic with the debutant as she is referred to being involved in charitable causes in addition to learning how to curtsy she practices dance with her partner. Major cities in the US and abroad have coming out balls with the International Ball being among the largest. Ivanka Trump was presented, Caroline Kennedy declined to be presented to society, while her mother Jacqueline was Deb of the Year when she came out
So interesting!
Glad you think so!
Please choose the phrase: "...wanted something different out of life." When the phrase "...wanted something more..." is used, it suggests that women who care for a family have settled for less.
Thanks for your thoughts.
Oh she was a writer
Yes and for the sake of idiots, maybe gay. Omg.
Thank you ☮️❣️💟❣️✝️
You are so welcome
👍⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
There was this way with the wealthy of that time for men and women to play on the same side more common than we today would like to think so because of the forced Victorian virtues of a person led the wealthy to sneak around and take long trips that did not seem to understand the average person so pretty much 79% of them back then was playing on the same team once in their life at least if not more and in public or in private inner circles some still did not know but sex was a driving force then and everyone was getting busted for it even the prince of England was same sex sex and dukes it goes on and on and yes true true true
I totally agree. Thanks for your thoughts!
Why is sexual orientation seemingly always addressed? It’s demeaning to bring a private life into the public life. It’s no one’s business, didn’t make her richer, better looking, a better writer, happier. I don’t need such potential scandal. Butt out of anyone’s sexual life.
Have no clue about her sexual orientation. Rather stunning if true that her marriage wasn't consummated! Totally platonic. Something decidedly wrong there. Maybe she didn't want children?
Maybe it was her husband who was gay or bisexual? With his clinical depression (as is mentioned in many biographies), or Bi-Polar, his libido probably wasn’t very high. Young women were so ignorant about sex so how would she become sexualized? Some people overlook that times then were very different than today when they make these assertions. Just because someone from back then says something doesn’t mean it’s true. People lied then too. I prefer the 30 minute biography video on Ms Wharton than this one.
So sad😢😢😢
Interesting and beautyful
Thank you very much and thanks for watching!
Why we have to read an entire packet about her biography in English is beyond me
Edith Wharton didn't live a life of misery and unhappiness. She was too tough minded for that. Her marriage wasn't the greatest, but her life was a busy and vibrant one. She lived an unconventional life but was no bluestocking feminist like others in her generation.
I agree. Unhappy in love, but omygoddess, she won the Pulitzer Prize and had a string of successful novels, short stories, gardening books, etc. She was independent after shedding Teddy and lived the life she wanted.
ohhh goodness, not lequisha
I like to assume all my historical figures gay until proven otherwise! Lol
Love it! Thanks for joining the conversation!
Re Edith Wharton as Gay - I have no problem with that, but it sounds like a lot of speculation to me. Why don't you, at least, read the book first. I'll still think of hher as straight for now, until I hear otherwise, supported by fact.
I wish they will stop calling these men in this video handsome because they were not attractive only their money and status was attractive. Ijs I guess attraction is in the eyes of the beholder.
I imagine they were attractive in their day. Thanks for joining the conversation!
RIdiculous and tasteless ( EW wouldnt approve) to speculate on whether she had a lesbian affair. Absolutely impossible to know given there are no letters. News alert: Women have frienships! including close supportive friendships, and it doesnt mean they are lesbians. Wharton did not shy away from controversial subjects in her books, infidelity for example was frequent. Yet there is not a hint in any of the 15 Wharton novels I have read that she had a sympathy or interest in homosexuality. Her passionate obesssion with her last male lover would suggest otherwise. Stupid to speculate.
So good chance that she was bisexual couldn't find love with men but found it in with her friends intellectual women
Agreed. Thanks for your thoughts.
Men didn't work out, she may have found understanding thur others. If she was Happy so be it.
Thanks for joining the conversation!
What a precious looking person. 👼
Thanks for your thoughts.
Maybe she was a romantic asexual.
Good perspective. Thanks for your thoughts.
Well, Wharton did have an affair with a man that was presumably sexual in nature. Also, we don't know if her affair(s) with women had a sexual component or were just romantic in nature. So, I don't really see her as being asexual, but I could be wrong. ~ Anastacia in Cleveland
I think both her and her husband were gay.
You have proof of this?
Don’t deceive yourself that would be lying to yourself and that’s not healthy. There isn’t much different in her life that isn’t relevant today. Womens progress is slow.
very interesting. who cares if she was gay
Thanks for joining the conversation!
I don't think there were so many gay people in the world as now because they didn't know about feeding chickens anti biotics to make them fat. Not until after anti biotics were discovered did hormone changes affect world populations with plastics and chemicals. I don't think she was gay.
Now that is not a theory that I have ever heard about antibiotics making people gay! Gay people have been around since the dawn of time and in as great a number as today. You just didn't hear about it in closed societies but today we live in a more open and inclusive world (to some extent anyway); hence the sense that there are more gay people than ever before! In spite of that, thanks for joining the conversation.
Ah NUTZ. Homosexuality has always been around,as has rape and sexual battery. STOP being naive!!! Signed,decidedly straight asexual!! BEEN there,done that, don't want to no more!!😣😣😷🤔🤔🤔😐
That is an insane theory…..
@@donnarobinson205 You can say that again...
Book Mouse: you’re too funny! WRONG!
if she didnt like it then why didnt she get a job in a factory
rrfrèrèlppp
She made poor Teddy go insane, what a selfish woman.
If she was gay and I'm still questioning that. It was because she was not getting any affection from her husband and her mother was a cold fish