The Reconfiguration and Authority of Text in The House of Mirth Sonny Elizondo

Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth presents an interesting study of the social construction of subjectivity. The Victorian society which Wharton's characters inhabit is defined by a rigid structure of morals and manners in which one's identity is determined by apparent conformity with or transgression of social norms. What is conspicuous about this brand of social identification is its decidedly linguistic nature. In this context, behaviors themselves are rendered as text, and the incessant social appraisal in which the characters of the novel participate is a process of deciphering this script of behavior. People's actions here are read, as it were, according to the unique social grammar of this society. The novel's treatment of this conception of social reading is brought to the fore through its devaluing of written texts in favor of legible behaviors.

The novel signals this pattern from its opening. In the first scene we are introduced to Selden, engaged in what we discover is a typical activity for the novel's personae, the silent, personal, interrogation of another person. "If she had appeared to be catching a train," we are told, "he might have inferred that he had come on her in an...