In the Interstices of the Tale: Edith Wharton’s Narrative Strategies

In the Interstices of the Tale brings Edith Wharton out of the Victorian past, focusing instead on narrative strategies that link Wharton with American Modernism. Wharton’s experiments with narrative form, her pervasive use of irony, and her attention to her ostensibly untold women’s stories all belie the standard image of Wharton as a novelist of manners and a literary remnant of the nineteenth century. By looking beyond this traditional image of Wharton, Hadley finds fresh insights into both the meanings of Wharton’s fictions and the significance of her place in American literature.