Wharton: The Forerunner to Women's History Month
February—Black History Month; September—Hispanic Heritage Month; May, June, October, and November—each with its own respective antiquity. Consequently, March is National Women’s History Month (this I did not realize until a recent Google search). I suppose, then, that my research on Edith Wharton couldn’t be timelier.
Edith Wharton was hardly a name I’d recognize before taking EN 414 American Realism this semester. When told to write a literary paper on an author who made a significant contribution to American literature, Mark Twain was the unquestionable literary figure in my mind. However, upon more research (and partly upon the fact that I didn’t want to write on my professor’s favorite writer), I chose to go the unconventional route and to write about an unconventional lady.
(Here’s the part where I educate you a bit.) Among her many accolades, Edith claims the rights to being the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, the first woman to receive an honorary doctorate of letters from Yale University, and the first woman to be inducted into the American National Institute of Arts and Letters, just to name a few. I’d say this lady set the bar high, possibly out of reach. Plus, these awards do not even account of her refugee relief efforts during World War I. Perhaps Edith was a woman before her time; but, perhaps, Edith was a woman at just the right time. In clearing her own path, Edith paved the way for like-minded women. So here’s to March—National Women’s History Month!
(March 2015)
Edith Wharton was hardly a name I’d recognize before taking EN 414 American Realism this semester. When told to write a literary paper on an author who made a significant contribution to American literature, Mark Twain was the unquestionable literary figure in my mind. However, upon more research (and partly upon the fact that I didn’t want to write on my professor’s favorite writer), I chose to go the unconventional route and to write about an unconventional lady.
(Here’s the part where I educate you a bit.) Among her many accolades, Edith claims the rights to being the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, the first woman to receive an honorary doctorate of letters from Yale University, and the first woman to be inducted into the American National Institute of Arts and Letters, just to name a few. I’d say this lady set the bar high, possibly out of reach. Plus, these awards do not even account of her refugee relief efforts during World War I. Perhaps Edith was a woman before her time; but, perhaps, Edith was a woman at just the right time. In clearing her own path, Edith paved the way for like-minded women. So here’s to March—National Women’s History Month!
(March 2015)
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