Wharton, Writing, and Nature

Abstract:Although past critics of Wharton's work have focused on the social world she depicts, Wharton also presents the natural world in her work, from poems she wrote as a teenager through her late writings. Using Thomas Lyon's "Taxonomy of Nature Writing" (1989), this article looks at a range of Wharton's work to argue that she is indeed a "nature writer." Wharton's work in Italian Villas and Their Gardens and A Motor-Flight Through France meditate on the relationship between landscape and human habitation, and her lifelong experiences of gardening in various climates deepened her ecological understanding of climatological differences. Wharton's first published story "Mrs. Manstey's View" argues for the importance of nature even in an urban setting, while also creating a character who is a phenologist (someone who studies seasonal cycles); much later in her career, her paired novels Hudson River Bracketed and The Gods Arrive not only demonstrate Wharton's own skill as a nature writer, but also convey the importance of nature, both cosmic and local, as inspiration to the writer. Finally, the article suggests that Wharton's attentiveness to nature may have made her a better writer; moreover, it asks readers to consider Wharton's depictions of nature as they consider today's ecological crisis.