THE END OF OLD AMERICA

Abstract

My thesis concerns itself with turn-of-the-twentieth-century America. This time in the development of the American nation distinguished itself with a clash between tradition and modernity, conservatism and progressivism, science and religion. All these dichotomies, which were due to a momentous shift from agrarianism to industrialism, constituted a backdrop to the institutions of society including marriage. Hence, a reading of Edith Wharton’s depiction of such an institution reveals much about the end of a pattern of life and the beginning of another. In fact, given the rise of America as a powerful western nation, this change meant also the end of a cycle in the history of Western civilization and the emergence of another.