ABSTRACT
Wharton is a broadly realistic writer who examines the manner in which individuals are shaped and often victimized by their economic environments. However, this naturalistic focus does not detract from the dominant stylistic qualities of her novels. In one of her more interesting late essays entitled "Visibility in Fiction" (1929), she argues that style is the crucial consideration for unifying the form and content of a novel: not only does style lend a story the "enduring semblance of vitality" but it is necessary for the creation of "visible" characters. She comments on her troubled attempts to render the "visual intensity" of characters when she admits that "the gift of giving visibility to the characters of fiction is the rarest in the novelist's endowment." She warns that such visibility is often overstated, as in the cases of Charles Dickens and Honore de Balzac, who persistently associate their characters with "the same physical or mental oddities." By way of contrast, she aspires to the manner in which Lev Tolstoi and Gustave Flaubert interweave realistic physical descriptions with subtle renderings of the emotional and mental complexities of their characters. In a similar manner, many of Wharton's novels present engaging characters faced with emotionally limiting or debilitating circumstances.
