EDITH WHARTON’IN MASUMİYET ÇAĞI BAŞLIKLI ESERİNDE ELLEN OLENSKA’NIN ESKİ NEW YORK’TAN SESSİZ SÜRGÜNÜ

Yıl 2022, Sayı: 52, 283 - 292, 25.09.2022

Olgahan Bakşi Yalcin

https://doi.org/10.30794/pausbed.1058270

Öz

Pulitzer ödüllü romanı Masumiyet Çağı (1920/1999) başlıklı eserinde Amerikalı romancı Edith Wharton toplumsal norm ve kuralların, eski New York'taki bireylerin yaşamlarını nasıl yönettiğini, sınırlar çizdiğini ve onları bu sınırlar içinde yaşamaya zorladığını anlatır. Bu sosyal ortamda, romanın kahramanı, sanat meraklısı bekar Newland Archer, seçkin bir toplumun üyesi olan güzel May Welland ile nişanlı, zeki ancak geleneksel bir genç adam olarak sunulur. Bu toplumun eski bir üyesi olan Ellen Olenska, yabancı kocasından ayrıldıktan sonra New York'a döndüğünde, ailesi itibarını arkasından dönen dedikodulardan korumak için etrafında toplanır. Ancak alışılmadık, yabancı yaşam tarzı ve Archer ile sözde romantik ilişkisi, toplumdaki yeni kazandığı yerini daha da tehlikeye atar. En sonunda, Ellen Olenska, New York toplumunda tatmin edici bir yaşam sürmesini imkansız kılan geleneksel tabuları açıkça kabul ettiğinde kendisini baskıcı üst sınıfın sosyal çevresinden kurtarmak için Archer ve New York’u tamamen terk etmeyi seçer. Bu makalenin amacı, Ellen Olenska'nın toplumdan dışlanmış bir birey muamelesi görmesinin ve sessizce Eski New York toplumundan sürgün edilmesinin nedenlerini araştırmaktır. Bunu yaparak, bu çalışma, Amerika’daki kadınların geleceğini gösteren, Ellen için gerçek kurtuluşun tek yolunun ataerkil toplumdan sürgün edilmesi olduğu sonucuna varmaktadır.

Anahtar Kelimeler

Masumiyet Çağı, Eski New York, Sessizlik Kuralı, Sosyal Dışlanmışlar, Ellen Olenska

ELLEN OLENSKA’S SILENT BANISHMENT FROM OLD NEW YORK IN EDITH WHARTON’S THE AGE OF INNOCENCE

Öz

In her Pulitzer-winning novel, The Age of Innocence (1920/1999), the American novelist Edith Wharton portrays how societal norms and codes rule the lives of individuals in Old New York, creating boundaries and forcing them to act within them. In this social environment, the novel’s protagonist, the dilettante bachelor Newland Archer, is presented as an intelligent yet conventional young man engaged to beautiful May Welland, a member of elite society. When Ellen Olenska, a former member of their circle, returns to New York after separating from her foreign husband, her family rallies around her to safeguard her reputation from the rumors circulating behind her back. However, her unorthodox, foreign lifestyle, as well as her alleged romantic entanglement with Archer, further jeopardize her newly gained place in society. At the end, when Ellen Olenska clearly recognizes the conventional taboos that make it impossible for her to lead a life of fulfillment in New York society, she chooses to leave Archer and New York for good to free herself from the oppressive upper-class social surroundings. The aim of this paper is to investigate the reasons why Ellen Olenska is treated as an outcast and is silently cast away from Old New York society. By doing so, this study concludes that her banishment/exile from patriarchal society serves as the only way for true liberation indicating the future of women in America.

Anahtar Kelimeler

The Age of Innocence, Old New York, Code of Silence, Social Outcasts, Ellen Olenska

Kaynakça

• Auchincloss, L. (1961). Edith Wharton. University of Minnesota Pamphlets on American Writers 12. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
• Ammons, E. (1980). Edith Wharton’s Argument with America. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
• Eby, C. V. (June 1992) “Silencing Women in Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence.” Colby Quarterly, 28/2, 93- 104.
• Elaman-Garner, S. (2016). “Contradictory Depictions of the New Woman: Reading Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence as a Dialogic Novel”, European Journal of American Studies [Online], 11-2.
• Forgas, J., Williams, K. D., & von Hippel, W. (Eds.) (2005). The Social Outcast: Ostracism, Social Exclusion, Rejection, and Bullying. Psychology Press.
• Gilbert, S. M. and S. Gubar. (1984). The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth- Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale University
• Girard, G. (1986). The Scapegoat Trans. Yvonne Freccero. Baltimore: John Hopkins.
• Hobfoll, S. (Ed.). (1986). Stress, Social Support, and Women. New York: Taylor & Francis.
• Hughes, C. (2005). Dressed in Fiction Oxford & New York: Berg.
• Joslin, K. (1991). Edith Wharton. London: Macmillan.
• Knights, P. (1995). “Forms of Disembodiment: The Social Subject in The Age of Innocence” The Cambridge Companion to Edith Wharton. Ed. Bell Millicent. Cambridge: CUP.
• Kozloff, S. (Summer 2001). “Complicity in The Age of Innocence” Style 35/2, 271-291.
• Lee, H. (2008). Edith Wharton. London: Vintage.
• Muda, G. E. (2011). The mirror image: The representation of social roles for women in novels by Charlotte Brontë, Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton and Jean Rhys. s.n.
• Preston, C. (2000). Edith Wharton’s Social Register. London: Macmillan. Singley, C. J. (2003). “Bourdieu, Wharton and Changing Culture in The Age of Innocence.” Cultural Studies 17/3, 495–519.
• Welter, B. (1966). The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860. American Quarterly, 18/2, 151–174.
• Wharton, E. (1905/2005). The House of Mirth. Edited by Janet Beer and Elizabeth Nolan. Broadview Editions.
• __________ (1919). French Ways and Their Meaning. New York and London: D. Appleton and Company.
• __________ (1920/1999). The Age of Innocence Wordsworth Classics.
• __________ (1933/2008). A Backward Glance. Middlesex: Wildhern Press.
• Wolff, C. G. (Autumn 1977). “Edith Wharton and the ‘Visionary’ Imagination” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 2/3, 24-30.