Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002
Includes bibliographical references (pages 229-239) and index
Introduction: women, art, and the sexual politics of (mis)representation in Edith Wharton -- Beauty enshrined: living pictures and still lifes; or, her body becomes his art -- Picturing Lily: body art in The house of mirth and "The potboiler"; or, her body becomes her art -- "Beauty enthrones": the muse's progress -- Angels at the grave; custodial work in the palace of art -- "We'll look, not at visions, but at realities": women, art, and representation in The age of innocence
An insightful look at representations of women & rsquo;s bodies and female authority. This work explores Edith Wharton's career-long concern with a 19th-century visual culture that limited female artistic agency and expression. Wharton repeatedly invoked the visual arts--especially painting--as a medium for revealing the ways that women's bodies have been represented (as passive, sexualized, infantalized, sickly, dead). Well-versed in the Italian masters, Wharton made special use of the art of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, particularly its penchant for producing not portraits of individual wome
