Changing Values of New World

Perhaps more than any other American novelist of the modern age, Edith Wharton devoted herself whole-heartedly to the task of capturing the colour and tone of her age in her novels. The art of novel writing was a sacred task for her.> Like her great predecessor Henry James, she believed that the novel was no longer a matter of It was a serious affair which consistent labour on the part of the novelist. She believed that the novelist's task required utmost honesty, sincerity The and seriousness of purpose. The present study confirms Edith Wharton's greatness as a serious novelist who has presented the peculiar and particular nature of social change in her novels. Society seemed to be going through a process of reconstruction and she knew that the process was disquieting. She was not only interested in social change or the social reality of the period but was also deeply concerned with the change inside the individual and his family. When she started writing, she found that in her age as a clash between the old leisured classes and the neo-rich, between the old values and the new ones which were process of acquiring a distinct shape.