Beyond Ideals: Edith Wharton’s Critique of Transcendentalism in <i>Summer</i>

Abstract Edith Wharton’s decision to settle in New England in 1902, the epicenter of transcendentalism, prompts a deep reflection on her ambiguous relationship with this school of philosophical thought. As an avid reader and annotator of works by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman, Wharton engaged in a sustained intellectual exchange with transcendentalist principles. This article contends that her 1917 novel Summer serves as a literary palimpsest, inscribed with the traces of transcendentalist thought, while simultaneously foregrounding structural inequities—particularly those of gender and class—that were often marginalized within the movement’s canon. This ultimately raises the question: Can Summer be interpreted as a metatextual commentary that reflects the epistemic and cultural shifts characterizing the American fin-de-siècle? This article employs stylistic and interdisciplinary approaches to interrogate Wharton’s appropriation of transcendentalist precepts as a critical project that reconfigures their foundations. Edith Wharton deploys the past as a discursive tool, not to preserve its ideals, but to critically dismantle them, ultimately proposing a new cultural synthesis relevant to her time.