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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A 16 page examination of the characterization of 'simple people' in Wharton's Summer and Anita Loos' Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. The paper concludes that simplicity for Loos implies a certain quality of mind, while for Wharton it is a quality of birth. Bibliography lists 7 sources.
Page Count:
16 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_Wharloos.doc
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
to be taken seriously, he should be a king, for example, "famous, or prosperous, like Oedipus, Thyestes, and the noted men of such families" (Aristotle, 24). It was not until
the beginning of the nineteenth century and the widespread fervor of democracy that "rustics" -- more politely known as "simple" people -- came to be considered fit subjects for a
serious literary treatment. It would certainly be erroneous to say that either Edith Wharton or Anita Loos were romantics -- Wharton could more accurately be called a late naturalist, and
Loos a satirical cynic; but both benefited from the widespread acceptance of unaristocratic protagonists which the romantic era had ushered in. This ready acceptance of characters exhibiting traits we would
consider less than genteel allows us to laugh at Looss Lorelei in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and weep for Whartons Charity in Summer, with nary a thought about their suitability as
the subject of fiction. However, having classed both these young women as "simple," there the similarity ends. Wharton and Loos, although they wrote their respective stories less than a decade
apart, had extremely different writing styles, tones, themes, and purposes. Loos, in her own personal life, was free-spirited, cosmopolitan, witty, and extremely modern. Wharton, on the other hand, was unhappily
married, sexually repressed, and (like her heroine) felt extremely ill-at-ease in the world in which she lived. The conflicts she expresses in Summer were ones much more common to the
close of the Victorian era -- the era when she was a child -- despite the fact she completed Summer in the final year of World War I. Because
these two authors are so different, their definition of their heroines "simplicity" and the way their heroines express this definition, are also very different. Loreleis simplicity is actually a single-minded,
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