Edith Wharton moved permanently to France, Teddy returned to his sister’s home in Lenox. It is a snow globe of a story, its characters held in stasis until someone new comes along to shake it up, setting the past swirling again. The Whartons sold The Mount in 1911, and they divorced in 1913. All while her marriage disintegrated under the weight of Teddy Wharton’s mental instability. Here she would write some of her greatest works, including The House of Mirth (1905) and Ethan Frome (1911). Indeed, the whole body of the novel represents the narrator’s effort to reconstruct the tragic circumstances of Ethan’s life. Ethan is, quite literally, a physical and emotional wreck. It was a transformational decade for Wharton, full of professional triumphs and emotional turmoil. Readers of Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome (1911) can hardly fail to be moved by the suffering of the title character. The Whartons would live at The Mount a short ten years. Decidedly, I’m a better landscape gardener than novelist, and this place, every line of which is my own work, far surpasses The House of Mirth… “ “I am amazed at the success of my efforts. In a letter to her lover, Morton Fullerton, Wharton revealed how much of herself she put into The Mount: Every aspect of the estate-including its gardens, architecture, and interior design-evokes the spirit of its creator. In 1901, eager to escape Newport, Wharton bought 113-acres in Lenox, then designed and built The Mount, a home that would meet her needs as designer, gardener, hostess, and above all, writer.
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