(the) American (Novel of)

138 Hildegard Hoeller
some vexations, or at least terrible temptations, the author herself feels
in her role as novelist. And she, as the writer, speaks the truth even as
manners forbid it—never quite openly, more by exposing transgressions
of taste. But the novel holds its course as a novel of manners via
Knightley, the one flawless character; highest on the social ladder, he
exhibits the most unerring sense of judgment and manners, navigating
his life among less worthy and well-mannered people with perfect taste
and respect, a paternal caring. He in other words exhibits manners in
the perfect sense. And he instructs Emma, “[Miss Bates] is poor; she has
sunk from the comforts she was born to, and if she lives to old age,
must probably sink more. Her situation should secure your compassion.”
8 While Austen thus acknowledges the tremendous discipline
manners demand, even at times the denial of one’s true thoughts, feelings,
and wit for the sake of the cohesion of the social body, her take
on manners is neither neurotic nor vexed. Knightley reprimands Emma
and the novel agrees, even as Emma also speaks for Austen’s ironic side.
For Austen, manners are the foundations of her writing, her moral and
social vision. The novel of manners is as perfect a form for Austen’s
vision, allowing and containing it, as Knightley is the perfect companion
for Emma, loving and instructing her: it is a delightful and reasonable,
a tasteful and well-mannered as well as a morally correct marriage
of form and content.
Now let’s move almost a hundred years ahead in history and
across the Atlantic to revisit the issue the novel of manners in the hands
of an American writer. Famously tasteful and mannered and moneyed
herself, a member of the upper class, Edith Wharton excelled in the
Austenesque tradition of ironic realism and the minute depiction of
manners. Thus, in her writing we can best observe the full force of the
American dilemma about manners. Consider Wharton’s masterpiece
The House of Mirth (1905) in light of Austen’s Emma. Wharton, too,
begins her novel with a tasteful and admirable heroine, who is unmarried
for a little bit too long. And Wharton’s novel, too, allows few
stronger actions than breaches of manners. But Wharton’s heroine, unable
to find the right match, never gets married, slowly descends in class, and
dies by suicide. Tastefully Wharton mitigates this melodramatic ending
by never quite allowing her heroine to actually commit suicide, but by
showing her not to care enough about life to count her sleeping drops
quite correctly. In many other instances in the novel as well, Wharton