Research Diary

The title of my dissertation paper is Killing the Angel in the House: The Age of Innocence and
House of Mirth by Edith Wharton.

Day 1

Today I received some pdf books via e-mail from Miss Baniceru. She was very kind to send me
all the books she had about or related to gothic genre that might help me (about 12 books). They
are more than welcomed as our library has very few books about my subject. I chose a few of
them which I am going to use in my dissertation, because after scanning them I could find
information about gothic feminism or even about Edith Wharton writing in a gothic feminism
style. Here are some titles: Savoy, E. (2002) ‘The Rise of American Gothic’. in The Cambridge
Companion to Gothic Fiction. ed. by Hogle, E.J. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ;
Punter, D. and Byron, G. (2004) The Gothic. Cornwall: Blackwell Publishing.

Day 2

I wrote a few more pages in Chapter II- Gothic Feminism Unsealed; to be more precise in the
subchapter Marriage and Society as a Prison. I thought a lot about how these two women, Lily
Bart and Countess Olenska viewed marriage, how the institution of marriage was viewed by the
society what makes marriage and society a prison for these two characters. And I’ve found some
interesting explanations and a lot of examples from the novels to support my claim.

Day 3

Angel of Death is the third subchapter of the second Chapter. Even though it might sound scary,
it is not like that. As Hurley Kelly states in her book, The Gothic Body, the fin de siècle
“perception of women as ‘the sex’ – fully constrained within a sexualized identity, and so both
corporeal and animalistic – stands in sharp contradiction to Victorian celebrations of woman as a
domestic angel, an essentially disembodied creature.” (Hurley 1996: 121) In this respect, Lily
Bart and Ellen Olenska identify themselves metaphorically as devil-women, because they use
their bodily charms to catch the prey, they are very corporeal in manifestations, each look, each
gesture are made purposefully to attract men in their net. I think I’ve made an interesting point
here, analyzing the two characters from the perspective of their sexual behavior, which is part of
the gothic feminism genre and therefore supports the idea of my paper.
Day 4

Today I rethought about the names of the chapters and I think the following will be the final
names of my chapters:

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I. Social Custom, Society and Women in the late 19th century New York, America.

1.1. Women vs. society’s rules, traditions and customs.

1.2. Defying the ideal of the Angel in the House

CHAPTER II. Gothic Feminism Revealed

2.1. Ellen Olenska and Lily Bart as gothic constructions

2.2. Marriage and Society as a Prison

2.3. The “Angel of Death”

2.4. Suicide

CHAPTER III. Feminist Streak. The rebel women of the fin de siècle.

3.1. A historical glimpse at American Feminism at the end of the century

3.2. Feminist tracks: Lily Bart and Ellen Olenska.

CONCLUSIONS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Day 5

I met Mrs. Reghina Dascal today, as she is the most feminist of all teachers and women I know
in this University and she gave me two very helpful books about the history of feminism in the
U.S.A: Evans, Sara. M. (1997) Born for Liberty. A History of Women in America. New York:
Simon & Schuster Inc and DuBois, E. C., (1995) ‘The Radicalism of the Woman Suffrage
Movement: Notes toward the Reconstruction of Nineteenth-Century Feminism’. in U.S. Women
in Struggle. A Feminist Studies Anthology. ed. by Moses, C.G., and Hartmann, H. Urbana and
Chicago: University of Illinois Press. These books will help me a lot to talk a little bit about the
history of feminism in America in my 3rd chapter.

Day 6

I managed to go through the books that professor Reghina Dascal gave me and I’ve done a pretty
good overview or review of the history of feminism in America and how it is related to my
subject. Here is an excerpt: “The “new woman” started defying “the Angel in the house” and
slowly, but surely, killing it. This new emerged woman started to be self-supporting; they were
“college-educated and frequently unmarried.” (Evans 1997: 147) It is quite striking that “half of
the college-educated women in the late nineteenth century never married” (Evans 1997: 147) and
if they married they gave birth to children very late or never, as it is the case of Edith Wharton,
in real life, or her characters in the novels that we are analyzing, in prose fiction. Lily Bart
exempted herself from the burden of marriage and child-bearing, whereas Ellen Olenska, though
married, also did not charge herself with the huge responsibility of a child.”

Day 7

Today my coordinator sent me a book that might be helpful for my dissertation. It is called
Feminist Readings of Edith Wharton by Dianne L. Chambers. I might use it to write another few
pages in Chapter III, called Feminist Streak. In this chapter I tried to do a short feminist analysis
of the two female protagonists of the novels, Lily Bart and Countess Olenska. She advised me to
think about a subchapter in which to analyze the two characters in comparison to the many
portraits that appear throughout the novels and how their figures are projected in those paintings,
therefore sustaining Gilbert and Gubar’s idea of women being killed into art from their essay The
madwoman in the attic.