Abstract

Edith Wharton (1862-1937), a Pulitzer Prize winner, is a distinguished female novelist at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her work The Age of Innocence contributes much to the formation of a female literary tradition. Wharton’s subversion of male discourse can be well traced in her novel The Age of Innocence. However, Wharton does not become a destroyer of her age due to the limitation of her time; instead, she shows an open submission and hidden resistance to the patriarchal system.

This thesis aims to analyze causes of Wharton’s duplicitous voice by the means of The Age of Innocence textual analysis in order to reveal her special strategy of text hidden behind this contradictory attitude.

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