The Good, the Bad, and the Literary: Edith Wharton's Bunner Sisters and the Social Contexts of Reading

Edith Wharton's naturalist affinities have been recognized for two decades now, and her little narrative Bunner Sisters is in many ways a text book specimen of the genre: lower-class characters, plot of decline, sordid embellishments, and godless sky. By the end of the tale one central character is dead; the other has lost her dearest companion, her livelihood, and her faith in God. For Ann Eliza there is, at last, nothing but" a black abyss above the roof of Bunner Sisters"(375). To see Wharton's early experiment as a naturalist text helps explain the resistance Wharton encountered when she first tried to publish the story. But Bunner Sisters can also be read as a survey of the literary field and a meditation on literary culture, especially the implications of reading some publications (novels, poems, newspapers) rather than others. Through its plot and generic affiliation the story challenges fictional norms of the period