Born in New York in 1862 to elderly parents, Edith Wharton was raised in a family replete with socially prominent relatives. Wharton traveled abroad and married during a time of transition for women in America. The urban-based Industrial Revolution brought sweeping social changes in her day, some of which altered women's lives. Although traditional standards of femininity continued to be upheld by the upper classes, the role of women was in flux around the turn of the twentieth century. House of Mirth, Wharton's second novel, would deal with the changing status of women around this time. A scathing critique of the "marriage market," the novel also depicts the broad spectrum of social tensions that surfaced as a newly rich class of industrial stockholders penetrated New York City's older, traditional monied aristocracy.
Economic growth. Following the American Civil War, the country's economy expanded rapidly, spurred by such inventions as the steam engine, the internal combustion engine, and electricity. Europe was debilitated by civil wars and revolutions and its economic edge was blunted, which further encouraged American growth. As the economic balance in the United States shifted from its farms to its industrial cities, so did many of its people; in 1900, 45 percent of Americans lived in urban centers of various sizes, in contrast to the roughly 20 percent of Americans who lived in cities in 1865.
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