3rd Annual Academic Symposium - Ashley Jordan

Both Pudd’nhead Wilson, by Mark Twain, and The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton, are novels in the tradition of American Realism that focus on a theme of determined identities. The characters in these novels are unable to escape the identities their commodity based communities have placed upon them. In both novels, these commodity-based and communally determined identities prove to be nearly inescapable, as every character who attempts to rise above their assigned price and determined identities face certain failure and undoing.