CUNY Academic Commons

After Lizzie’s awful sin of adultery, she returns home to her maid who tells Lizzie that her husband Charles was not home.  This took Lizzie by surprise as it was extremely cold, he was ill and shouldn’t be […]

Manhattan was swamp land for a long time before Madison Square was created it was a hunting ground crossed by Cedar Creek and was soon renamed, Madison Creek. According to Wikipedia, “In 1839, a farmhouse located […]

Wharton has the capacity to take a person on a voyage and make it your own.  Wharton’s graphic detail makes you put yourself in the shoes of the character, Adeline Tintner states ” Her new genre depends on […]

Lizzie and her partner in crime Henry Prest parted ways after the fire. Henry went uptown, while Lizzie went downtown, this is a true separation of wealth and class. Lizzie was from old money and Henry was […]

The first climactic moment in Wharton’s novella happens at the beginning, “She was bad … always, They used to meet at the Fifth Avenue Hotel”.  Unusual for an author to start literature with a climax point, […]

Art and Picture Collection, The New York Public Library. “Washington Square.”The New York Public Library Digital Collections. […]

The map shows the evolution of Fifth Avenue, more buildings surrounding the once Fifth Avenue Hotel and about three to four times the amount of people living there compared to when the novella was written. […]