[NEW CLASS] We will look at Edith Wharton’s life as a reflection of the Gilded Age, that opulent period of American excess and wealth the stretched from 1870 to 1914. She describes both the excesses and ironies of a rigid Old New York society-facing onslaught by “invaders” like Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, and Carnegie who trumped lineage with wealth: “The daughters of the Invaders bought their husbands as they bought an opera box. It ought all to have been transacted on the stock exchange.” She would turn her back on that society to witness WWI from her balcony in Paris, a mere 40 miles from the guns at the front.  Audio/Visual, Lecture