Watching the Flame of Youth

Focusing on the “flaming youth” figure of the 1920s, this chapter explores the prevalence of discussions about child marriage in works by Wharton and Fabian, exploring forms of generation-specific authority and the peculiar age-specific qualities of the “child-woman” at the center of these plots. Scenes of youthful teen girls’ slumber, which frequently overlap with middle-aged men’s sexual interests, predict many of the aspects of these relationships that interest Wharton, whose fictions imagine child marriage, then increasingly problematize the age-asymmetrical relationships involved in such unions.