Gary Totten, associate professor of English, has received the Beinecke Research Award from the Edith Wharton Society. The award supports travel to the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University to conduct research in the Edith Wharton manuscript collection.
Totten’s project, “Wharton’s Wild West: Undine Spragg, Medora de Mores, and Dakota Divorce Culture,” examines the North Dakota contexts of Edith Wharton’s novel, “The Custom of the Country (1913),” specifically the ease and availability of divorce in Dakota Territory – Fargo and Sioux Falls being the main divorce capitals before statehood. In addition, the project looks at Wharton’s modeling of Undine Spragg on Medora de Mores, wife of the Marquis de Mores, who established a ranch and meatpacking business in western North Dakota in the late 19th century and founded the town of Medora, N.D, named for his wife.
In the novel, Undine Spragg’s journey west from New York to obtain Dakota residency and then a Reno divorce emphasizes the relationship in Wharton’s work between unregulated western U.S. spaces and women’s increased cultural freedom.
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