Course Description: Are you intrigued by the lives and loves of the upper classes? Fascinated by HBOs The Gilded Age? Want to know where the phrase “keeping up with the Jones” originated? Then it’s time for you to get acquainted (or reacquainted, if you were forced to read Ethan Frome in high school) with the OG Gilded Ager, Edith Newbold Jones Wharton. This class will explore the short works of the early-twentieth-century writer: her powerful two novellas, Ethan Frome and Summer, and short stories such as “Roman Fever,” “Mrs. Manstey’s View,” and “The Other Two.” We will be looking at Wharton’s insights into love, sex, money, social class, and gender and connecting her life as a wealthy woman in New York Society with her desire to expose the seamier sides of that world.

Instructor: Dr. Caren J. Town is professor emerita of English at Georgia Southern University, where she taught for 35 years. She has published four books and a variety of scholarly articles on American literature, young adult fiction, censorship, and mystery novels. She has taught classes at Amelia Lifelong Learning for several years and enjoys playing clarinet with the Nassau County Band.

Schedule: 8 sessions: Fridays, Oct. 2, 9, 16, 23, 30, Nov. 6, 13, 20; 10:30-Noon.

Location: Room 203, St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, 801 Atlantic Ave., Fernandina Beach

Cost: $50

Materials: Students should purchase copies of Ethan Frome and Summer and preferably the collection The New York Stories of Edith Wharton, edited by Roxana Robinson.