Edith Wharton's Interesting Approach

In her work, The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton has an interesting approach of telling the story.  Keeping in mind this book was written in an entirely different time period, it is at times hard to understand.  The sentence structures are very often set up the same way, meriting a further explanation to an original thought.  This overflow of information is sometimes difficult to understand.  Wharton also occasionally uses pronouns to much, not allowing the reader to know which woman "she" is.  She also sometimes makes the implied meaning of a characters words or actions difficult to understand, as she may simply just suggest what they are doing.  This could possibly be attributed to the time gap, and the phrases better understood in the early twentieth century than today.  But the most confusing and frustrating thing about Wharton's writing style is the tendency to transfer between scenes without any explanation.  Whaton writes "... but Gerty's tenderness, disciplined by long years of contact with obscure and inarticulate suffering, could wait on its object with a silent forbearance which took no account of time.  She could not, however, deny herself the solace of taking anxious counsel with Lawrence Selden..." (Wharton, 218).  Wharton starts this passage with a scene in which Lily is venting and being emotional with Gerty.  After a sentence of thought by Gerty, the scene has now transferred to Gerty talking alone with Selden about helping Lily.  This can, and has, led to many misunderstandings of scenes in which the reader can be confused as to who is and isn't taking part in a conversation.