Edith Wharton feared that the 'ill-bred', foreign, and poor posed threats to what was known as the American native elite. Other threats to elite hegemony at the turn of the century were technology, and changing sexual mores. Drawing on a range of social documents, unpublished archival material, and Wharton's major novels, Kassanoff researches Wharton's role in the construction of certain basic mythologies about race and national origin, and her participation in a number of other turn-of-the century discourses - from euthanasia and tourism to pragmatism and Native Americans.