Abstract

Laughter takes a great many forms in the novel of manners, signifying different things at different times for different characters in different situations. Linguistics, philosophy, rhetoric, psychoanalysis, poetry, art, and film have all attempted to tackle the subject of laughter, yet in relation to manners, and the novel of manners, the matter remains fraught and underexplored. By examining laughter in Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country, this paper attempts to show how laughter on a micro level mirrors the simulacra and simulations that comprise manners, characters, and even the progression of the novel on a macro level. What the study of laughter in The Custom of the Country reveals about knowledge, sign systems, and commodity and exchange, could nuance the way in which we read laughter in the novel of manners, a type literature built upon knowing and understanding the conditions of the personal and social simultaneously.