Abstract
This thesis project is concerned with the construction of the New Woman in both Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence and Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. The project seeks to inform of the significance of such constructions in relation to gender roles in the settings within the novels as well as the settings in which the novels are produced. Therefore, the project uses a theoretical framework of New Historicism in order to reveal the complexities of the construction of the New Woman as represented by the female characters in both Wharton and Hemingway’s novels. The project finds this type of theoretical approach vital to the study and interpretation of literary texts and to the study of literature as a discourse in which multiple meanings and constructions constantly influenced and shaped by multiple social environments.