« convergences | main | Longsword, Earl of Salisbury »
The House of Mirth
5 Jul 06
Wharton, Edith. The House of Mirth. New York: Scribner’s, 1905.
Wharton’s novel is the study of the somewhat ambiguously tragic Miss Lily Bart. The setting is the 19th Century, almost entirely within the milieu of New York’s most wealthy class—I love that Wharton uses the terms “society” and (better!) “fashion” as nouns describing this upper crust. Wharton is new to me, as is anything American from her period. While her style and subject matter are distinctly American, there is still a rather English quality to the work, as there must have been in the society she writes about, London at that time still being unchallenged as the world’s preeminent city. Apparently, among other things, Americans once knew how to make tea.
I don’t intend to answer the question of Lily’s tragedy in a blog post. More than anything my intention is to ask it. For there is some question as to whether Lily can truly be read as tragic. There is undoubtedly something in her that rebels against the world she has been trained from birth to inhabit. Perhaps one can argue that her tragedy lies in her inability to defeat the expectations of society, but I might suggest that she never really engages in the struggle. Quite the opposite: from her pursuit of Percy Gryce to her friendships with the Trenors and the Dorsets, she shows a remarkable facility with social success that coexists dichotomously with a blindness to the harm that certain relations can do to her reputation—and ultimately these are her downfall. She displays power in her relationships, but is ultimately powerless in her societal context. She cannot find it in herself to embrace that society’s mores, but she is completely incapable of imagining a life for herself that lacks the extravagant luxury her society can provide. Perhaps it is a simplistic reading, but it’s difficult not to agree with Selden that “[s]he was so evidently the victim of the civilization which had produced her, that the links of her bracelet seemed like manacles chaining her to her fate” (7). Of course, others have been more generous (especially Restuccia), and I am easily swayed. . . .
Further Reading
Blair, Amy L. “Misreading The House of Mirth.” American Literature 76.1 (2004): 149-175.
Dimock, Wai-Chee. “Debasing Exchange: Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth.” PMLA 100.5 (1985): 783-792.
Kassanoff, Jennie A. “Extinction, Taxidermy, Tableaux Vivants: Staging Race and Class in The House of Mirth.” PMLA 115.1 (2000): 60-74.
Restuccia, Frances L. “The Name of the Lily: Edith Wharton’s Feminism(s).” Contemporary Literature 28.2 (1987): 223-238.
Showalter, Elaine. “The Death of the Lady (Novelist): Wharton’s The House of Mirth.” Representations 9 (1985): 133-149.
Posted by pzed on July 5, 2006 at 1.20pm
Categories: scripture
Comments on "The House of Mirth"
[...] Looking back at my brief post after reading Wharton’s House of Mirth, I’m tempted to re-write it. Perhaps what I wanted to say about Lily was simply, How could she have been so stupid? Was her tragic flaw something as simple as thinking herself better than she was? Or better than those around her? [...]
Posted by words » Blog Archive » House of Mirth follow-up on July 9, 2007 at 11.12am :: link
