The House of Mirth

By Edith Wharton

A bestseller when it was originally published nearly a century ago, Wharton's first literary success was set amid the previously unexplored territory of fashionable, turn-of-the-century New York society, an area with which she was intimately familiar.

The tragic love story reveals the destructive effects of wealth and social hypocrisy on Lily Bart, a ravishing beauty. Impoverished but well-born, Lily realizes a secure future depends on her acquiring a wealthy husband. Her downfall begins with a romantic indiscretion, intensifies with an accumulation of gambling debts, and climaxes in a maelstrom of social disasters.

More a tale of social exclusion than of failed love, The House of Mirthreveals Wharton's compelling gifts as a storyteller and her clear-eyed observations of the savagery beneath the well-bred surface of high society.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
• Release date: Jan 14, 2016
• ISBN: 9781471152481

Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton (1862 - 1937) was an acclaimed American novelist. Known for her use of dramatic irony, she found success early in her career with The House of Mirth, which garnered praise upon its publication. In 1921, she won the Pulitzer Prize for her tour-de-force novel, The Age of Innocence.

Book preview

Edith Wharton was born in 1862 into the upper stratum of New York society. Educated by tutors and governesses, she was raised for only one career: marriage. But her marriage in 1885 to Edward Wharton was an emotional disappointment, if not a disaster. She suffered the first of a series of nervous breakdowns in 1894. In spite of the strain of her marriage, or perhaps because of it, she began to write fiction and published her first story in 1889.

Her first published book was a guide to interior decorating, but this was followed by several novels and story collections. They were written while the Whartons lived in Newport and New York, travelled in Europe, and built their grand home, The Mount, in Lenox, Massachusetts. In Europe, she met Henry James, who became her good friend, travelling companion, and the sternest but most careful critic of her fiction. The House of Mirth (1905) was both a resounding critical success and a bestseller, as was Ethan Frome (1911). In 1913 the Whartons were divorced, and Edith took up permanent residence in France. Her subject, however, remained America, especially the moneyed New York of her youth. Her great satiric novel, The Custom of the Country, was published in 1913 and The Age of Innocence won her the Pulitzer Prize in 1921.

In her later years, she enjoyed the admiration of a new generation of writers, including Sinclair Lewis and F. Scott Fitzgerald. In all, she wrote some thirty books. She died at her villa near Paris in 1937.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHRONOLOGY OF EDITH WHARTON’S LIFE AND WORK

HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF The House of Mirth

THE HOUSE OF MIRTH

BOOK I

BOOK II

NOTES

INTERPRETIVE NOTES

CRITICAL EXCERPTS

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

SUGGESTIONS FOR THE INTERESTED READER

INTRODUCTION

The House of Mirth:

WHEN FORTUNES FALL

An economic downturn. Life savings, gone overnight. Jobs bitterly lost and desperately sought. Some emerge richer and stronger . . . and some suffer, with no happy ending in sight. Cycles of prosperity and despair, sadly familiar to Americans today, have deep roots in American culture, extending to even before the Great Depression. Growing up in the late nineteenth century in a New York family whose old wealth proved less stable than they had once believed, Edith Wharton witnessed the impact of a volatile economy. While newspapers and magazines no doubt focused then, as they do today, on Wall Street’s heroes and villains, Wharton saw how such dramas affected those less directly involved in the making and breaking of fortunes: women.

Wharton was neither the first nor the last novelist to tackle the suffering of women in a literary work. In The House of Mirth, however, Wharton shifts the angle of focus. Rather than making Lily Bart, the protagonist, a victim for readers to pity, she explains why Lily’s bad situation exists in the first place. The materialism that drives the men in The House of Mirth to earn more money also renders the women born into wealthy families symbolic creatures of refinement and beauty, and utterly useless in making money themselves.

Lily spends her teenage years in a whirl of social events, the object of her mother’s desire to make her debutante daughter an appealing jewel to be snatched up by a wealthier family. Even after her parents lose their money, Lily’s mother encourages Lily to use her beauty to secure a fortune. Lily makes her way through her twenties in halfhearted pursuit of this dream. The novel begins when she is rumored to be twenty-nine, a victim of the jealous gossip of those who rightfully perceive vulnerability in this once bright flower’s fading youth.

Lily’s reluctance to make the deal that will ensure her financial well-being, however, means that she is more than a passive victim. Her intelligent critique of all that she finds bothersome about the world of the wealthy—its fickle treatment of the newly rich and newly poor, its devotion to fashion rather than aesthetics, and its harsh judgments of women who lack the protection of money and marriage—guarantees that she can never truly be a part of it. Her relationship to high society is not unlike that of Edith Wharton, who remained part of the social elite even as she exposed the cracks in its façade to her readers.

But, as any astute reader of Wharton’s biography would point out, Lily Bart should not be mistaken for Wharton, a highly successful author and a woman who outsmarted the game Lily couldn’t win. As she sat writing The House of Mirth, Wharton endured what Lily would not—an unhappy marriage—and enjoyed the security of what Lily could never achieve: a comfortable income, drawn from her family’s fortune. Lily, on the other hand, finds a way to save her soul but not her skin: in material terms, she loses big.

Could it be that, in creating the character of Lily, Wharton considered what might have become of herself, had she drawn worse cards or played her hand differently? The only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it, Lily tells her friend Lawrence Selden early in the novel. But the events of both the novel and U.S. economic history ultimately imply that Lily might be wrong: even those who have money think about it daily and live in constant fear of its loss.

The Life and Work of Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton grew up enjoying every possible advantage: material wealth, family connections, educational opportunities, and cultural experiences. Still, she did not become the sort of woman her parents wished her to be. She felt like a misfit for much of her early life, and only gradually became able to realize her own ideal of success. Eventually she would become one of the most respected American authors of her era.

Born Edith Newbold Jones in 1862, the author spent her youth in both America and Europe. Her parents, both members of elite New York families, found that they could enjoy a higher standard of living in Europe than in America after the post-Civil War depression put a strain on their finances. While such extended stays abroad were common in their circle, the experience seems to have had an unusual impact on young Edith, who gained not only fluency in French, German, and Italian, but also a permanent sense of alienation from the United States. Additionally, her family’s financial uncertainty, complicated by her father’s death in 1880, gave her an outsider’s take on the wealthy New York society to which her family returned.

As those made rich by the railroad and industrial expansion vied to join the highest social ranks, families like the Joneses stood guard over old traditions, including those that governed the lives of young women. Raised by governesses and kept out of school, Edith read widely on her own. Soon after she came out as a debutante at age seventeen, she was briefly engaged to a wealthy young man. The engagement was soon broken off, reportedly because Edith proved too intellectual for the groom and his family. Despite her ongoing desire to write, and her early success at publishing poems, she did marry a society man—Bostonian Edward Teddy Wharton—when she was twenty-three. Unlike Lily Bart in The House of Mirth, who seems to grasp the sacrifices involved in such unions, Edith had been carefully guarded from the realities of sex and marriage, both of which proved to be disappointing to her.

Wharton’s biographers have deftly noted how the conflict between her family’s and husband’s expectations, on the one hand, and her literary and intellectual aspirations, on the other, resulted in severe depression. Nevertheless, she began during the early years of her marriage to carve out a life that allowed her to write and to travel extensively. Her early works included a book about decorating houses, a volume of short stories, and a historical novel set in eighteenth-century Italy. When the esteemed novelist Henry James, who would become her good friend, wrote to congratulate her on that novel, he encouraged her to turn to American subjects in her next one. She took his advice, and in 1905 she published The House of Mirth. The novel established Wharton both as a best-selling author and as an astute portraitist of the social circle from which she had emerged.

Wharton’s success as a writer contrasted sharply with the marital difficulties she experienced as a result of Teddy’s emerging mental illness and his misuse of her money. Between 1908 and 1910, Edith had an extramarital affair with journalist Morton Fullerton, which proved to be emotionally devastating. In 1913 she divorced her husband, and by 1914 she was living permanently in France. Despite these crises, she continued to write and publish fiction, including Ethan Frome (1911), The Custom of the Country (1913), and The Age of Innocence (1920), all of which took marriage as their subjects.

After her death from a stroke in 1937, one French newspaper described her as the last Victorian writer. A generation of critics concurred, dubbing her a lesser Henry James who had failed to break away from outmoded aesthetic conventions. Nevertheless, as recent scholars have asserted, Edith Wharton succeeded not only in rebelling against the life her parents had once planned for her, but also at writing literature that offers key insights into the era of change it chronicles.

Historical and Literary Context of The House of Mirth

The Gilded Age, the Progressive Response, and Changing Ideas of Women’s Roles

The House of Mirth, published in 1905, shows the impact of the last decades of the eighteen hundreds on American ideas of class. Known as the Gilded Age, this time was one in which some Americans became wealthy at an unprecedented rate and displayed their wealth in mansions, dress, or other ostentatious displays. The formation of large-scale railroad, oil, and financing companies demanded new strategies of business and social organization, and those at the top of the corporate pyramids—like Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and Cornelius Vanderbilt—became rich robber barons in the process. Mass production took off, transforming the American economy from one driven by agriculture to one dominated by factories and fueled by Wall Street speculation. Immigration rates skyrocketed and those who came to the United States arrived in a country that was becoming increasingly urban, industrial, and divided between rich and poor.

The Progressive Era, beginning in the 1890s, can be described as the search for order that emerged in response to the excesses of the Gilded Age. Many young political leaders and social reformers of this era attempted to make the United States a country that was empowered by its modernization, rather than overwhelmed by it. Theodore Roosevelt began his path to the White House as a political reformer who sought to end corruption in New York. For young women in particular, the Progressive model offered a way to engage in domestically oriented social reform movements, such as the temperance and women’s suffrage movements, without posing a threat to traditional gender roles. This New Woman, who might attend college or work before marriage, took advantage of this latitude within social constraints, but, like the bold and athletic Gibson Girl featured in popular illustrations of the era, she maintained a distinct femininity.

In The House of Mirth, we see a portrait of one such New Woman in the daring and divorced Carry Fisher, who dabbles in Progressivism, but more for the sake of fashion than reform. Lily briefly engages in helping the poor, but more from a sense of noblesse oblige than a desire to change the world. Gerty Farish, Lily’s unmarried friend, is the only true Progressive in the novel. She has a heart of gold, but her modest single life can barely win Lily’s admiration, let alone her enthusiasm. Historical heroines of the Progressive era include reformers like Jane Addams, who gave up her upper-class comfort to serve the poor immigrants of Chicago; Margaret Sanger, a family planning and birth control activist; and Alice Paul, a leader of the women’s suffrage movement. The House of Mirth shows how the ideals of the Progressive Era and the accomplishments of such pioneering women as Addams, Sanger, and Paul did not change society’s traditional ideas of a woman’s role overnight. Lily and her friends, and the real women who were like them, were drawn to the promise of greater personal freedom and a wider variety of life choices, but reluctant to abandon the comfort that came with being pampered upper-class women.

Realism, Modernism, and the Question of Culture

Wharton’s work has often been considered realism, a style in which turn-of-the-century authors reacted against sentimental Victorian literature by prioritizing the documentation of life as it really was. Though associated with gritty portraits of urban life such as Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie (1900) and Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (1906), this literary term also applies to writers like Wharton and her friend and mentor Henry James, who focused on the upper class. Economist Thorstein Veblen’s publication of The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) coincided with an American desire to gain more insight into the workings of wealth and those who displayed it. Wharton contributed to the realist tradition by examining the psychological workings of the wealthy and the sophisticated rituals through which they upheld social hierarchies. Like Kate Chopin, whose novel The Awakening (1899) preceded The House of Mirth by only a few years, Wharton also directed a realist focus at the options of women within such social systems.

Literary historians point to the years leading up to and during World War I (1914–1918) as the time when a new way of responding to the modern world emerged in American literature; rather than simply trying to document society realistically, literary modernism was a more radical approach. Controversial writers such as T.S. Eliot, e.e. cummings, and Gertrude Stein sought to break all ties with the past by changing, subverting, or abandoning established literary conventions. Other American writers like Wharton, Chopin, Willa Cather, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Zora Neale Hurston wrote literature that examined issues such as gender, race, and class with a modern eye, but in a style that did not prove as difficult for readers to appreciate.

Wharton’s breakthrough work in The House of Mirth combines a realist’s observations of revealing detail with a modernist’s interest in questioning the meanings and practices of culture. Unlike modernists who sought to cast aside the conventions of the past, Wharton sought to understand how they impacted the present. She also sought to document the folly of the conventions themselves, whether it concerned the unfair treatment of women or the ridiculous lengths to which old money set out to exclude the newly rich. The House of Mirth shows Wharton’s early development as a writer with a voice that verges on cynical, but stops far short of nihilism. Here, as in her works to come, she never gives up completely on what can be gained by sharing even the most seemingly privileged human’s story with others, if not to garner pity, then at least to achieve understanding.

CHRONOLOGY OF EDITH WHARTON’S LIFE AND WORK

HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF THE HOUSE OF MIRTH

THE HOUSE OF MIRTH

¹

BOOK I

I

SELDEN PAUSED IN surprise. In the afternoon rush of the Grand Central Station¹ his eyes had been refreshed by the sight of Miss Lily Bart.

It was a Monday in early September, and he was returning to his work from a hurried dip into the country, but what was Miss Bart doing in town at that season? If she had appeared to be catching a train, he might have inferred that he had come on her in the act of transition between one and another of the country-houses which disputed her presence after the close of the Newport² season; but her desultory air perplexed him. She stood apart from the crowd, letting it drift by her to the platform or the street, and wearing an air of irresolution which might, as he surmised, be the mask of a very definite purpose. It struck him at once that she was waiting for some one, but he hardly knew why the idea arrested him. There was nothing new about Lily Bart, yet he could never see her without a faint movement of interest: it was characteristic of her that she always roused speculation, that her simplest acts seemed the result of far-reaching intentions.

An impulse of curiosity made him turn out of his direct line to the door, and stroll past her. He knew that if she did not wish to be seen she would contrive to elude him; and it amused him to think of putting her skill to the test.

Mr. Selden—what good luck!

She came forward smiling, eager almost, in her resolve to intercept him. One or two persons, in brushing past them, lingered to look; for Miss Bart was a figure to arrest even the suburban traveller rushing to his last train.

Selden had never seen her more radiant. Her vivid head, relieved against the dull tints of the crowd, made her more conspicuous than in a ball-room, and under her dark hat and veil she regained the girlish smoothness, the purity of tint, that she was beginning to lose after eleven years of late hours and indefatigable dancing. Was it really eleven years, Selden found himself wondering, and had she indeed reached the nine-and-twentieth birthday with which her rivals credited her?

What luck! she repeated. How nice of you to come to my rescue!

He responded joyfully that to do so was his mission in life, and asked what form the rescue was to take.

"Oh, almost any—even to sitting on a bench and talking to me. One sits out a cotillion³—why not sit out a train? It isn’t a bit hotter here than in Mrs. Van Osburgh’s conservatory—and some of the women are not a bit uglier."

She broke off, laughing, to explain that she had come up to town from Tuxedo, on her way to the Gus Trenors’ at Bellomont, and had missed the three-fifteen train to

Rhinebeck.⁴

And there isn’t another till half-past five. She consulted the little jewelled watch among her laces. Just two hours to wait. And I don’t know what to do with myself. My maid came up this morning to do some shopping for me, and was to go on to Bellomont at one o’clock, and my aunt’s house is closed, and I don’t know a soul in town. She glanced plaintively about the station. "It is hotter than Mrs. Van Osburgh’s, after all. If you can spare the time, do take me somewhere for a breath of air."

He declared himself entirely at her disposal: the adventure struck him as diverting. As a spectator, he had always enjoyed Lily Bart, and his course lay so far out of her orbit that it amused him to be drawn for a moment into the sudden intimacy which her proposal implied.

"Shall we go over to Sherry’s⁵ for a cup of tea?"

She smiled assentingly, and then made a slight grimace.

"So many people come up to town on a Monday—one is sure to meet a lot of bores. I’m as old as the hills, of course, and it ought not to make any difference; but if I’m old enough, you’re not, she objected gaily. I’m dying for tea—but isn’t there a quieter place?"

He answered her smile, which rested on him vividly. Her discretions interested him almost as much as her imprudences: he was so sure that both were part of the same carefully elaborated plan. In judging Miss Bart he had always made use of the argument from design.⁶

The resources of New York are rather meagre, he said; "but I’ll find a hansom⁷ first, and then we’ll invent something."

He led her through the throng of returning holiday-makers, past sallow-faced girls in preposterous hats, and flat-chested women struggling with paper bundles and palm-leaf fans. Was it possible that she belonged to the same race? The dinginess, the crudity of this average section of womanhood made him feel how highly specialized she was.

A rapid shower had cooled the air, and clouds still hung refreshingly over the moist street.

How delicious! Let us walk a little, she said as they emerged from the station.

They turned into Madison Avenue and began to stroll northward. As she moved beside him, with her long light step, Selden was conscious of taking a luxurious pleasure in her nearness: in the modelling of her little ear, the crisp upward wave of her hair—was it ever so slightly brightened by art?—and the thick planting of her straight black lashes. Everything about her was at once vigorous and exquisite, at once strong and fine. He had a confused sense that she must have cost a great deal to make, that a great many dull and ugly people must, in some mysterious way, have been sacrificed to produce her. He was aware that the qualities distinguishing her from the herd of her sex were chiefly external, as though a fine glaze of beauty and fastidiousness had been applied to vulgar clay. Yet the analogy left him unsatisfied, for a coarse texture will not take a high finish; and was it not possible that the material was fine, but that circumstance had fashioned it into a futile shape?

As he reached this point in his speculations the sun came out, and her lifted parasol cut off his enjoyment. A moment or two later she paused with a sigh.

Oh, dear, I’m so hot and thirsty—and what a hideous place New York is! She looked despairingly up and down the dreary thoroughfare. Other cities put on their best clothes in summer, but New York seems to sit in its shirtsleeves. Her eyes wandered down one of the side-streets. Someone has had the humanity to plant a few trees over there. Let us go into the shade.

I am glad my street meets with your approval, said Selden as they turned the corner.

Your street? Do you live here?

She glanced with interest along the new brick and limestone house-fronts, fantastically varied in obedience to the American craving for novelty, but fresh and inviting with their awnings and flower-boxes.

"Ah, yes—to be sure: The Benedick. What a nice-looking building! I don’t think I’ve ever seen it before." She looked across at the flat-house with its marble porch and pseudo-Georgian façade.⁸ Which are your windows? Those with the awnings down?

On the top floor—yes.

And that nice little balcony is yours? How cool it looks up there!

He paused a moment. Come up and see, he suggested. I can give you a cup of tea in no time—and you won’t meet any bores.

Her colour deepened—she still had the art of blushing at the right time—but she took the suggestion as lightly as it was made.

Why not? It’s too tempting—I’ll take the risk, she declared.

Oh, I’m not dangerous, he said in the same key. In truth, he had never liked her as well as at that moment. He knew she had accepted without afterthought: he could never be a factor in her calculations, and there was a surprise, a refreshment almost, in the spontaneity of her consent.

On the threshold he paused a moment, feeling for his latchkey.

There’s no one here; but I have a servant who is supposed to come in the mornings, and it’s just possible he may have put out the tea-things and provided some cake.

He ushered her into a slip of a hall hung with old prints. She noticed the letters and notes heaped on the table among his gloves and sticks; then she found herself in a small library, dark but cheerful, with its walls of books, a pleasantly faded Turkey rug, a littered desk and, as he had foretold, a tea-tray on a low table near the window. A breeze had sprung up, swaying inward the muslin curtains, and bringing a fresh scent of mignonette and petunias from the flower-box on the balcony.

Lily sank with a sigh into one of the shabby leather chairs.

How delicious to have a place like this all to one’s self! What a miserable thing it is to be a woman. She leaned back in a luxury of discontent.

Selden was rummaging in a cupboard for the cake.

Even women, he said, have been known to enjoy the privileges of a flat.

Oh, governesses—or widows. But not girls—not poor, miserable, marriageable girls!

I even know a girl who lives in a flat.

She sat up in surprise. You do?

I do, he assured her, emerging from the cupboard with the sought-for cake.

Oh, I know—you mean Gerty Farish. She smiled a little unkindly. "But I said marriageable—and besides, she has a horrid little place, and no maid, and such queer things to eat. Her cook does the washing and the food tastes of soap. I should hate that, you know."

You shouldn’t dine with her on wash-days, said Selden, cutting the cake.

They both laughed, and he knelt by the table to light the lamp under the kettle, while she measured out the tea into a little tea-pot of green glaze. As he watched her hand, polished as a bit of old ivory, with its slender pink nails, and the sapphire bracelet slipping over her wrist, he was struck with the irony of suggesting to her such a life as his cousin Gertrude Farish had chosen. She 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.

She seemed to read his thought. It was horrid of me to say that of Gerty, she said with charming compunction. I forgot she was your cousin. But we’re so different, you know: she likes being good, and I like being happy. And besides, she is free and I am not. If I were, I daresay I could manage to be happy even in her flat. It must be pure bliss to arrange the furniture just as one likes, and give all the horrors to the ash-man. If I could only do over my aunt’s drawing-room, I know I should be a better woman.

Is it so very bad? he asked sympathetically.

She smiled at him across the tea-pot which she was holding up to be filled.

That shows how seldom you come there. Why don’t you come oftener?

When I do come, it’s not to look at Mrs. Peniston’s furniture.

Nonsense, she said. You don’t come at all—and yet we get on so well when we meet.

Perhaps that’s the reason, he answered promptly. I’m afraid I haven’t any cream, you know—shall you mind a slice of lemon instead?

I shall like it better. She waited while he cut the lemon and dropped a thin disk into her cup. But that is not the reason, she insisted.

The reason for what?

For your never coming. She leaned forward with a shade of perplexity in her charming eyes. I wish I knew—I wish I could make you out. Of course I know there are men who don’t like me—one can tell that at a glance. And there are others who are afraid of me: they think I want to marry them. She smiled up at him frankly. But I don’t think you dislike me—and you can’t possibly think I want to marry you.

No—I absolve you of that, he agreed.

Well, then—?

He had carried his cup to the fire-place, and stood leaning against the chimney-piece and looking down on her with an air of indolent amusement. The provocation in her eyes increased his amusement—he had not supposed she would waste her powder on such small game; but perhaps she was only keeping her hand in; or perhaps a girl of her type had no conversation but of the personal kind. At any rate, she was amazingly pretty, and he had asked her to tea and must live up to his obligations.

Well, then, he said with a plunge, "perhaps that’s the reason."

What?

The fact that you don’t want to marry me. Perhaps I don’t regard it as such a strong inducement to go and see you. He felt a slight shiver down his spine as he ventured this, but her laugh reassured him.

Dear Mr. Selden, that wasn’t worthy of you. It’s stupid of you to make love to me, and it isn’t like you to be stupid. She leaned back, sipping her tea with an air so enchantingly judicial that, if they had been in her aunt’s drawing-room, he might almost have tried to disprove her deduction.

Don’t you see, she continued, that there are men enough to say pleasant things to me, and that what I want is a friend who won’t be afraid to say disagreeable ones when I need them? Sometimes I have fancied you might be that friend—I don’t know why, except that you are neither a prig nor a bounder and that I shouldn’t have to pretend with you or be on my guard against you. Her voice had dropped to a note of seriousness, and she sat gazing up at him with the troubled gravity of a child.

You don’t know how much I need such a friend, she said. "My aunt is full of copy-book axioms, but they were all meant to apply to conduct in the early fifties.⁹ I always feel that to live up to them would include wearing book-muslin with gigot sleeves.¹⁰ And the other women—my best friends—well, they use me or abuse me; but they don’t care a straw what happens to me. I’ve been about too long—people are getting tired of me; they are beginning to say I ought to marry."

There was a moment’s pause, during which Selden meditated one or two replies calculated to add a momentary zest to the situation; but he rejected them in favour of the simple question: Well, why don’t you?

She coloured and laughed. "Ah, I see you are a friend after all, and that is one of the disagreeable things I was asking for."

It wasn’t meant to be disagreeable, he returned amicably. Isn’t marriage your vocation? Isn’t it what you’re all brought up for?

She sighed. I suppose so. What else is there?

Exactly. And so why not take the plunge and have it over?

She shrugged her shoulders. You speak as if I ought to marry the first man who came along.

I didn’t mean to imply that you are as hard put to it as that. But there must be some one with the requisite qualifications.

She shook her head wearily. I threw away one or two good chances when I first came out—I suppose every girl does; and you know I am horribly poor—and very expensive. I must have a great deal of money.

Selden had turned to reach for a cigarette-box on the mantelpiece.

What’s become of Dillworth? he asked.

Oh, his mother was frightened; she was afraid I should have all the family jewels reset. And she wanted me to promise that I wouldn’t do over the drawing-room.

The very thing you are marrying for!

Exactly. So she packed him off to India.

Hard luck—but you can do better than Dillworth.

He offered the box, and she took out three or four cigarettes, putting one between her lips and slipping the others into a little gold case attached to her long pearl chain.

Have I time? Just a whiff, then. She leaned forward, holding the tip of her cigarette to his. As she did so, he noted with a purely impersonal enjoyment how evenly the black lashes were set in her smooth white lids, and how the purplish shade beneath them melted into the pure pallour of the cheek.

She began to saunter about the room, examining the bookshelves between the puffs of her cigarette-smoke. Some of the volumes had the ripe tints of good tooling and old morocco, and her eyes lingered on them caressingly, not with the appreciation of the expert, but with the pleasure in agreeable tones and textures that was one of her inmost susceptibilities. Suddenly her expression changed from desultory enjoyment to active conjecture, and she turned to Selden with a question.

You collect, don’t you—you know about first editions and things?

As much as a man may who has no money to spend. Now and then I pick up something in the rubbish heap, and I go and look on at the big sales.

She had again addressed herself to the shelves, but her eyes now swept them inattentively, and he saw that she was preoccupied with a new idea.

"And Americana¹¹—do you collect Americana?"

Selden stared and laughed.

No, that’s rather out of my line. I’m not really a collector, you see; I simply like to have good editions of the books I am fond of.

She made a slight grimace. And Americana are horribly dull, I suppose?

I should fancy so—except to the historian. But your real collector values a thing for its rarity. I don’t suppose the buyers of Americana sit up reading them all night—old Jefferson Gryce certainly didn’t.

She was listening with keen attention. And yet they fetch fabulous prices, don’t they? It seems so odd to want to pay a lot for an ugly badly printed book that one is never going to read! And I suppose most of the owners of Americana are not historians either?

No; very few of the historians can afford to buy them. They have to use those in the public libraries or in private collections. It seems to be the mere rarity that attracts the average collector.

He had seated himself on an arm of the chair near which she was standing, and she continued to question him, asking which were the rarest volumes, whether the Jefferson Gryce collection was really considered the finest in the world, and what was the largest price ever fetched by a single volume.

It was so pleasant to sit there looking up at her as she lifted now one book and then another from the shelves, fluttering the pages between her fingers while her drooping profile was outlined against the warm background of old bindings, that he talked on without pausing to wonder at her sudden interest in so unsuggestive a subject. But he could never be long with her without trying to find a reason for what she was doing, and as she replaced his first edition of La Bruyère¹² and turned away from the bookcases, he began to ask himself what she had been driving at. Her next question was not of a nature to enlighten him. She paused before him with a smile which seemed at once designed to admit him to her familiarity and to remind him of the restrictions it imposed.

Don’t you ever mind, she asked suddenly, not being rich enough to buy all the books you want?

He followed her glance about the room, with its worn furniture and shabby walls.

Don’t I just? Do you take me for a saint on a pillar?

And having to work—do you mind that?

Oh, the work itself is not so bad; I’m rather fond of the law.

No; but the being tied down: the routine—don’t you ever want to get away, to see new places and people?

Horribly—especially when I see all my friends rushing to the steamer.¹³

She drew a sympathetic breath. But do you mind enough—to marry to get out of it?

Selden broke into a laugh. God forbid! he declared.

She rose with a sigh, tossing her cigarette into the grate.

Ah, there’s the difference—a girl must, a man may if he chooses. She surveyed him critically. Your coat’s a little shabby—but who cares? It doesn’t keep people from asking you to dine. If I were shabby no one would have me: a woman is asked out as much for her clothes as for herself. The clothes are the background, the frame, if you like; they don’t make success, but they are a part of it. Who wants a dingy woman? We are expected to be pretty and well-dressed till we drop—and if we can’t keep it up alone, we have to go into partnership.

Selden glanced at her with amusement: it was impossible, even with her lovely eyes imploring him, to take a sentimental view of her case.

Ah, well, there must be plenty of capital on the lookout for such an investment. Perhaps you’ll meet your fate to-night at the Trenors’.

She returned his look interrogatively.

I thought you might be going there—oh, not in that capacity! But there are to be a lot of your set—Gwen Van Osburgh, the Wetheralls, Lady Cressida Raith—and the George Dorsets.

She paused a moment before the last name, and shot a query through her lashes; but he remained imperturbable.

Mrs. Trenor asked me; but I can’t get away till the end of the week; and those big parties bore me.

Ah, so they do me, she exclaimed.

Then why go?

"It’s part of the business—you forget! And besides, if I didn’t, I should be playing bézique¹⁴ with my aunt at Richfield Springs."

That’s almost as bad as marrying Dillworth, he agreed, and they both laughed for pure pleasure in their sudden intimacy.

She glanced at the clock.

Dear me! I must be off. It’s after five.

She paused before the mantelpiece, studying herself in the mirror while she adjusted her veil. The attitude revealed the long slope of her slender sides, which gave a kind of wild-wood grace to her outline—as though she were a captured dryad subdued to the conventions of the drawing-room; and Selden reflected that it was the same streak of sylvan freedom in her nature that lent such savour to her artificiality.

He followed her across the room to the entrance-hall; but on the threshold she held out her hand with a gesture of leave-taking.

It’s been delightful; and now you will have to return my visit.

But don’t you want me to see you to the station?

No; good bye here, please.

She let her hand lie in his a moment, smiling up at him adorably.

Good bye, then—and good luck at Bellomont! he said, opening the door for her.

On the landing she paused to look about her. There were a thousand chances to one against her meeting anybody, but one could never tell, and she always paid for her rare indiscretions by a violent reaction of prudence. There was no one in sight, however, but a charwoman who was scrubbing the stairs. Her own stout person and its surrounding implements took up so much room that Lily, to pass her, had to gather up her skirts

Reviews for The House of Mirth

[sprainedbrain · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

My first Wharton, and I can see why so many people love her. The writing is excellent, the social commentary is strong, and the female characters especially in this book feel authentic. I found myself equal parts annoyed by and enamored of Lily. Her movements within ‘society’ as an independent woman, and her fall from that society, make for a compelling story. Lily Bart will stay with me for a long time. So many feels.

[profh-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Interesting from a historical perspective and at moments still contains relevant observations about the shallow and materialistic lives of wealthy Americans. The social manners and high sentimentality might be dull for most contemporary readers, but it still retains value.

[jscape2000 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I don't love anything that smells too much like Victorian literature. This was pretty close, but I enjoyed the inversion of the tale- how the young woman falls from social prominence, overplays her hand, and then chooses to live with the consequences. It's not tragedy in the classical sense, but Lily is a tragic character. Her combination of determination and lack of self-awareness keep the engine of the novel running.

[tanya8dogearedcopy · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The House of Mirth is the tragedy of twenty-nine-year old Lily Bart who commits a series of egregious social faux pas that guarantee her downfall. Vain, a tease, pretentious, weak and bit stupid, Lily flits though the upper striatum of New York Society with a naïveté that is at odds with her upbringing. Trading in on her beauty and ability to charm the company she keeps, she flirts and snubs through parties on her way to… what? Unable to define her goals and discriminate to that end, she sabotages her opportunities on the premise of some vague morality. Though impoverished when her father is financially ruined and forced to live in a more circumscribed situation than what she was used to, she is nonetheless acculturated with the ways of the upper crust and thrives in the orbit of the wealthy. She knows the rules, the ways of the rich; and yet, she makes a series of incredulous decisions that defy not only convention, but common sense.

Edith Wharton has written a novel about societal Darwinism. Mrs. Astor’s 400 of The Gilded Age evolved, and arguably devolved, as established families lost money and standing and, new wealth and those of a “certain race” crept in. Those who failed to adapt would find themselves consigned to the fringes and even “out” altogether. The exposition of this process through a number of characters in the novel is extremely well portrayed, but none more so than with Lily herself. Lily finds herself caught in a time of transition into the new society at the turn of the century and struggling to adapt to newer circumstances. The novel is written with Lily’s voice and perspective (though technically in the 3rd person omniscient), yet, despite being privy to the inner workings of Lily’s mind which might lend understanding to her modus operandi, the reader finds a curious lack of the survival instinct.

If there is a failing of the novel, it would be that the reader can never come into full sympathy with the protagonist. Whatever you may think of Lily, as a romantic figure, tragic victim, insipid socialite… it’s nearly impossible to know Lily herself. Perhaps this is because Lily doesn’t have a clear definition of herself either. The reader, like her friends, never really knows Lily and it results in a series of misunderstandings. How can you have faith in someone you don’t really know and can’t get a handle on? As one of Lily’s erstwhile friends, Carry Fisher put it when trying to explicate Lily’s situation, “…but I never could understand you, Lily!” Edith Wharton doe not give the reader a special insight into Lily so we can only judge her instead of love her.

[alcracka · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I have no idea if I'll be able to think of anything worthwhile to say about this. It's the best book I've read in a little while.

[beabatllori · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book reminded me of when I used to tutor a particular 15-year-old boy. I'd arrive and he'd be snacking and watching this dreadful MTV reality show called “My Super Sweet Sixteen”. I used to spend a lot of time over there, so I caught enough bits and pieces of it to feel thoroughly revolted.

Those of you in the USA have probably seen it – it follows over-privileged kids as they organize and throw their lavish 16th birthday parties. But what I find scary about it aren't the 6-figure cars these kids get, but the sense of entitlement floating in the air. These children think that if they want something they will automatically get it – what's more, they think if they want something bad enough, that means they deserve it.

I remember standing there one day, waiting for my pupil to rinse his glass, and being overcome by a crushing feeling of pity. Because I really wanted to slap the kid on the TV, but at the same time I knew, with an overwhelming certainty, that this girl was never going to be truly happy, ever. Even if their parents could keep this up, this sort of entitled, shallow upbringing can only lead to frustration, one way or the other. What a waste of a perfectly good life.

I thought a lot about this moment while reading The House of Mirth. I felt sorry for Lily Bart, while hating her at the same time. I wanted to slap her, while knowing it wasn't her fault that she was the way she was. I wanted her to make up her mind, and at the same time dreaded every one of the options she had.

For make no mistakes – she does have options. A few of us at Bookish were discussing whether this was feminist literature or not. If feminist literature aims to portray women's lack of possibilities as constraining the female character, then this is not your average feminist book (I know, I know, but bear with me for a minute). Lily Bart does in fact have a few options to choose from, even though they would all entail some measure of dependence from other people. But none of these ever crystallize into anything tangible, because she won't make up her mind.

Wharton tries to imply that she's secretly an idealist, and she may be subconsciously sabotaging her own attempts at marrying money. But in fact, for most of the book she doesn't openly defy the system – mostly, she's just angry that she can't find a rich man to support her (she wants one, so she should have one, right?). Her moral scruples only show up when she's already put herself in a compromising position and she needs to save what little self-respect she has left. She is not an idealist, not in practice – she wants to work within the system.

Yet the very system of which she is a result has no place for her. She's a highly specialized product, an ornamental object, the Gilded Age in its most extreme expression - and as such, she's so profoundly dysfunctional she can't bring herself to make a choice for her future, because none of her options are even remotely acceptable. This world is so messed up, its own product can't function within it.

Watching Lily shy away from at least 4 potential husbands, a few socialite patrons and even an opportunity for blackmail can get annoying after a while (“will you make up your mind already? I have stuff to do, you know?!”). But it also brings me back to my thoughts that day, watching “My Super Sweet Sixteen”. I vaguely thought that this world was f'd up if it was capable of creating such a monstrous thing as that over-entitled 16-year-old. This kid was the product of an environment that was condemning her, by effect of her upbringing, to be chronically dissatisfied for the rest of her life.

The world that Ms. Wharton portrays in her book is just as monstrous. And if it did this to people, and those people were mostly women, then by the FSM, this book serves its purpose, and it definitely is a feminist book.

[etxgardener · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is my favorite of Edith Wharton's novels. The story of Lily Bart's fall from the heights of society to its depths is a cautionary tale of the price of pride and hubris in early twentieth century New York.Lily Bart is a beautiful young woman - well not so young as she is 28 when the novel opens - of excellent birth, but limited financial means. She lives with her aunt and expects to inherit her wealth when she dies, which is a good thing, since her own income only allows her to live in a modest way. Lily, however, seems to think that her beauty will carry her to endless riches and she lords it over her less well situated cousin and also to enter into a questionable financial arrangement with the husband of her best friend.Lily's problem is that, while she is bad by the standards of the day, she is not bad enough to truly profit from the opportunities that appear before her. Her main fault is that she loves her life of luxury and is seemingly not able to make the smallest sacrifice to assure that her means of life will continue. Instead of attending to her aunt and living the life of a proper young woman as should, Lily embarks on a European adventure with dubious companions that will be her undoing. When her aunt dies, she finds she has been disinherited and faces a truly dismal life.Still, although she has the means to save herself and to, in all likelihood restore herself to her former position, she cannot bring herself to her former position, she cannot bring herself to do so, thus bringing her life to an untimely end.This is, perhaps, Wharton's most tragic novel and the modern reader's heart cries out at every twist and turn of the plot for Lily Bart.

[heididenney · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Depressing.

[kaulsu · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Gads, what a depressing book. One hundred years does make a difference in literary tastes and what passes, I suppose, for a morality tale. This book was, to my memory, strongly reminiscent of Theodor Dreiser.Still, as a Guttenberg Project digitized book, the price was right!

[adonisguilfoyle · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Fish, guests and now wordy novels with obnoxious heroines really do start to stink after three days. Or possibly three chapters - I loved the first fifty or so pages of The House of Mirth but then Lily Bart and the storyline got stuck in a loop, and I found myself dropping off to sleep after struggling through a couple of pages. At work, on the bus, at home - finishing Edith Wharton's novel was a trial, but I was determined. The final few chapters made up for the soporific effect of the bulk of the book, however.My main problem, aside from the fact that Wharton should have contented herself with a short story or a novella, was with Lily Bart, the distinctly unloveable heroine with an inflated opinion of herself (or with the author's inflated opinion of herself). At twenty-nine, a woman of Lily's age and situation would have been labelled a spinster and left on the shelf, but because of her glowing, ethereal, exquisite, etc. beauty, descriptions of which must pad out over half of the novel, Lily still considers herself a 'marriageable girl' in the market for the richest husband she can find. Lily also considers herself to be some sort of princess, when in fact she is little more than a leech who maintains her delusional lifestyle by befriending/flirting with the social elite/nouveau riche of New York. She is a horrific snob without the means or intelligence of an Emma Woodhouse, a calculating gold digger without the deviousness or brass neck of a Becky Sharp, and a stunning beauty without the charm of a Lady Blakeney. Lily Bart is a useless, heartless, fading bauble, who continually sabotages her own ambition to be a rich man's wife, whether by design or cowardice.She has a fear of being poor and 'dingy', and has become 'dependent on ease and luxury', whatever the cost. Lily's sympathisers, like Lawrence and cousin Gerty, blame Lily's upbringing and insist that 'she can't help it', which also irritated me. I couldn't stand her, and was infinitely satisfied by the way her story played out.That said, Edith Wharton does have a way with words, if nothing else - sort of an American Jane Austen, but lacking the same slyness in her social commentary. 'A girl must, a man may if he chooses', Lily opines to her ill-fated suitor, Lawrence Selden. And Wharton's shrewd observation that 'inner vanity is generally in proportion to the outer self-deprecation' is very true. I also love the poetic descriptions that Wharton employs, as with Lily's aunt, Mrs Peniston: 'She had always been a looker-on at life, and her mind resembled one of those little mirrors which her Dutch ancestors were accustomed to affix to their upper windows, so that from the depths of an impenetrable domesticity they might see what was happening in the street'.A cleverly written, though drawn out novel about a woman who blames everyone else for her own mistakes and failures, and thinks a pretty face should be enough to carry her through life. If I can't even admire or sympathise with the central character, then it's no wonder that I could barely maintain consciousness!

[hebephrene · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Wharton was an extraordinary sociologist specializing in her own class: the rich. Page 53 is unbelievably smart and beautifully tailored. We are in the world of Balzac thematically and James stylistically. I had difficulty entering the story because of her reliance on summary. The most exquisite parts were these descriptions which while placed erratically nonetheless showed you that despite the intellect and the judgement and the constant assessment, Wharton loved the dilated moments where the narrative paused and we were allowed to see where we were..and Wharton could it turns out paint with light. It was almost a hundred and fifty pages before I found myself hooked. The men are all weak and while they survive because they have a clearer understanding of the transactional nature of the world, they offer little. The exception is Selden and I have to say that the problem with both Wharton's scenes with him as well as her handling of the confrontation with Trenor are so obscured and indirectly dealt with that I was never sure what was going on. I know she couldn't talk about sex but it all felt so unclear. The book is dated because of what was written only a few years later namely Joyce but as a 19th century aesthetic it is a remarkably, and one feels true picture of America in that time.

[doingdewey · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The House of Mirth is a “novel of manners” or a novel which focuses on social customs, often the customs surrounding marriage (think Jane Austen, for example). This particular novel focuses on high society in New York during the early 1900′s, a setting very familiar to the author, and was intended to highlight what she saw as the complete lack of anything worthwhile in that society. However, as the forward to my version pointed out, what still draws people to this book today is mostly the character of Lily Bart. Throughout the book we follow Lily’s attempts to marry for money, culminating in her fall from society when she is accused of being a man’s mistress.The author’s writing style, as well as her subject matter, reminded me of Jane Austen. Perhaps it’s simply something about older books, but I found the writing unusually formal. This definitely wasn’t something that kept me from enjoying the writing though. I was still drawn into the plot, able to visualize the locations and feel for the characters. The only part of the writing I didn’t like was the attention to social details required to understand all the plot points. Especially at the beginning, I sometimes felt sure I was missing something! This is a problem not with the author’s writing (since she wrote for her contemporaries) but a problem of book version. And my book version (the penguin classics version pictured above), had unnecessary footnotes describing locations and a few useful word definitions but provided little social context.The characters were definitely intriguing, in part because their motivations were so entirely different from anything in my experience. I was always curious about what they might do next! What at the end kept me from liking this book more was that I often didn’t like what they did next. I think I might have been able to like Lily even though she wanted to marry for money if she’d just seriously gone for it. Instead, her indecision ended up depriving her of a marriage for money or a marriage for love. Even worse, things frequently almost worked out and some little twist of fate caused everything to go wrong. Situations like that, where simple chance ruins everything, are one of my pet peeves in movies and books. They’re just too frustrating! In this case, the book was good enough to keep me reading past all of the bits where things almost worked out in hopes it would get better. But when it ended on the same note, with a so very nearly happy ending, it left me feeling dissatisfied with the whole book. If you’re ok with unhappy endings and don’t share my hatred for cruel twists of fate, the book was well written enough that I’d recommend it much more highly.

[limelite_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Materialistic NY society in the fin de siecle literally crushes Lily Bart to death under the weight of its code. There is no possibility for a young single woman to have a life of her own, an honorable occupation, or a visible means of support.She exists only as a marital prospect, and that only for a short decade, during which time a single slight misstep can spell utter ruin of reputation and prospects. If after that time, she remains unmarried, her desperation is neither pitied nor remedied but used as an indictment against her.Lily Bart, motherless and dependent on her aunt, exists only as a fortune hunter restricted to finding herself a husband attached to the purse. But fortunes attract fortunes, and Lily has none of her own, only expensive tastes. One misstep is followed by another and another. Disastrous financial decisions, a naivete concerning Gus Treanor, her friend, Judy’s husband who “invests” her meager savings on the basis of vague speculator tips, a manipulated indebtedness to Mr. Rosedale, a man who is despised by a society riddled with racism against his Jewishness, and her own misplaced effort to protect her friend Laurence Selden from the humiliating evidence of undestroyed letters from a married woman with whom he had a liason combine to effect Lily’s ruin.In an effort to escape her downward spiral she accepts an invitation from Bertha Dorset to join her and her husband, George, on a cruise of Europe aboard their yacht only to be accused by Bertha of adultery with George in order to hide her own affair with Nate Silverton. Again, she tries to shield Selden. But it is too much and Lily, having been disinherited by her aunt has nowhere to go but down.Wharton’s “novel of manners” written a century and a half after Austen’s novels on that subject and moved to the US shows a society just as perversely aligned against maidens of a certain age. The environment of both NYC and Bath is akin to a tank filled with patrolling fish – some of whom are sharks, some of whom are bait.

[marysgirl · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I like Wharton's writing and think I would have enjoyed this one more except for the current times. The story is about the endeavors of a beautiful young woman to stay in the social circles her birth entitles her to, but her increasing impoverishment makes more and more difficult. I admired the heroine Lily Bart in her efforts to "keep up" while sabotaging her marriage prospects out of a personal sense of honor and secret abhorrence for her useless life. However, I had little sympathy for her or her troubles or her friends. The troubles of the idle rich seem trite and boring...which I think was Wharton's point, but didn't make for compelling reading.

[bbleil_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Edith Wharton belongs in my cohort of favorite authors who write about courting and marriage but not for the same reasons. In “The House of Mirth,” Miss Lily Barton is unmarried and dependent on the society of which she strives to belong. When her plans to marry go awry, she makes one failed maneuver after another and finds herself quite alone and increasingly without the means to support herself. Her life is anything but merriment. Wharton uses satire and humor like Jane Austen and Barbara Pym, but there is a darker undercurrent to her plot which makes me glad that I was born in a much different time.

[andreablythe · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Since I can't seem to find a way to some it up on my own, here's a description from the back of one of the editions: "Lily Bart, beautiful, witty, and sophisticated, is accepted by "old money" and courted by the growing tribe of nouveaux riches. But as she nears 30, her foothold becomes precarious; a poor girl with expensive tastes, she needs a husband to preserve her social standing and to maintain her life in the luxury she has come to expect. While many have sought her, something—fastidiousness or integrity—prevents her from making a "suitable" match."Lily was raised to love splendor and wealth and to be an ornament in that world. She cannot help but strive for the comfort and ease (even if it is marked by falsehoods) that that world offers. And yet there is a part of her that strives for some greater, higher ideal, some deeper truth beyond the finery. Her downfall is in part due to circumstance (being a woman in her time period and raised to desire wealth and shun shabbiness) and in part due to her own poor choices. There are many times she could have prevented a mishap, only to blindly (out of naiveté) or purposefully (out of selfishness and her desire for wealth) step right into it. And many other times she could have saved herself, only to reject it due to her own sense of morality. Witnessing her mistakes is to see all the little ways she is guilty, while simultaneously discovering the multitude of ways she is innocent. It's all just so profoundly human.The story was easy to follow and compelling to read. the scenes unfolding with eloquent language and open frankness. By the end of the book, i found that my commute wasn't long enough and I sat in my car upon arriving home listening to the conclusion, unable to wait until morning. I often cry at books and movies; I'm easily moved (sometimes even a TV commercial will illicit a few tears). But this was an experience beyond mere crying. This was me with my hands pressed to my face, snot running out of my nose, abjectly weeping in the front seat of my car. I can't fully express why this book plucked that inner string in me, but it did.I'm sure a part of it was the spectacular reading given by Eleanor Bron (who also, as it turns out, played Lily's Aunt Peniston in the 2000 movie adaptation) in the audio. She strikes just the right tone of reserve and emotions, her voice soothing and adaptable to each character. I don't know if my wrought emotional reaction would have been the same had I read it in text, but that's not something one can speculate on, since each individual experience is based on a multitude of circumstances that can't be recreated.All I know, is I started this book thinking I would merely enjoy it, and ended it being madly in love.

[michaelm42071 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

One alternately wishes to smack Lily Bart and feels sorry for her. She is intelligent and has real scruples: she refuses, even in the distress of poverty, to use for blackmail the letters from the married Bertha Dorset to her former lover Lawrence Selden, even though the blackmail Simon Rosedale suggests to Lily would merely force Bertha to retract her lies about Lily and reinstate her in society. Moreover, Lily spends her entire inheritance paying back her debts, mostly to Gus Trenor, who gave her money in the expectation of sexual repayment when Lily naïvely thought he was investing her little income and making huge returns. On the other hand, her scruples bend to the extent of cruising the Mediterranean with the Dorsets when Bertha has made it fairly clear she is wanted to amuse George Dorset while Bertha dallies with her latest, Ned Silverton. When George realizes that Bertha and Ned have been out all night together and he makes a fuss, Bertha turns the light of scandal on Lily and pretends she is the guilty party who was out all night with her husband. This is the episode that precipitates Lily’s loss of her place in society and her aunt’s cutting her off with a tiny inheritance.Lily could have married Selden, who is “poor”—that is, he has to work for a living, as a lawyer. But she has been trained by her mother to abhor all that is “dingy”—that is, whatever isn’t opulent and rich. Yet she cannot bring herself to marry those who would provide this life for her: the priggish Percy Bryce or Simon Rosedale, whose repulsiveness seems to consist mostly in his being a Jew—Lily to her credit finds him less repulsive as the book goes on, but then she’s also getting poorer.The scenes between Selden and Lily have the conversational frisson of good Henry James, who was clearly the model for much of her fiction. Most agree that this is her best book.

[rubya_32 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

An abandoned read. Why must the woman always be the victim? Couldn't stand it; Couldn't finish it.

[leslie398 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

At first this novel seemed to be an American version of Vanity Fair, only not as good. I found Lily to be a bit annoying which I never thought about Becky Sharpe. As the story proceeded, I realized that despite some similarities with Thackeray's work, The House of Mirth was its own story. Unfortunately, although my sympathy for Lily grew, she remained on the whole irritating.

[cayenneellis · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

** spoiler alert ** This novel follows primarily a young socialite named Lily Bart as she slowly ruins her life, dropping from the most beloved of country dinner visitors to a working class girl with an addiction to a sleep aid. Although many call this a love story, I think this would be classified as a love story in only the loosest sense, and in the great tradition of novels like Gone with the Wind and Wuthering Heights. If anyone's actually in love, it's rarely if ever admitted and certainly not happy.When I began this book, without the slightest hint of what it might be about other than having previously read another of Wharton's works Ethan Frome, I assumed from the first chapter that the story would be a drawn out account of the changing of Lily's morals as she realizes that, obviously, Lawrence Selden (the pseudo "romantic interest") is the one for her, blah, blah, blah. As it turns out, Lily's morals change very little throughout the book, and her high standards of living combined with her strong moral fiber almost always ruin things for her. Why can't she just marry Selden and maintain her place in the social order and actually go a step up in her living conditions, if not achieving the wealth of which she dreams? Standards. Why can't she get over herself and marry Rosedale who will give her said wealth, even though she quite dislikes him? Standards. She simply can't be pleased. She won't marry for love and she won't marry for money - she's content to settle into old maidhood waiting for the perfect Mr. Right to come along. Meanwhile, her morals generally screw her over too. She has to stand by Bertha Dorset when she cheats! She can't use the love letters she found against her to regain her place and society and Rosedale's hand! She can't confess her undying love for Selden! But she's perfectly cool getting into various shady dealings with the Gormers, Mrs. Hatch and the chloral. Good God, Lily. She can't seem to decide what she wants and refuses to make the right decision throughout the book.Although I found Lily to be in character throughout, I found so many of her decisions frustratingly stupid and unambitious (combined with her thoroughly ambitious personality) that I found it hard to love Lily as much as I would have otherwise. So many times, salvation was within reach. Actually, she didn't even have to reach for it. All she had to do was say the word and be whisked away from her depressing and anticlimactic end...but nope. Her standards/morals always got in the way.Although I found the novel frustrating, slow and confusing (Wharton referred to characters exclusively by their first or last names for pages on end and then would spontaneously end, plus freaking everyone is related which is hard to remember) I did enjoy it. I would say it was really more of a 3.5 than a 3, a meh+ versus just a meh... But I also wouldn't quite say I "liked" it. I'm certainly glad I read it, but I'm also glad it's over.

[konastories · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Joy's review: Beautiful young woman only cares for society, but does not manage to marry well and she comes undone... I did this as an audio book. I'd never read any Edith Wharton and felt I should give her a go. But I found myself wishing I was reading, if only so I could skim and skip the dull bits. And there were plenty of dull bits. Kept my interest just enough to keep going to see how it would turn out, but overall, I thought it was pretty dull.

[jmoncton_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The House of Mirth was the selection for my book club this month. Maybe because it is on the classics shelf, my first thought was that this would be another delightful 'parasol' book. You know, the type where all the characters seem to enjoy 'taking a turn around the parlor.' How big were the parlors back then?? The House of Mirth is a timeless classic about social climbing and the status of women. Our discussion of this book lasted several hours and was not just idle speculation about women's lives during the fin de siecle in New York City, but the choices women have today. Edith Wharton's writing style is amazing. Members of my bookclub even had favorite quotes from the book saved to discuss (usually we focus on the food more than quotes from the book). If you are looking to pick up a classic that will lead to a great discussion, then this is it!

[dablackwood · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Moving and profoundly sad. Such a beautiful story written by a master of the English language. I cannot believe I waited so long to read this wonderful book.

[fist_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I must be too obtuse a male for this kind of novel. The heroine has made a career out of looking out for a rich husband, because she was raised just for an ornamental role in New York high society of the late 19th century. At the same time, the manipulation, hypocrisy and connivance is so intense and folded back into itself that it becomes very hard to understand what people's real motives are. The author assumes that the reader is aware with these conventions and can read between the lines. The reader that can't (like me), will feel disoriented and alientated (I fear that, as time goes by, ever more people will be bewildered by the non-sequiturs and seemingly illogical behaviour, mainly of the main character). As a so-called satire of high society, I found it smug and sanctimonious. Its general statements about human nature are at times nonsensical, at worst stupid. I will have to study Jane Austen's books a bit better to understand why exactly I feel one female author's take on the social conventions of her era remains a classic, and this one will fade into oblivion, as far as I am concerned.

[stevetempo_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Excellent...Edith's words are enchanting....the story resonates with me....

[jim53_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Ms. Wharton gives us Lily Bart, a young woman whose beauty has been her entree into a world of rich society in whch she cannot afford to live. She contemplates marrying a rich man who bores her but cannot keep from sabotaging her half-hearted efforts. Lily makes mistakes, and we see the noose of her fate tightening inextricably. Wharton does a nice job with the society characters, showing us the qualities that both attract and repel Lily. I found two other characters of greater interest: Lily's cousin Gerty, who lives a poor but honest life and longs to entice Lily away form her obsession with money; and Lawrence Selden, a bachelor who can move in various circles but shows Lily different ways of thinking and in effect acts as her conscience. The most finely drawn character is Lily herself; we see her motivations, her hesitations, her hope and despair. Her final choice to act honorably rather than accept a path into society seems inevitable based on how she has been developed throughout the novel.The style of the novel is unexceptional, reflecting the slow pace prevalent at the turn of the century, but with some nice phrases and imagery. The novel requires some patience but rewards it nicely.

[shirleybell · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I liked this! It is the first book I have read by this author and having read this, I shall definitely be reading more of her work. My sympathy for Lily grew throughout the book and though she was annoying at the start, I grew to like her as the story progressed. I didn't mind that the book had a sad ending - in fact that made the book all the more poignant.

[rubyscarlett-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Quite brilliant. I always love Edith Wharton's heroines and Lily was no exception. It's a great character and social study of a woman who has expensive tastes and can't break into the world she feels she belongs to because of lack of money. It's made clear throughout (and more towards the end with the appearance of an unlikely ally) that she probably would have been happier had she settled for a middle-class life. I don't know if I agree with that seeing as I don't think it would have suited her personality and cultured leanings and she would have ended up frustrated, not to mention that having lived in relative luxury growing up she can't bear not to be comfortable. I can see that opinions on Lily could be vastly different but I for one understood every move and mistake she made, she's drawn very carefully and the continuity in this regard is excellent.
It's a crushing book, beautifully written with sharp characterization and I somehow identified with Lily, to the point when I can say this has made me look at my own life in a different way. It can be life-changing. I never expected this novel to resonate so much with me but that's what great literature is all about. Perhaps it's even the one book I needed right now. Five stars for sure.

[lit_chick_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

2000, Blackstone Audiobooks, Read by Anna FieldsLily Bart, bred to be ornamental, has known only comfort and luxury. When her family is ruined, she is keenly aware that she must marry money in order to maintain her position in 1890s New York’s elite society: “The only way to not think about money is to have a great deal of it." (Bk 1, Ch 6) And there are no shortage of suitors: Lawrence Selden, Percy Gryce, Simon Rosedale. But she dithers, seemingly wanting the impossible: Selden, whom she loves, is not wealthy enough; and while Gryce and Rosedale are plenty wealthy, she cares not a thing for either of them. Indeed, what might life be like married to Percy Gryce, that droning millionaire and “portentous little ass”:“She had been bored all the afternoon by Percy Gryce … but she could not ignore him on the morrow, she must follow up her success, must submit to more boredom, must be ready with fresh compliances and adaptabilities, and all on the bare chance that he might ultimately decide to do her the honour of boring her for life.” (Bk 1, Ch 3)Lily’s hesitation, coupled with a series of other social missteps and foolish decisions, sets in motion her descent of the social ladder. But it is Bertha Dorset, the novel’s antagonist, who ensures Lily’s expulsion from society. A nasty, manipulative woman, Bertha invites Lily on a Mediterranean cruise; but her motives are despicable. An unsuspecting Lily walks right into her deception, and Bertha uses her money and influence to bar Lily permanently from society. Wharton’s protagonist pathetically becomes one “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.” (Bk 1, Ch 1)The House of Mirth is highly recommended. While I did not enjoy it as much as The Age of Innocence, I love to read about late 1800s New York Society, particularly as written about by Wharton – elite, ostentatious, frivolous, narrow-minded, vicious – and fascinating. Expectedly, prose and characterization are brilliant. And Anna Fields did a lovely job of narration in this audiobook edition.

[addictedtomorphemes · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I *heart* this...even though it makes my heart hurt. Wow. Portrayal of a young woman, Lily Bart, navigating high society New York circa 1903 without the benefit of a supportive family to guide her or the financial means to support the lifestyle. When you are raised only to be decoration and you realize your own uselessness and inability to establish means to independent living, what do you do when you've waived all the options that have come your way?