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Loading... The House of Mirth (Dover Thrift Editions)by Edith Wharton
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. 1   greenstarfish | Jan 5, 2010 |  Another tale of woe from Wharton. I can forgive anyone who spends their life writing about one theme when they do it well. This wasn't her best but it was certainly entertaining. Lily Bart isn't Bovary or Karenina but she flirts with becoming one. If you're familiar with Wharton you'll feel very at home in this novel. If not, prepare yourself for an individual's conflict between desire and society. As usual with her, society comes off worst. Lily Bart, the protagonist, is looking for a husband. As usual, she's schemes and manipulates the men around her, using her charm and beauty as the tools of her trade. But her 'fortune' isn't as large as it she wants it to be (sound familiar?) She thus sets out to capture someone who can make her a society woman and thus beat her rivals into the dirt. Of course, it all goes wrong, she ends up with mud on her face and eating humble pie after a series of unexpected events leave her in worse circumstances than when she had the world at her feet. Having hesitated to marry because she was enjoying the thrill of the chase, she now finds herself the victim of a class system that closes the door on her. I think Wharton tries, again, to show that society has no room for the independent self-determined woman who has value in her own right. But there's a problem with this. Society is the sum of its parts and therefore reflects the dominant views current at the time. There's little an individual can do about this without swimming against the stream and, if you do that, there's no time for sulking and pouting when everyone hates you; it's par for the course. So, while Lily is totally happy to use the system when it suits her, this doesn't earn her any friends when the system works against her. That's the way it goes and I can no more feel sorry for her than I can that Hitler had to kill himself, poor dear. And was society stuck up and snobbish to a cruel degree in early 20th century New England? Yes, but if it hadn't been, Wharton wouldn't have had a market for her books and enjoyed the extremely privileged lifestyle that gave her the education and freedom to write in the first place. It's all kind of circular really and while I did enjoy the writing and the story and the characters, the moral's a bit lost on me. It's a tragedy that will have a few weeping and is worth a read as an important image of the world in that place at that time. (  ) arukiyomi | Dec 18, 2009 | It was the audio version I "read" and at times found it a little hard to follow but that was due to the format. I have to agree the book was depressing. I kept hoping for a happy ending but that was not to be. However, it was well written and worth reading even if over a century old. (  ) alizarin | Nov 9, 2009 | This was one of the most depressing books I have ever read. There was no bright moment in sight. Nowhere to 'rest your eyes' so to speak, from deep darkness. Lily Bart is one of the most tragic heroines in literature. There was absolutely no way of a happy ending for her. She was doomed from the start. She wanted a life that never really belonged to her. She couldn't stand the thought of 'lowering' herself to anything less than the upper class, and that led to her downfall. Bart was naive and vein and sometimes just downright stupid. She sacrificed everything instead of taking that one happy opportunity that was right in front of her face. The House of Mirth shows the cruelty of the upper class New York society at the beginning of the 20th century better than any non-fiction book could. Wharton crafted a beautifully tragic story showing that the upper class isn't what it's cracked up be. She tore off the blinds and shows us the vile and ugliness. ( )1 runaway84 | Aug 11, 2009 | The House of Mirth is about Lily Bart, a socialite in early 20th century New York, that lives richly when she is in fact poor. By the time the book starts, she has been on the marriage market for ten years, not having yet landed the husband that will allow her have the luxuries she requires. However, in spite of her famous beauty, Lily always seems unable to close the deal. Struggling between the values and skills she was raised to have and what she really wants, Lily can't commit to any one life, which makes it difficult for her to accomplish anything that makes her happy. The House of Mirth is a very good book. It suffers from the usual flaws reading Wharton a century after it was written: it's melodramatic in places and it's hard at times to understand and identify with the bizarre social rules her characters live by. Having said that, the story and characters Wharton creates are timeless, insightful, and engaging. The point the author makes about Lily's sad life is interesting and says something about both the lot of women in Edwardian society and how one's upbringing can be at odds with one's real wishes. The House of Mirth only received four stars from me rather than five as Ethan Frome and The Age of Innocence did merely for its length: at 400 or so pages the novel isn't inordinately long, but Wharton could have wrapped things up a little more quickly and made a bigger impact. ( ) k8_not_kate | Aug 10, 2009 |  no reviews | add a review
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| Book description |
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One of Wharton's earliest descriptions of her heroine, in the library of her bachelor friend and sometime suitor Lawrence Selden, indicates that she appears "as though she were a captured dryad subdued to the conventions of the drawing room." Indeed, herein lies Lily's problem. She has, we're told, "been brought up to be ornamental," and yet her spirit is larger than what this ancillary role requires. By today's standards she would be nothing more than a mild rebel, but in the era into which Wharton drops her unmercifully, this tiny spark of character, combined with numerous assaults by vicious society women and bad luck, ultimately renders Lily persona non grata. Her own ambivalence about her position serves to open the door to disaster: several times she is on the verge of "good" marriage and squanders it at the last moment, unwilling to play by the rules of a society that produces, as she calls them, "poor, miserable, marriageable girls.
Lily's rather violent tumble down the social ladder provides a thumbnail sketch of the general injustices of the upper classes (which, incidentally, Wharton never quite manages to condemn entirely, clearly believing that such life is cruel but without alternative). From her start as a beautiful woman at the height of her powers to her sad finale as a recently fired milliner's assistant addicted to sleeping drugs, Lily Bart is heroic, not least for her final admission of her own role in her downfall. "Once--twice--you gave me the chance to escape from my life and I refused it: refused it because I was a coward," she tells Selden as the book draws to a close. All manner of hideous socialite beasts--some of whose treatment by Wharton, such as the token social-climbing Jew, Simon Rosedale, date the book unfortunately--wander through the novel while Lily plummets. As her tale winds down to nothing more than the remnants of social grace and cold hard cash, it's hard not to agree with Lily's own assessment of herself: "I have tried hard--but life is difficult, and I am a very useless person. I can hardly be said to have an independent existence. I was just a screw or a cog in the great machine I called life, and when I dropped out of it I found I was of no use anywhere else." Nevertheless, it's even harder not to believe that she deserved better, which is why The House of Mirth remains so timely and so vital in spite of its crushing end and its unflattering portrait of what life offers up. --Melanie Rehak
(retrieved from Amazon Tue, 05 Jan 2010 12:51:01 -0500)
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Wikipedia in English (1)
When I was younger I loved this book for the scope of its tragedy. In every chapter a new opportunity is presented to Lily that she chooses to pass by. She makes her choices based on her own moral compass, and, Job-like, is punished for each choice. The beginning of the book, and the loss of Percy Gryce, is smoothed over with well-bred manners. By the end of the book Lily is raw and direct and the price she is paying totally clear.
What I don't remember is how much you end up hating Lawrence Selden by the end of the book. Lily has his number when she admonishes him at Bellomont for decrying society while enjoying its company. He's too bright to be an obtuse Ashley to Lily's Scarlet, and so he ends up being just plain impotent — realizing too late on every occasion that he's done exactly the wrong thing. (