The House of Mirth

Lily Bart is beautiful and lives with her rich aunt. She is nearly thirty and has been trying to make an advantageous marriage, without being able to bring herself to do it, for the last ten years. We see her throw over Percy Gryce, who was about to propose, because he is wrong and because she prefers the company of Lawrence Selden. Selden loves her, but is not rich enough for her purposes. Lily is caught up in marital dispute between two friend and rumours begin to circulate about her. Her aunt dies and leaves her only a small legacy. She begins to lose her place in society and eventually is forced to try to earn a living as a milliner.

The whole book reads like a car crash and is relentless and oppressive. I found myself taking breaks show more out of a need to escape the unfolding disaster, although it is not without humour: Lily "had been bored all afternoon by Percy Gryce ... but... must submit to more boredom...and all on the bare chance that he might ultimately decide to do her the honour of boring her for life." Wharton cleverly causes us to sympathize with Lily, but at the same time we judge her for her sense of entitlement, the way she puts status and wealth above love, even the way she cannot bring herself to make the compromise she determines to make and just marry some one. Her moral conscience is important, and I was cheering for some of her later decisions (although I would have borrowed from Rosedale to repay Trenor and set up a shop).

Gerty is a helpful character to show us a life style choice Lily could have made and Selden demonstrates a choice not to take society too seriously. None of Liliy's other "friends" are truly her friends at all, except for Carry Fisher and, in a sense, Simon Rosedale. Wharton's attitude to this Jewish character is of another era, but he has redeeming qualities and again offers Lily choices which she fails to take.

Very interesting, with lots to think about, but I'm glad it's over and I need to go and read something cheerful. show less

"The House of Mirth" is a story of Lily Bart. Lily came from a New York ‘high society’ family, and while most of the relatives may have lived in lofty Fifth Avenue apartments or country estates, they lived conservative unpretentious lives outside of the social spotlight. But Lily’s mom narcissistically had big plans for herself and her only daughter. Lily’s dad literally worked himself to death, while Mrs. Bart squandered the money, enjoying every known luxury. She doted on Lily, pampering her with extravagant vacations and clothes, assuring her from a very young age that she was born to be a princess.

By the time Lily was 19 years old, both her parents were deceased. She was financially worthless and in the care of an elderly show more aunt (Mrs. Peniston) who didn’t mind supporting Lily. Her aunt provided a bedroom in her Fifth Avenue apartment and a modest allowance for entertainment and clothing. This is where the novel begins.

Lily isn’t particularly appreciative of her aunt. She is preoccupied with her own life. She has one goal which she refers to as her “career” and that’s to find a rich husband - preferably an English Nobleman or Italian Prince. But she is willing to settle for a New York WASP as long as he is filthy rich.

So what defines Lily? A heroine? Not so much. A victim? Perhaps. Misguided? Without a doubt. Misunderstood? Questionable. Even the characters in the book were never quite sure.

The author’s assessment, “She was like a rare flower grown for exhibition, a flower from which every bud had been nipped except the crowning blossom of her beauty. (pg. 278)

One unbiased character uncannily analyzed, “she works like a slave preparing the ground and sowing her seed; but the day she ought to be reaping the harvest she over-sleeps herself, or goes off on a picnic... sometimes I think it’s just flightiness and sometimes I think it’s because, at heart, she despises the things she is trying for. (pg. 197)

Several things about Lily the reader discovers quickly: she is a mooching, scheming opportunist. She is disloyal to friends, is self-absorbed, patronizing, and above all - a snob. At the very least she shows poor judgement and is naive in thinking herself to be exceptional. Lily shrugs off her careless disregard for others proclaiming, “I wasn’t meant to be good” (pg. 278) She puts on a great act, but unfortunately it’s just not quite good enough. People eventually see right through her because she inevitably slips up and gives herself away.

Lily offends one person after another, refuses marriage to men who are just not rich enough, flirts with married men, secretly takes money from her girlfriend’s “dull boring and repulsive” husband, hypocritically pretending to find him fascinating, and ultimately disgraces her aunt. As she is dropped by suitors and shunned by one elite couple after another, she descends the social ladder one rung at a time. Lily justifies her actions, swallows her pride, and lowers her expectations until one day when she is thirty years old (a spinster in those days), she discovers herself disowned by her family, destitute, and completely removed from the New York social scene.

Without a doubt, Edith Wharton paints a cynical picture of the New York elite and an even harsher image of the the wanna-be social climbers. Some readers dislike the book because they can’t sympathize with Lily. Perhaps she wasn’t meant to be a sympathetic character- or held blameless for being caught in the deadly web of society... “the great gilded cage in which they were all huddled for the mob to gape at. How alluring the world outside the cage appeared to Lily, as she heard its door clang on her! In reality, as she knew, the door never clanged: it stood always open; but most of the captives were like flies in a bottle, and having once flown in, could never regain their freedom.” (pg. 57)

"The House of Mirth" is a great book. Eloquent writing, captivating story, tragic plot. Lily was jaded and her goal was trite. She was like that fly in the bottle, but she did know the way out. She just refused to leave until it was too late.

Immensely popular when first published, this classic is sometimes referred to as dated and irrelevant. Irrelevant? Of course, the customs and morals presented in Edith Wharton’s 1905 "The House of Mirth" are outmoded, but with all the ostentatious bling flaunted in today’s society and the persistent quest to “keep up with the Joneses” (a cliche that coincidently originated from Edith Newbold Jones Wharton’s family), the story is timeless and a powerful lesson to be learned for all generations of every decade. show less

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 show more 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. show less

4.5 Stars. First off, a sort of public service announcement for those who are new to classics, I learned the hard way a long time ago that “introductions” in classics are often littered with spoilers as is the case with the Anna Quindlen penned introduction in my copy of this one, so unless you enjoy learning every major plot point ahead of time, do yourself a favor and wait until after you read the story to read the introductions. It would be nice if publishers would ever do the readers a favor and just put these things at the back of the book where they belong.

The House of Mirth moves at a relatively slow pace, dialogue is minimal, it’s definitely more character focused than plot driven, still it rarely felt tedious and does show more have some page turning moments. Like most classics, it’s probably best to reach for this when you’re in a patient mood, when you feel more like taking your time rather than breezing through something.

Although this was written near the start of the 1800’s, in many ways the world of this story doesn’t feel as foreign or distant as you might imagine, social climbing in New York society back then doesn’t read all that different from someone clamoring for likes and follows, putting on a facade or living above their means in order to present a certain image, and we’re certainly also in an era where one misstep, or even the whisper of a misstep, whether you’re proven truly guilty of it or not can send your life into a tailspin. This is one of those books that while it takes place in a specific time period, it winds up feeling somewhat timeless thanks to how in tune the author is with how human beings tick, everyone in this story is recognizable, a person who could as believably exist now as then.

Initially, it’s tempting to write off Lily Bart as a one-dimensional socialite gold-digger archetype, the sort of person who I avoid watching on reality shows, but the fuller the picture I had of her, the more interesting she became psychologically and by the end I had came around to caring for her, too. If you want to read a female character full of complexities and contradictions, you need to meet Lily Bart, she’s can be appalling yet her moral fiber will surprise you, she’s both naive and conniving, and she’s prone to self-sabotage thanks to the tug of war inside her, torn between the material life she’s been raised to covet and a type of freedom that isn’t really available to the women who lived that lifestyle at that time.

While it was easier to like secondary characters Gerty and Nettie, I suspect Lily Bart is someone who will linger in my mind for a long time, particularly those final scenes with her. show less

http://tinyurl.com/nk3cqcy

This might be the most complex piece of writing I've read. And not just for its florid writing.

On the surface, a social commentary about the mores and dictates of late 19th century New York, it felt like much more than that to me. It's not as if any of the crazy shenanigans surrounding society - and by society, I mean any kind in any place - have disappeared. There are still rules, although they may have become more relaxed. There is still old money and new money and how people are treated if you come from one versus the other. And there are still problems in marrying or courting above or below your station - again, no matter where you come from.

The novel tends to age well, since it tells the story of society show more in general, not just that of New York in its time. It's as if nothing has changed, and our culture is not more enlightened 100 years further on. For instance, never does Mr. Rosedale appear that his manner and forbearing are not associated with the fact that he is a Jew. For all Wharton's obvious liberal attitudes, she was not able to bridge that cultural divide. Upbringing? Lack of education? We struggle with those to this day.

Far more interesting, though, is Lily herself. You want to whomp Lily over the head, bringing her to some reasonable sense of where her life is going because she cannot be reconciled with her own desires. She wants to be morally upright, but she also abhors anything not beautiful and expensive. That conflict makes it impossible for her to choose the right path, time and again. I understand how that could work in her head, but the ending makes you truly wonder if anyone would choose this path, lacking any foresight about where it can end. That makes her a true innocent, more than anything else, and I think it's likely that Wharton could never have told this moral tale without an innocent at the center. show less

9/10

"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. What can one do when one finds that one only fits into one hole? One must get back to it or be thrown out into the rubbish heap -- and you don't know what it's like in the rubbish heap!"

There is a displacement in the space-time continuum, Mr. Spock.

If it were not for the slightly more formal language, I might be forgiven for thinking I was still in the midst of (re)reading [b:Convenience Store Woman|38357895|Convenience Store Woman|Sayaka show more Murata|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1523623053s/38357895.jpg|51852264] -- a contemporary satire on alienation. The characters therein also announce themselves as "just a screw or a cog in the great machine"; each one finds him/herself able to fit into "only one hole". Each one, too, is "useless anywhere else". Miss Furukura, for one, is "useless" everywhere except in her convenience store. She tries for a time to escape her "one hole" existence, but, like Lily, she finds herself in the rubbish heap -- and so she scurries back to the safety of a limited existence -- but one which nonetheless provides purpose to her life.

Lily Bart finds she is "useless" everywhere except in the whirling circle of high society. Without its trappings, her life is meaningless. But sadly for Lily, she cannot find her way back into her own brand of convenience store because the gatekeepers won't have it. At some point, if one has a brain, or a heart, one transgresses all the rules of a particular society, and re-entry is denied.

This is a heartbreaking tale of those damned to live the high life in the Gilded (C)Age; and more specifically, about women's precarious footing within that cage.

... she was perhaps less to blame than she believed. Inherited tendencies had combined with early training to make her the highly specialized product she was: an organism as helpless out of its narrow range as the sea-anemone torn from the rock. She had been fashioned to adorn and delight; to what other end does nature round the rose-leaf and paint the hummingbird's breast? And was it her fault that the purely decorative mission is less easily and harmoniously fulfilled among social beings than in the world of nature? That it is apt to be hampered by material necessities or complicated by moral scruples?

With faint echoes of Tess of d'Urberville in my mind, one wonders if Lily too is not more sinned against than sinning -- for what could she have done, given the strictures imposed upon her; given the life she had been shaped for, by the earliest forces of her mother inculcating in her her duty to rebel against "dinginess".

Ruling the turbulent element called home was the vigorous and determined figure of a mother still young enough to dance her ball-dresses to rags, while the hazy outline of a neutral-tinted father filled an intermediate space between the butler and the man who came to wind the clocks. ... Lily was naturally proud of her mother's aptitude in this line: she had been brought up in the faith that, whatever it cost, one must have a good cook, and be what Mrs. Bart called "decently dressed." Mrs. Bart's worst reproach to her husband was to ask him if he expected her to "live like a pig".; and his replying in the negative was always regarded as a justification for cabling to Paris for an extra dress or two, and telephoning to the jeweller that he might, after all, send home the turquoise bracelet which Mrs. Bart had looked at that morning.

Having raised the little girl to not live "like a pig", why is one surprised when she adopts the very lifestyle into which she was indoctrinated?

We speak much, in our society, of the deleterious after-effects of child abuse. We acknowledge the reality of PTSD after prolonged abuse, poverty, neglect. And yet, we smirk behind our hankies when it is suggested that someone like Lily was also abused. It's not abuse, then, if one stuffs the child's mouth with money rather than dirt?

To indoctrinate, to brainwash, to instill day after day, into a young girl that she must never stoop to live like a "dingy" "pig" ... and then to blame her when she rises up to live above the pigs! How could she fight against the very air that she breathed?

This is an insidious piece of writing which presents itself as an innocent little book of manners; perhaps a simple morality tale, but in the end is aiming at upsetting the societal apple cart.

Wharton's luscious language is applied to this tale much in the same way one would apply a rich lather of sweet icing to a cake or exuberant amounts of make-up. In truth, it reminds me of the over-garnished, over-made-up precious little girls that are decorated by their mothers to appear in beauty pageants: there is too much of it, and at some level, it feels wrong. At the same time as this occurs, one has the sense of not being able to pull away because the spectacle is riveting.

Wharton's tale would not have worked so perfectly had her language, her style, been simpler and more direct. The dress fits the occasion, one could say. How could we feel the florid exuberance of Lily's life and the ultimate depression and lethargy into which she falls to her ruin if Wharton had not provided the means to juxtapose so vividly? It cannot be otherwise. show less

Listened on Audible. Beautifully read by Kate Petrie.

Edith Wharton has quite a lot to say about the subtle social forces and currents of the well-to-do and the not-at-all-doing-well in Society of the early 1900s.

Her observations on the scale of both large symbolic dimensions as well as finer physical points of what social customs actually mean on a frank, physical level carry a sense of believable accuracy. Better yet, this becomes quite a page-turner, during which I found myself shrieking "Don't do it!" at my car speakers while stopped at a red light.