When was house of mirth written

Great cities such as New York became worlds of extremes, where on one block lived millionaires in mansions and on another block lived immigrant families in tenements.

It is in this environment that Edith Wharton chose to set her first major novel. Wharton knew the upper-crust New York society well because her family was in it. She was familiar with the politics of that society and knew how cruel it could be. It was her intent to satirize this society, but also to show the profoundly tragic suffering that goes on inside it. To be sure, The House of Mirth is a novel that condemns the elitist world of women like Bertha Dorset; it does so by promoting the age-old ideal that you can't buy happiness.

The most content person in the novel may be Lawrence Selden, who is comfortable with his modest wealth and remains a detached observer of the upper-crust. Lily Bart, the protagonist, is trapped by her obsession with money, which prevents her from marrying the man she really loves because he is not wealthy enough. Perhaps more importantly, Wharton wanted to write a "novel of manners" see "The Novel of Manners" section with a particularly American spin.

Because my attachment to the book is so personal, I tend to reread it with slight trepidation that the magic may have fled. After all, the world and I have both changed quite a bit since I was a teenager. On its surface, The House of Mirth reads like a 19th-century novel.

The first world war was inconceivable. Where The House of Mirth is decidedly 20th century is in its frank depiction of the changing sexual mores around the behaviour of married women.

Wives have begun to divorce their husbands. Here we have the moral double standard at the crux of The House of Mirth : sexual deception is rewarded, while virginity remains a volatile property, inciting suspicion.

Like her protagonist, Wharton was born into upper crust New York and coerced by her overbearing mother to choose a husband from within its ranks.

In her autobiography, A Backward Glance , she celebrates the passion shared with her husband for travel and dogs. Wharton had already written books including a novel set in 18th-century Italy and a volume on interior design when she began drafting a novel set in the rarefied world of moneyed New York. Also, it has a really good moral, which is: make your own damn money. Um, not that I am judging Lily Bart or anything.

Different times and all! Note to self: Should not review great works of literature after so much beer. What a beautiful and tragic novel this is! As frustrating as Lily Bart could be — she kept making small errors that damaged her reputation — I also pitied her for how she was mistreated by society. Lily was unable to marry the man she loved because he wasn't rich enough, but she also couldn't tolerate the dull, wealthy men who were interested in her.

Lily wanted to do the right thing, but somehow things kept going wrong for her until she ended up broke, sick and without hope. I decided to reread What a beautiful and tragic novel this is! I decided to reread this novel after seeing a thought-provoking article on The Awl called "Men Like Him," about how damaging the Lawrence Seldens of the worlds can be. To quote from The Awl, "Lawrence Selden Highly recommended. Favorite Quotes "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.

I can hardly be said to have an independent existence. I was just a screw or a cog in the great machine called life, and when I dropped out of it I found I was no use anywhere else. What can one do when one finds out that one only fits into one hole? One must go back to it or be thrown out into the rubbish heap - and you don't know what it's like in the rubbish heap! View all 3 comments. Sep 09, Alasse rated it it was amazing Shelves: novel-of-manners , feminists-and-friends , books.

This book reminded me of when I used to tutor a particular year-old boy. 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 This book reminded me of when I used to tutor a particular year-old boy. 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. I have stuff to do, you know?!

I vaguely thought that this world was f'd up if it was capable of creating such a monstrous thing as that over-entitled 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. I know many authors who can write beautiful scenes beautifully,but there are few who can also write sad scenes as beautifully as Wharton.

Yes,she is a real pro at love tragedies. When reading,sometimes I cynically wonder if each description and character gangs together to dig nasty holes here and there,even though the heroine tries every possible effort to get herself out of them. The story line is simple and easily predictable,which leaves it to your imagination why each character thinks and acts I know many authors who can write beautiful scenes beautifully,but there are few who can also write sad scenes as beautifully as Wharton.

The story line is simple and easily predictable,which leaves it to your imagination why each character thinks and acts in this way or that. This is the beauty of this gem and her outstanding writing makes it possible.

View all 14 comments. Apr 29, Julie rated it really liked it Shelves: american , 20th-century. 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!

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 Convenience Store Woman -- a contemporary satire on alienation. 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. 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. Bart's worst reproach to her husband was to ask him if he expected her to "live like a pig".

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" 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. May 13, Alice Poon rated it liked it Shelves: classics. I have taken much longer than usual to finish this novel. I blame it on two reasons. First, the subject matter of vacuous and decadent high society life in 20th century America is not of particular interest to me, and second, the writing is verbose and convoluted to the point of vapid. I had read The Age of Innocence by the same author, and had enjoyed that novel much more.

The story is slow-paced but effectively constructed, reaching the climax in the last fifth of the novel. It tells how one gl I have taken much longer than usual to finish this novel. It tells how one glamorous socialite Lily Bart endeavors to climb the New York social ladder at the turn of the last century, but meanwhile falls for an intelligent lawyer who can see right through her and tells her that is not the life she really wants.

Then she finds herself trapped at every turn between her innate morality and the sweet illusion of being accepted into the upper-class milieu. After a couple of botched attempts to win over marriage prospects, she begins to question her own motive, but is too proud to accept help from the man she loves. Eventually, a few incidents lead her to realize the corruption and callousness of high society. Sadly, regret comes too late as she is betrayed time and again, and she begins to descend into penury.

I have to give the author credit for presenting the privileged class of her times in an honest and scathing manner. I feel that Lily Bart was always free to make her own choices. View all 8 comments. Dear Ms. Wharton, I recently finished your book, The House of Mirth and am once again left disappointed. I so very much want to love your books. Your style of writing is beautiful and real, but the characters, oh the characters!

I feel like I get to know them so well, and feel such hope for them, only to be crushed down at the end! Let us not start with Lily Bart as that would be jumping in rather hastily. First, let's discuss the handsome Lawrence Selden, that book-loving, philosophical lawyer wh Dear Ms. First, let's discuss the handsome Lawrence Selden, that book-loving, philosophical lawyer who sees Lily for the woman she is, not the creature society created.

From the early stages, I had hopes that LS would be the slightly impoverished hero, who saves Lily from herself and damns society in the process. But, no! How quickly he is turned away, and falls out of love or so he thinks just because he sees something and jumps to a rash conclusion. If ol' Larry were half the man I thought he was, he would have believed more in Lily, and denied the rumors thrown at him.

When she needed him most, he turned away. At the end, he still doesn't come through in time, and I think it's appropriate that he will live with this regret in his future. Is that the point you are trying to make? I can't help but wonder if you were once shunned by society in a similar fashion and have determined to exact your revenge through your writing. If that is the case, then can you have just one woman who doesn't care about whether or not she is society's darling, and one gentleman who is actually looking for a monogamous, committed relationship instead of all those spineless dolts who want a mistress and who don't have the hutzpah to stand up their own wives?

Now, Lily. Poor, expensive toy named Lily. Was she just a symbol for the potential in all woman to deny marriages of convenience and hope for actual love. Was she meant to come across as so indecisive and shallow? It seemed that every time things got rough, she went off on a luxury vacation that her friends, whom she often disliked, paid for. She seemed like a bit of a high-priced, if virginal, prostitute, unfortunately.

I had such hopes for her but they were ultimately dashed. There was one remarkable character, however; Gerty Farrish. She was smart, charitable, independent, strong, caring, and good. Of course, since she had neither money nor looks, she was relegated to the role of unmarryable old maid, subject to have her "friend" cry out her miseries while she actually tried to do good in the world. Now, I know this may all seem a bit harsh, and I may be missing the point, but this is my third book by you, and I have yet to come to a full appreciation of your novels that a writer of your stature deserves.

That is not to say I am giving up, merely that I'm watching, very carefully, for that hidden gem, that little bit that makes a reader think of an author with a heightened sense of awe. I think you may have it, and I shall continue looking. Til then, requiat in pace, Ms. Wharton, until we meet again. Your devoted, yet skeptical reader, Paula P. Where was the mirth? View all 20 comments. Jun 12, Alex rated it it was amazing Shelves: reading-through-history , top , rth-lifetime , , , perfect-novels.

Lily Bart is the first and greatest of Edith Wharton's trapped women. Here's the trick Wharton pulls off with her: she's not great, and Wharton makes you wish she was worse.

Lily is beautiful; she looks, thinks her star-crossed friend Selden, as though "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. It's halfway through the book and it's Lily's last triumph. Lloyd" by Joshua Reynolds, Pervy old guys are like "I can see her whole legs!!! Her mother died of dinginess. Faced with a series of rich losers - supremely boring Percy Gryce; some old Italian Count; even, clutch your pearls, a Jew - she sabotages herself at every turn.

Lily is inconsistent and unstable, but her real problem is that she must sacrifice either money or love, and she can't bring herself to make the choice. Love is Selden, who lacks money - also possibly heterosexuality, according to some, but I don't see it. Gerty Farish, on the other hand! The aching, almost-there scene on a hill between Selden and Lily may not be bursting with boners, but it doesn't seem gay to me either.

Money is nearly everyone else, but I want to talk especially about Rosedale, because did I mention that he's a Jew? He's a Jew. And you know what Jews are like, or in case you don't, here's Edith Wharton to tell you: - "His race's accuracy in the appraisal of values" - "That mixture of artistic sensibility and business astuteness which characterizes his race" - "The instincts of his race fitted him to suffer rebuffs and put up with delays" - "Disciplined by the tradition of his blood to accept what was conceded, without undue haste to press for more" I'm not a moral relativist, and not everyone in was anti-Semitic.

Edith Wharton was, and it's a problem for this book. It sucks and it also muddles the book, because Rosedale actually is the right guy for Lily to marry. He sees her, as Selden does; both of them realize the trap she's in, both realize how anguished she is about all her escape options.

And he honestly, truly wants to help. Do that, you great flapping idiot! She won't do it because he's a Jew, but also because there's this one little thing she has to do first.

I'm going to outline some of the middle plot, so skip this paragraph if you want: she's in trouble at this point. She's accepted money from her friend Judy Trenor's husband; she thought he was managing her investments, but it turns out he thought he was paying her in advance for sex. My initial reaction to this was, "That's ludicrous, nobody would think that! And the thing is that Lily has accidentally acquired proof of Bertha's infidelity; she can use it to destroy Bertha and regain her social stature.

That's all Rosedale needs - he needs her slightly less scandalous - but Lily won't do it. She refuses to sink to Bertha's level. That's her in a nutshell. Describing wonderful Gerty who, again, is gay af for her she says, "She likes being good, and I like being happy. Over and over she's presented with the opportunity to be happy, at the minor cost of just an insignificant sliver of goodness, and she turns away.

So step by step Lily slips, and each time "she recovered her footing, and it was only afterward that she was aware of having recovered it each time on a slightly lower level. Wharton makes us watch every slip, and it's terrible. So here we are, and here's the trick Edith Wharton has pulled off: she presents us with this essentially useless human, and by the time she's done, all we want is for her to be a little worse.

Just sacrifice this tiny little piece of goodness, in order to get at least a little sliver of happiness. The thing with Edith Wharton is that she made the decision Lily Bart can't. Wharton was elegant and broke and she married the money, spending 28 long years with a rich, cheating, unstable, possibly closeted husband before finally and somewhat scandalously divorcing him.

She wrote House of Mirth, her first hit, in the middle of all this. Custom of the Country, which explores divorce, came at the end. So you can sense the ambivalence running throughout this book: Wharton is unhappy, and she both envies and condemns Lily.

Lily allows her to live out her escapist fantasies, and to reassure herself that they wouldn't have worked. Although, I mean, it would have been fine if she had just gotten with Gerty in the first place. View all 11 comments. This will end up being a review of The House of Mirth , sort of.

It makes her look like the real Lily — the Lily I know. I am neither, and I come from a long line of neithers. I come from hardy, working-class stock — Scots-English, mostly. The women were tough mama bears who put their heads down and did what they had to do to put food on the table.

From what I can piece together, Grandma Flora had been working as a domestic, with few prospects for anything but a life of slavery and grinding poverty. She had never before suspected the mixture of insatiable curiosity and contemptuous freedom with which she and her kind were discussed in this underworld of toilers who lived on their vanity and self-indulgence.

I think she may have had some distant relatives here, but really, she was on her own. She somehow ended up in Timmins, in the deep woods of northern Ontario near the Quebec border, and married a man from Leeds — a Bernardo orphan , we believe - who subsequently drank the money they were making from the fledgling bakery they had established together.

When it went under, he moved her to Toronto on the likely assumption that he could find work there, then in in the depths of the Depression, he left her never to be seen or heard from again with children aged five, two and six months with no income and no prospects for a life other than one of, again, ongoing grinding poverty.

There are stories about how Grandma Flora, my two uncles and my father the middle child survived in a time when there was no welfare, no social programs to speak of, that would rip your heart out.

The children somehow must have fended for themselves. At the age of two, the youngest came down with tuberculosis and was sent to a sanitorium in the west end of the city. Grandma Flora. I now picture her gripping the hands of her other two, barely past toddlers themselves, and tugging them along Queen Street. They walked on rare days, they could probably afford the streetcar for part of the trip a round-trip of 40 km each Saturday to visit him.

He was her baby, her bonnie lad. They all were. She held on tight. Uncle Stan, the oldest—who never married while she was alive and lived with her until she died—left school at grade 6. The family needed the income. My father did a little better, making it to grade 10 and finding a spot in a coveted mechanical apprenticeship program and later into a permanent job on the railway.

Her father lasted with them a while longer, until one day he came home from work, lay down on the sofa, and his heart exploded. Mom was 12; her younger brother This was a little later — — so times were not so desperate, and there was some kind of insurance that kept them going, at least for a little while.

Still, mom had to leave school at age 16 with a high school equivalency diploma, and get herself an office job downtown. Rosedale suppressed a low whistle of surprise.

As soon as you could and at whatever you could. What a way for you to talk! It had horrible smelling hallways and a terrifying elevator, which you took — even though you only needed to get to the second floor — because the stairwell was not an option. Although, in her mind, she was in the Taj Mahal compared to where she had been. I would often bring her drawings that I had done and she would exclaim and marvel over them in a most uncharacteristic way she was a taciturn Scot, after all.

She was a tough, practical, judgmental, tee-totalling survivor of god knows what for god knows how long. Such a vision of the solidarity of life had never before come to Lily.

She had had a premonition of it in the blind motions of her mating instinct, but they had been checked by the disintegrating influences of the life about her. Grandma Flora helped me sketch out the family tree, as much as we could anyway. It ended up looking like a maple after a particularly gusty October day, denuded by bad memory and so much unknown history. So many bare branches, disappearing into the foggy newsprint of my sketchbook.

I was more interested in names and places — quantity, clarity — as I thought that was where the marks were. And still a little young to be asking what I wish I had asked her: what were you thinking, what were you feeling, from where did you draw your courage? Did you, when you trudged along Queen Street or over the Bloor Street bridge, ever think of throwing yourself over? By the time those questions became of interest to me, it was too late to ask them. Grandma Flora hardened into a silent, angry knot and I was insolent and arrogant, clutching my B.

I had been raised to aspire to more. Work, as long as you can work, you can survive. Talent was good — but secondary. It gave you something to build on, but mine were seen more as options for recreation and, at best, avocation; not tangible enough to provide a living.

I could write and draw and play a little piano my inherent lack of grace and athleticism made highland or any other kind of dance pretty much a dead-end , but none of these looked promising as a route to providing social and financial security — which, to them, meant having a nice house and a car and some savings in the bank, maybe a good pension plan.

Since she had been brought up to be ornamental, she could hardly blame herself for failing to serve any practical purpose; but the discovery put an end to her consoling sense of universal efficiency. They were worthwhile, acceptable and attainable goals. That kind of money — real money; the one percent in today's handy vernacular — you were born or married into. And it dirtied you. It called into question your moral fibre the consoling rationalization of the poor. She had learned by experience that she had neither the aptitude nor the moral constancy to remake her life on new lines, to become a worker among workers and let the world of luxury and pleasure sweep by her unregarded.

Across time and place and class, we are more alike than we might seem. And there, my sympathy and empathy were engaged. One by one she had detached herself from the baser possibilities, and she saw that nothing now remained to her but the emptiness of renunciation.

If only life could end now—end on this tragic yet sweet vision of lost possibilities, which gave her a sense of kinship with all the loving and foregoing in the world. Who are you Edith Wharton, and where have you been all my life? Why has it taken me so long to find you? Can't remember the last time I've been so engaged with characters and the world they inhabit.

Or been provoked, moved, stirred to pity, disgust, anger, sadness to the point where my only recourse was to scrawl margin notes in capital letters followed by much punctuation: what a BITCH!!!!! OMG - what a simpering fop!!! View all 26 comments. I was clearly misguided. As with the majority of her works, Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth is chiefly concerned with depicting the conflict between social and individual fulfil blog tumblr ko-fi 4.

As with the majority of her works, Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth is chiefly concerned with depicting the conflict between social and individual fulfilment , and it focuses on the experiences of American's upper social class during the turn of the last century. Wharton demonstrates incredible social nuance in her almost anthropological-like study of New York's elite society.

Her commentary regarding the prevailing behaviours found within this group of people is insightful, satirical, and witty. Her portrayal of this privileged class emphasises its pettiness, giving us the impression that beneath their refined appearances and manners lies hatred, envy, and hypocrisy. Wharton throws light upon the discordance between their behaviour and their values. They are little more than jealous gossips, ready to temporarily forget their strict sense of propriety if it means to tarnish someone else's reputation.

It's very much an every person for themselves type of world or as I like to call it, a shark eat shark kind of world. Someone's ruin or misfortune might not result directly to your advantage but it's guaranteed to entertain and possibly detract attention from your own ongoings. This group of selfish and wealthy individuals make for a rather unhealthy environment. Yet, socialite Lily Bart , strives to belong to it. While this is a story that follow's a woman's unsuccessful attempts at social climbing to define it simply as such doesn't do it justice.

Throughout the course of the narrative Wharton constructs and deconstructs Lily's character , making her into much more than a social climber. Lily's story provides a keenly observed social commentary , and Wharton does so without employing a heavily didactic or moralistic tone. Throughout the course of her novel Wharton interrogates themes of gender and class.

Alongside her satire of New York's high society, with its oppressive customs and its pretence at niceties , Wharton criticises binary thinking. Unlike her characters, Wharton does not pass judgement on Lily's transgressions, rather she makes her protagonist's changing circumstances make her aware of the way in which her values have brought about her own ruin.

Although Lily is not painted as the story's victim, the narrative informs readers of the limited options available to women in Lily's position.

Lily Bart is one of the many tragic heroines who is ruined by her own materialism and romanticism. These fictional women are often frivolous Rosamond Vincy , selfish Emma Bovary , inclined to transgress social norms Sula Peace , mostly concerned with their own economic elevation Becky Sharp , and often branded as evil or regarded unsympathetically. Yet, Lily's character subverts notions of good and bad , as Wharton does not seem to equate her protagonist's self-interest with vice.

While other characters within this novel are quick to label and condemn Lily, we read of her various internal struggles whom she wants to be vs. Lily very much plays a role in many of her relationships, making herself into what others want her to be. Above all she is an actress, a performer. Yet, her self-fashioning aggravates the disconnect between who she is and who she pretends to be and often results in problematic situations in which others expect her to do or act in a way that goes against her wishes.

Lily's solipsistic nature did not make her into an unlikable character. Even when she seems to exhibit the same hypocrisy as those she criticises, I still found her to be a beguiling individual. While her debts are certainly a consequence of her own materialistic desires , if not opulent impulses, we come to understand the significance that appearances such as one's dresses play in one's fortune and reputation.

Lily can charm those in her circle as long as she continues to live a certain lifestyle, she has to keep up with their expensive tastes and habits. Lily often falls prey to ennui , a boredom that is tied to a sense of sublime potential , one that makes her feel superior to her environment. So Lily remains adamant in her certainty that she been cast into the wrong role or life , believing instead that she deserves to live as freely as she pleases, possibly married a man who is both sophisticated and wealthy, and more importantly surrounded by riches.

While she certainly longs to and works toward belonging to this upper crust, she finds them to be both petty and shallow, and is often repulsed by their bad tastes, appearance, and behaviour. This sense of self-importance allows her to manipulate those around her. Lily is a schemer, prone to self-pitying, and not very emphatic.

Yet it is her very cleverness and charm that make into a formidable figure. The novel mostly focuses on Lily's attempts to find wealth whether this is through a husband or fortune, she initially doesn't seem to mind , and the way in which her plans often backfire. As her reputation is shredded beyond all repair, Lily slowly begins to reconsider herself, her values, and her past actions.

Her character's development is realised through extensive acts of introspection , and Wharton's narration lends itself beautifully to Lily's self-analysing. What more can I say write? This story is populated by gamblers and gossips, who are eager to use and walk over Lily and I hated them, how I hated them , but there are those who show compassion and love towards her.