Knowing Edith Wharton’s reputation as a writer but not having read any of her books, I was anticipating wit and dry humour. What I wasn’t quite expecting was the deft way in which the author wields the literary equivalent of a scalpel to dissect the snobbery, hypocrisy and downright cruelty of the New York social scene. I mentioned the mocking humour and here are a few of my favourite examples:

On the eligible but tedious bachelor, Percy Gryce: ‘Mr. Gryce was like a merchant whose warehouses are crammed with an unmarketable commodity.’

On Lily’s aunt, Mrs Peniston: ‘To attempt to bring her into active relation with life was like tugging at a piece of furniture which has been screwed to the floor.’

‘It was the “simple country wedding” to which guests are conveyed in special trains, and from which the hordes of the uninvited have to be fended off by the intervention of the police.’

‘Lily presently saw Mrs. Bry cleaving her determined way through the doors, and, in the broad wake she left, the light figure of Mrs. Fisher bobbing after her like a row-boat at the stern of a tug.’

And I have to mention the elegance of the writing that can convey so much in just a few sentences. For example, as Lily observes those she has regarded as friends: ‘That very afternoon they had seemed full of brilliant qualities; now she saw that they were merely dull in a loud way. Under the glitter of their opportunities she saw the poverty of their achievement.’

Throughout the book, my sympathy was always with Lily and the situation she finds herself in. Yes, she has a role which is largely confined to being an ‘adornment’ to the social scene. However, I admired her determination to use the gifts she has been given, even if that does involve a degree of manipulation. Unfortunately, an entirely innocent action and a chance meeting set in motion a chain of events that put Lily in the power of others, risking her future happiness. Lily believes her beauty allows her to manipulate men but, sadly, she finds it is she who is being manipulated because of a mistake and the need to maintain her social status because of her (relative) poverty.

It transpires that navigating the social scene is akin to a game of snakes and ladders. Working your way up takes time, requires skill in order to cultivate contacts and involves being seen in the right places with the right people. ‘She had been fashioned to adorn and delight; to what other end does nature round the rose-leaf and paint the humming-bird’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?’ However, one misstep, one troublesome rumour or item of mischievous gossip and you can slide down very quickly. ‘Lily had the doomed sense of the castaway who has signalled in vain to fleeing sails.’

Very few of the characters in the book come out well. So-called friends (I’m looking at you, Mrs. Fisher) prove to be anything but in Lily’s hour of need – because they are too timid, too afraid of what others will say or possess ulterior motives.

I’ll confess, I was unprepared for the impact the ending had on me. Part of me could understand why Lily did what she did and part of me wished she had found the strength to take another course. The romantic in me wanted another outcome altogether which, I’ll admit, would not have been true to the spirit of what the author was trying to communicate in the book. Call me an old softy.

This will definitely not be the last book by Edith Wharton I read. What an amazing author to have discovered; even more amazing when you realise The House of Mirth was Wharton’s first published novel.

On occasions like this, I rue the absence of a 'tragedy' shelf or some variation of the same because mere 'melancholia' seems too modest, too equivocal a word to convey the kind of heartbreak Lily Bart's story inflicted on me.

It is, perhaps, apposite that I came to this with my mind still fresh from Anita Desai's stirring homage to a resolutely single, unsung fictional heroine who holds together a disintegrating family, unacknowledged, misunderstood, left behind and forgotten (Clear Light of Day). Because Desai's Bim and Wharton's Lily are both flawed figures who manage to stand erect, weathering storms of hostile circumstances that whittle down their will to live and sense of self worth. Even when the vicissitudes of fate leave them psychologically battered and dying inside, they manage to maintain their slippery grip on ideals that cost them dearly. And how many tragedies can we think of, in which the female protagonist's tragic status is not a mere matter of simple victimization at the hands of patriarchal figures of authority but is, instead, locked in a complex configuration of missed chances, reluctance to surrender self-esteem in exchange for societal approval and an unsympathetic social milieu?

n  She was realizing for the first time that a woman's dignity may cost more to keep up than her carriage; and that the maintenance of a moral attribute should be dependent on dollars and cents, made the world appear a more sordid place than she had conceived it.n

Lily Barton's ill-fated fall from grace is not just the tragedy of a woman of insufficient means restricted to using her beauty as currency. It is representative of a greater human predicament. Unlike Desai's ornately crafted family drama taking place amidst the squalor of an Old Delhi neighborhood, Lily's tale comes swathed in layers of exquisite riches. The shimmer of expensive china, the buzz of vacuous conversations conducted in affected accents, the ring of self-assured laughter spilling forth from the made up faces of social butterflies and the dispassionate flirtations between social aspirants and calculating husband-hunters provide a glittering backdrop to her spiralling descent into the realms of penury and obscurity. But this outward show of grandeur and exuberance stands in stark contrast to the bleakness of Lily's inner world - the site of a perennial conflict between necessity and moral rectitude - which Wharton limns with stunning precision and empathy. Lily's bitter ending hits home not because she is a woman forced to choose between a marriage of convenience and complete annihilation but because that tragedy is one of her own making, a fatal repercussion of her last defiant refusal to play by the rules of society.

n  If she slipped she recovered her footing, and it was only afterward that she was aware of having recovered it each time on a slightly lower level.n

Why Edith Wharton does not share the same pedestal of authorial eminence with figures like Fitzgerald, I don't understand. Both The Great Gatsby and 'The House of Mirth' indict the soulless heart of a blindly hedonistic social order and yet Wharton seems to be often viewed simply as a woman's writer. As if to write from the female perspective and use female bondings and rivalry as tools of social critique automatically qualify as criteria for exclusion of a work from greater recognition.

n  She had fallen, she had "gone under," and true to the ideal of their race, they were awed only by success-by the gross tangible image of material achievement.n

To hell with the canon then. Gatsby's tragedy transpires as a result of his naivete and callow optimism. Lily's ultimate end is an act of conscious self abnegation and implicit resistance to the value judgment systems which govern the world she inhabits. It should be obvious which story's razor-sharpness cut me to the bone.

n  “She had no tolerance for scenes which were not of her own making.”n

Edith Wharton had a particular way of writing which was a bit difficult to tune into at first but once I got the hang of it, it was real beautiful.

Which was why I am saddened to give this such low rating. Just saddened.

From the very start I really liked Lily Bart... until the second half of the book, then, I couldn't stop myself getting annoyed with her everytime: her indecision, her actions and mostly just.... HER.


Rating: ★★½

Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth made me think about a lot of 'stuff'—so if you're one of those self-righteous hall monitor types who scolds reviewers on Goodreads for not being relevant enough, then be on your way. There's nothing for you to see here except for some navel-gazing. Proceed at your own peril.

The House of Mirth centers on a privileged white female named Lily Bart who's navigating the precarious social landscape of New York City and its environs at the tail-end of the nineteenth century. Although Lily is a woman—and this qualifies her for special consideration as a class of the variously marginalized of the period (i.e., she wasn't a wealthy white male)—I have a feeling (and it's only a feeling) that many modern readers will be put off by being placed in the position of sympathizing with this poor little rich girl. The liberal intelligentsia—of which I'd like to consider myself a constituent, however damning that admission might be—has become so preposterously righteous and (yes, at times) patronizing that it has somehow become unseemly to offer anything but snarky derision to the 'plight' of the white, wealthy, and otherwise advantaged.

You may think you see where this is going, but it's not that bad. Really. It's not as if I'm some white upper-middle class male who is 'standing up' for my own kind against the perceived persecution of political correctness. Quite the contrary, it's understandable (and perhaps morally healthy) for well-off white people to feel some guilt because of our surfeits—and not only material surfeits—in light of the history that has preceded us and the injustices which continue today. I'm not one of those nutjobs who offers up #alllivesmatter in response to #blacklivesmatters—because only a dunce would fail to understand the importance of white lives is already the underlying premise and vouchsafing principle of our society.

I'm getting away from myself a little here. As regards Lily Bart—our unfortunate protagonist in The House of Mirth—I can imagine countless readers' sighs greeting her predicaments—e.g., how to keep up appearances; how to marry well; how to insinuate herself, profitably, into the lives of the highest echelon of fashionable society... In other words, not only do Lily's problems scarcely deserve the name by modern standards, but the particulars are also pretty well estranged from our experience of the world today.

Lily Bart hasn't been prepared or instructed in any other course except to marry well. If that isn't clear enough, I'll be more blunt: in order to preserve her standard of living, she can only hope to marry a wealthy, socially well-positioned man, irrespective of romantic feelings or even basic affection. Her parents and her aunt hadn't conceived of any other alternatives for her, and if they had been more generous with possibilities, let's remember that nineteenth century society was not any more accommodating with other opportunities for women. It's hard to manage sometimes, but as readers we have to guard against imposing our values on persons of another era. While we often idealize self-sufficiency and self-determination as the greatest of social values, we must also remember that the prevailing attitudes and social infrastructure didn't always make these ideals attainable.

Toward the beginning of The House of Mirth, I was bothered a little by the novel's starchiness and wondered what Wharton wanted me to make of Lily (as if the author's intentions necessarily have anything to do with a reader's reactions). She seemed spoiled and flighty and less snobby than most of her social peers perhaps, but still jarringly snobby at times. But as the novel progressed, I realized that Wharton was showing me the differences (and strain) between Lily's outward social behavior and her ideas and values. Despite the fact that she knew what was required of her, it wasn't really what she wanted. It reminds me of my job, in a way. I've worked in this office for more years than I'd care to admit to because it's what I know how to do and someone will pay me a reasonable amount to do it... but does it reflect my taste or values? Only to extent that I'm lazy and unmotivated and willing to 'settle' for the things that are easily put in my way. Of course, I'm in a much different position from Lily Bart. If I wanted to, if I were motivated, I could leave this job and adapt myself to some other, more preferable life. I'm not sure the Lily Bart of this rarefied social milieu had so many options, and if she did, it would have required much more bravery to have pursued them.

What I'm getting at is that even though Lily's position is peculiar to most readers today, it's still forcefully human and relatable. I think the last fifty pages of this book were some of the saddest and most affecting I've ever encountered in a novel. Once we get past all the particular trappings of Lily's life, her story speaks of something universal and essential to being human. None of us are gods who create our fates entirely from scratch. Conservative types love to beatify the poor immigrant who worked hard against all adversity to become a success in the New World, but it's not as easy as that. Who taught the immigrant the value of work hard? Who instilled him with his values and ambitions? Didn't luck or happenstance help him along the way? Did his race or gender open any doors for him that would have been closed to others? The self-made man is a myth—because we only bother to notice the parts of the story that reinforce the message that we've decided on ahead of time.

Likewise, Lily Bart's failings weren't only her own; they were society's at the time too. Lily Barts don't materialize into the world, pre-formed, with limitless agency to optimize themselves. Society hems them in in certain ways, not only materially, but ideologically. That's why The House of Mirth is a tragedy that admits itself to all readers who can see beyond the instance and recognize the shadow of limitation that darkens everyone's life to some extent.

Mrs. Lloyd by Sir Joshua Reynolds (1775)

n  In our imperfectly organized society there is no provision as yet for the young woman who claims the privileges of marriage without assuming its obligations.n

Oh, how I delighted in this book. How I bathed in the world Edith Wharton created, this world belonging to beautiful Lily Bart, as she navigates through the temptations and perils of society of the early twentieth century. I was charmed, transported and moved as she tries desperately to cling to the luxurious life she desires. The fascinating part is that she is never quite willing to do what it takes to get it - settle in a marriage of convenience.

Lily Bart is a beauty with ambitions to live in luxury and care. She abhors "dinginess" and knows exactly the game to play in order to succeed in the cutthroat world of high New York society. She is charming, elegant and poised. She wants a wealthy life more than anything, appearing quite shallow at times. But when it comes to it, this woman at thirty continually throws away opportunities to land in a life of ease, unable to sell herself short just for money. She has moments of clarity when she sees the wealthy people around her for what they are:

n  How different (her friends) had seemed to her a few hours ago! Then they had symbolized what she was gaining, now they stood for what she was giving up. That very afternoon they had seemed full of brilliant qualities; now she saw that they were merely dull in a loud way. Under the glitter of their opportunities she saw the poverty of their achievement.n

How I reveled, telling myself "Wharton is like the American Jane Austen! She is the champion of women and matchmaking!"

I was so wrong.

It has been far too long since I read The Age of Innocence, so I forgot that the brilliant Edith Wharton's works are written with the heavier hand of reality. And this is what separates her from Jane Austen. Wharton's stories do not tie up nicely with a bow, with everyone getting their just deserts.

What Wharton does show us is the true plight of her flawed heroine: the tragedy of the trappings of wealth. She also depicts a woman's (limited) choices at this time in history, still heavily reliant on men and oh-so-delicate social footing amongst the who's who.

She also calls forth immense beauty, in particular the unforgettable scene of Lily as tableau vivant, a living version of the Reynolds painting (featured above), inspiring a moment of passion so delicious, stirring her reader's hunger for more of the same with every page. But can life truly imitate art? I think it is the other way around.

n  In the long moment before the curtain fell, he had time to feel the whole tragedy of her life. It was as though her beauty, thus detached from all that cheapened and vulgarized it, had held out suppliant hands to him from the world in which he and she had once met for a moment, and where he felt an overmastering longing to be with her again.n

I was wrong about Wharton, but I'm so glad to be wrong in this case. This book is stunning, a true masterpiece.

Espectacular novela de Edith Wharton, autora decimonónica con clara vocación de modernidad y de siglo XX. Es una crítica agudísima al modo de vida de las élites neoyorkinas en torno a 1900 y un retrato apasionante de costumbres y personajes. Hay que decir que el título induce a confusión – aunque hay mucho humor fino en la disección del entramado social – pero el tono general es más bien triste y pesimista. Una especie de Historias de Filadelfia pero mostrando todo el reverso negativo y la falta de humanidad que esconde la vida glamourosa de unos pocos.

El tema principal es la ascensión/descenso social. Los personajes luchan, unos por entrar en una clase superior y otros por no caer hacia abajo y tener que abandonar el paraíso que han conocido. Este último es el caso de Lily Bart, la protagonista absoluta de la historia y ciertamente un personaje femenino memorable. Poseedora de una belleza y atractivo que la hacen triunfar en la buena sociedad, carece en cambio de una posición económica que le permita mantener su tren de vida. Una posible solución es encontrar el marido adecuado y a ello dedica Lily mucho de su esfuerzo a lo largo de la novela.

Seguimos a Lily en su lucha por conservar su estatus y no caer en lo que más le horroriza: una vida vulgar, carente de belleza y llena de estrecheces económicas, que es lo que ve en su amiga Gerty, que no se ha casado y malvive en un pequeño apartamento.

El dibujo que Edith Wharton nos deja de la alta sociedad neoyorkina es desalentador. Mujeres manipuladoras obsesionadas con el éxito social a cualquier precio, maridos ociosos que especulan en la bolsa, falsedad y conveniencia presentes en todas las relaciones interpersonales. Vemos cómo una serie de familias influyentes, en una búsqueda incesante de diversión, se visitan en sus mansiones, organizan bailes y viajan a Europa a jugar en el casino de Montecarlo.

En este ambiente de tórrido esplendor se movían seres tan ricamente tapizados como los muebles, seres sin metas definidas ni relaciones permanentes que vagaban en una lánguida marea de curiosidad de restaurante a sala de concierto, de invernadero a sala de música y de 'exposición de arte' a desfile de modelos de alta costura.

Me ha sorprendido lo bien escrito que está el libro, la intriga que hace que sea una lectura apasionante y las reflexiones sobre la sociedad y la condición de la mujer, que creo que son perfectamente válidas en la actualidad. Imprescindible. 4,5*

I love books about people who perish for staying true to their principles, regardless of what these principles are. I also love books which make me wonder what I would have done in the hero/heroine's situation -- whether I would have given in to temptation or let my better self prevail. So I love Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth, which delivers on both counts, and then some.

The House of Mirth chronicles the rise and fall of Lily Bart, a stunningly beautiful late-nineteenth-century socialite whose fortune sadly doesn't match her looks. Raised to believe beauty and fun are all that matters in life, Lily has trouble reconciling herself to her reduced circumstances. She realises she has to marry a rich man to keep up her current lifestyle, and doesn't lack for wealthy admirers, but each time she comes close to making a good match, she sabotages her prospects. Partly this is because she is unconsciously in love with a man who sadly has no great fortune to put at her disposal; and partly it's because despite her increasingly urgent need of money, she is too snobbish and refined to bring herself to marry a man who offends her aesthetic and social sensibilities. So far, so Jane Austen, but Wharton wouldn't be Wharton if she didn't add some venom to the story, and some tragedy, too. Rather a lot of tragedy, actually.

The House of Mirth can be read on several levels. First of all, it's a parlour drama in the grand style of Jane Austen and Henry James (but more modern than either). Secondly, it's a love story -- a very tragic one indeed. Mostly, though, it's a critique of a society that creates women like Lily -- a society in which well-bred women are not taught to be independent, but rather to be just charming and beautiful enough to ensnare a wealthy man whose fortune they can then squander without any moral compunction. It's a critique of a hypocritical society in which married women (and men) can do as they please, but unmarried girls like Lily Bart have to be very careful indeed. Lily's Gilded-Age New York is a society in transition -- a society in which old manners and morals are increasingly being replaced by money and conspicuous consumption. On the outset, Lily seems to be part of a fast, shallow and profligate modern crowd, but as the story unfolds, the reader discovers she is not quite so corrupted as she seems. She still has some Old New York values left in her: naïveté, loyalty, chastity, discretion, and most of all, dignity. Needless to say, modern society being what it is, these old-fashioned values prove to be her undoing. Even when she is dealt a card with which she could turn a distinctly disadvantageous situation to her favour, Lily refuses to use it, choosing instead to suffer in silence and penury. Whether this is because using her trump card would place her on a par with the morally bankrupt people who make up her set or because she is too weak and exhausted to put up a fight is anyone's guess, but it makes for interesting speculation. And for introspection, for one inevitably ends up wondering how one would have behaved in Lily's position. Provided one would ever have found oneself in such a position in the first place, for unless I'm very much mistaken, most sensible women would have married Selden a few chapters into the book and dispensed with the rest of Lily's adventures. But that wouldn't have left Wharton with much of a story, would it?

Wharton's first novel suffers from a minor overdose of melodrama and may be a bit too heavy on descriptions of parties and social events for those of us who don't particularly care about such things, but in all other regards it's a triumph. As a depiction of an era and of changing upper-class society, it's as powerful as anything Wharton ever wrote, although the social satire isn't as scathing as it is in The Custom of the Country. As a portrayal of a tragic heroine, it is quite simply superb. For all her blindness and ineffectiveness, Lily is an excellent protagonist -- witty, socially astute, an asset to any assembly. If she has a spectacular talent for making bad decisions, it only serves to make her more likeable. For that is the amazing thing about The House of Mirth -- the reader never quite loses his sympathy for Lily, despite her obvious flaws. Wharton may satirise the society that has produced Lily, but she never goes so far as to satirise Lily herself, which makes her fate all the more tragic.

The House of Mirth may not be Wharton’s best novel (I think I prefer both The Age of Innocence and The Custom of the Country), but like all her work, it's eminently readable -- beautifully written and full of acute social and psychological insights (particularly into Lily's position). If it's only for people who like flawed heroines and tragic endings, so be it.

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 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. "The House of Mirth" is definitely a novel that shows how destructive and cruel the patriarchy has been for women. To quote from The Awl, "Lawrence Selden ... kills Lily Bart as surely as if he held a gun to her head."

Between "House of Mirth" and "The Age of Innocence," Edith Wharton is one of my favorite American writers, and I'm looking forward to reading the rest of her works. 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."

"Half the trouble in life is caused by pretending there isn't any."

"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 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!"

"Why do we call all our generous ideas illusions, and the mean ones truths?"

"One of the surprises of her unoccupied state was the discovery that time, when it is left to itself and no definite demands are made on it, cannot be trusted to move at any recognized pace."

Edith Wharton's House of Mirth is, I believe, her at her consummate best. The character of Lily Bart is complex, she is a moral battleground, she is both distinctly a product of her Golden Age society and paradoxically a modern heroine, a timeless heroine; she is both hero and villain, she is both to be pitied and hated; she is always ambiguous. Whatever Jonathan Franzen may say about Edith Wharton's unloveliness, what he has to say about her characters is not irrelevant: they are tortured beauties, and their beauty provokes a complex feeling of pity and envy. The fall of beauty is always tragedy, although beauty is always mortal, always fleeting, always dying. To be beautiful is to be graced with an innate advantage, something which can never be borrowed, bought, or imitated by one who does not have it. But though beauty is a gift, literature reminds us, Edith Wharton reminds us, that it is also a curse: that beauty is often bought on the credit of a pound of flesh, and that no technicalities can save the licentious spender of that gift.

We meet Lily Bart as she is already aging out of the lily-white beauty of her youth. She is a shallow woman, she is a spendthrift and she is reckless, she is looking for a husband who will save her from the imminent disaster of her fall from grace. In a society which draws her to vice and then casts her out for her indulgences, Lily is always walking a tightrope between the freedom of joy and the constraint of convention, she has a poor balance. It seems that Lily's life is defined by money, by social power: she pursues men who do not interest her, who she could never love, but who can provide for her excesses. She pursues them doggedly, but at the decisive moment she lets them slip, she makes a move which topples her whole plan, and leaves her lower and farther from her goal than before.

Life is a host of opportunities, and one must constantly flirt with triumph and disaster, for they are inseparable, in fact, they are, for one or the other, often times the same. For Lily, a marriage to Percy Gryce, the wealth Americana collector and her initial prey, is the culmination of this two-faced fate. It would relieve her of her financial and social anxieties, her whims and fancies would be assured, her dresses and hats always of the latest flair and fashion: but, Lily Gryce would prove a disaster, a death, an elegiac epithalamium. Lily's tragedy is that she knows this is true, that she deliberately, though maybe subconsciously, voids this fate, she breaks her own design. She proves a powerfully alive woman, but one who is easily misguided by the pressures and demands of her purse and party lifestyle. And the tragedy, as we see it, is that she is so beautiful, that her death is avoidable, that her ruin is not imminent but that she makes it so. We are torn as readers, rooting for her vice that she might escape the horror of her virtue when it is too late.

n  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.n

We feel from the first that her fate is sealed, despite the vibrations of her virtue. She does not lack strength, nor moral fiber, but she lacks in resolve. Her ambition flies out before her, remains distant, and she feels that she has grabbed it ahold only to find it is not her hope at all, but some gilt-masked horror, and she quickly drops it, fleeing to the next. We know that her greatest hope is in Laurence Selden, but we also know that it is a fate that will escape her, because she will let him escape.

Lily is trapped in a world which is ingenuine, which is obsessed with pretending, and though she loves Selden she must pretend not to care for him, though she loathes Percy Gryce and Mrs. Dorset, she must pretend to adore them. And all this make-believe support is the device of her own destruction, which she enables and feeds. And slowly, she knocks away the supports, her opportunities fall away, and her hopes are drawn in nearer and nearer, her illusions are brought closer and closer to the harsh light of reality. Lily discovers that she is useless; she is like one of Wharton's toy terriers: bred to perfection, to the ideal of beauty but a beauty with foregoes utility, a gilded butterfly: impotent loveliness. She cannot even make a meagre living as a milliner, nor as a societal aide, nor as a happy wife. She has been bred and fluffed to be the unhappy bride of a man who she hates, but who will indulge her like a pet. But this breeding is in defiance to her strong character, her passion for life. Lily is the lone living creature in the gold and chintz puppet theatre of silhouettes and phantoms. Drawn and repulsed by this theatre, she plays the parts of heroine and villain in her own tragedy, falling prey to both her vices and her virtues. For both hero and villain, success requires consistency: Lily is only consistent in her variance.

"The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth." The house of mirth is the gold-faced and hollow society which dazzles, tempts and torments Lily. Her heart is a fool precisely because of its wisdom: she knows that her goal is vain, that it is empty, that it is only and image, but she pursues it: she steels her heart to the vacuity of her hopes, makes her heart a court-jester for the laughing and prodding of her privileged friends, and abandons in the process her only true love, her only true chance of happiness.

Another classic. Why oh why do these appeal to me so. The writing is exquisite is all I can say. "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." Pg 11 and I was hooked.

"But those who are determined to be rich fall into temptation and a snare and many senseless and harmful desires that plunge men into destruction and ruin. For the love of money is a root of all sorts of injurious things, and by reaching out for this love some have been led astray from the faith and have stabbed themselves all over with many pains." –1 Tim. 6:9, 10

Over ten years ago I watched the movie adaptation of The House of Mirth. I didn't remember much of the plot going into the book except the ending, which was tragic, so it was interesting to read about Lily's descent in society. I haven't reacted so strongly to a character's bad choices in a long time. Sometimes I did need to put my book down, walk around and then come back for more. Like a train wreck, I couldn't look away from Lily and her plight.

Throughout most of the book, I wasn't particularly fond of Lily.

n  "Ah, no-she was too intelligent not to be honest with herself. She knew that she hated dinginess as much as her mother had hated it, and to her last breath she meant to fight against it, dragging herself up again and again above its flood till she gained the bright pinnacles of success which presented such a slippery surface to her clutch."n

Her preference for wealth, prosperity and social advancement made me sick! But the more I read, the more I was sucked into this environment that felt pretty stifling, especially for a woman, who was valued for her beauty, charm and connections instead of the person she was inside. Ugh. How sickening! To witness her again and again trying to clutch at "success" and see it slip from her grasp was so disheartening. But something about her character always rang true to me: that of someone trying to do the right thing imperfectly. It's almost as if even she didn't completely buy into the hypocrisy of New York society, even if she so desperately longed to be a part of it. Those were her redeeming qualities in my estimation.

I loved how Wharton crafted this novel. Going back I was able to see so much forshadowing, and am determined to re-read this some time in the future. I'm sure I will glean even more from its pages then.

SYNOPSIS:
Lily Bart is a well-born but impoverished young woman, trying desperately to maintain her footing in the New York elite society, where money talks louder than just about anything. She relies on her rich friends for everything, and, at 29, has let a few too many "decent" proposals pass her by - and now she is doing everything she can to find a husband who can give her what she wants: wealth, status, a permanent place in the society she has grown up with. Unfortunately her high standards and hesitance about marrying without love tip her into a downward spiral that ultimately ends in tragedy.

"The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth." Ecclesiastes 7:4
Wharton took the title of her book from the above verse, and it says a lot about her perspective of New York high society. Lily Bart is a "cog in the great machine called life," useless once her part in it is played out. I feel that there is so much to learn in these pages; the story of Lily's fall is engrossing, infuriating, tantalizing. We understand her because we *are* her. How do our choices affect the course of our lives? What matters most? These are the questions we all must ask.
I remember really hating Lily the first time I read this book - hating her for the choices she made, for how she blindly hurt the ones who cared for her - but this time I just pitied her. Though she made foolish choices, in the moment they made sense to her. Selfish, yes. Evil, no. Ultimately, this book is beautifully and masterfully written, revealing the cracks in human nature when afflicted with shame.

If you spent the entire time reading this book just WISHING Lily wouldn't be so daft and would make better decisions for her life, read Wharton's Glimpses of the Moon. She wrote it as a sort of experiment - what if two people in the same social situations as Lily and Selden were to actually make the choice to love each other in spite of it all? A great read to follow HoM.