The House of Mirth: Lily Bart’s dignity

Spoiler alert: people who haven’t read The House of Mirth are warned that I shall discuss details of the plot, including the ending. 


In my previous post, I make a strong statement that Edith Wharton didn’t want readers to sympathise with Lily Bart—I was expecting someone to disagree with me. Nobody did. So now I’m arguing with myself. 
I wrote about Lily Bart’s choices, but they’re the choices before the disgrace (Bertha Dorset’s humiliation, and the disinheritance). What about the choices she makes after the disgrace? 
Readers should probably ask: should she have done what she did? what would I have done? (It’s not about identifying with the character, but about considering the ethics of her choices, and other choices she could have made). 
Let’s look at the situation: Bertha Dorset kicks her off the yacht, humiliating her in front of everyone, and playing the role of a jealous wife who can’t take it anymore. Her husband does nothing, Lily gets entangled in a scandal. Then she makes some more blunders, and is disinherited—getting a legacy that is only a bit more than the amount she owes Gus Trenor. People in her class start to desert her, including her friends (except for the poor Gerty Farish, and the scandalous Carry Fisher). She becomes disgraced, an outcast. 
Lily faces 3 choices: 

• a) Bear witness against Bertha Dorset, using Bertha’s letters to Selden, help George Dorset in the divorce case 
• b) Threaten Bertha with the letters, regain her “friendship” and connection, get accepted again in society, then marry Rosedale for money and social standing 
• c) Do nothing, accept her fate 

She does nothing. 
Instead, she accepts Carry Fisher’s suggestion to stay with the Gormers: 

“The Gormer milieu represented a social outskirt which Lily had always fastidiously avoided; but it struck her, now that she was in it, as only a flamboyant copy of her own world, a caricature approximating the real thing as the "society play" approaches the manners of the drawing-room.” (B.2, ch.5)    

This choice, to Gerty Farish and Lawrence Selden, is a mistake, because it would constantly remind Lily of the social circle of which she’s no longer a part. As Gerty realises, “Lily was not of those to whom privation teaches the unimportance of what they have lost.” (B.2, ch.8) 
Then when Bertha Dorset starts to have her hold on Mattie Gormer and undermine their friendship, Lily leaves, and starts working as a secretary for Mrs Hatch, a disreputable woman who wants to get in high society. 

“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.” (ibid.) 

As Lily becomes, indeed, lower and lower (after leaving Mrs Hatch, she comes to a milliner’s for training), one might question her choice, and wonder why she doesn’t make a different one. The weapon is in her hands.  
Consider all the options again—the 1st one might be satisfying, but insecure, and involve siding with George Dorset. Lily doesn’t want to be involved in the Dorset drama again, I doubt she wants to fight Bertha. She also doesn’t want to help that weak, pathetic, and selfish George Dorset. 

“She found him, on the first Sunday after her return to town […] he asked only to be allowed to sit for half an hour and talk of anything she liked. In reality, as she knew, he had but one subject: himself and his wretchedness; and it was the need of her sympathy that had drawn him back. But he began with a pretence of questioning her about herself, and as she replied, she saw that, for the first time, a faint realization of her plight penetrated the dense surface of his self-absorption. […] The fibres of sympathy were nearly atrophied in him, but he was suffering so intensely that he had a faint glimpse of what other sufferings might mean—and, as she perceived, an almost simultaneous perception of the way in which her particular misfortunes might serve him.” (B.2, ch.6)  

The man is weak and pathetic; he has no backbone, no self-respect. He does nothing when Lily’s humiliated in front of others and thrown away. He does nothing when she’s socially disgraced, and in need of help. In fact, he has his share in the scandal because he lets Bertha know that he knows about the affair but does nothing, and allows Bertha to take the first step, to save herself. 
George Dorset only comes to Lily when he feels wretched and wants her help in the divorce. He may even want to marry her afterwards. It is understandable that Lily doesn’t want to have anything to do with it. 
Above all, she doesn’t want to use the letters, because they’re sent to Lawrence Selden. It is partly love, partly pride. Selden is worthless, even despicable—he speaks of loving her, but never asks to marry her; he runs away whenever she’s in trouble, and neglects her when society abandons her. By sparing him, she proves herself more dignified, more heroic. 
This is also why Lily doesn’t want to use the letters to threaten Bertha and regain her place in high society. Seen from different perspectives, the 2nd option appears to be the best option, because she shouldn’t be discarded like a pawn, and, as she herself knows, she can’t survive outside her social circle. If Bertha doesn’t pay for her deceit, at least she should be frightened and kept in place. By marrying Rosedale, Lily can regain her former position, have money, pay off the debt to Gus Trenor, regain connection with everyone, especially her friend Judy Trenor, have social standing, and have power over Bertha Dorset. 
Instead, she accepts defeat. I suppose she’s tired of fighting, and sick of that world. As Rosedale puts it: 

“Everybody knows what Mrs. Dorset is, and her best friends wouldn't believe her on oath where their own interests were concerned; but as long as they're out of the row it's much easier to follow her lead than to set themselves against it, and you've simply been sacrificed to their laziness and selfishness.” (B.2, ch.7)  

It is a world of hypocrites and false friends, a world where people use each other and discard those who are no longer of use, a world where people have neither feeling nor principle and only care about their own interests. Lily knows she can’t survive outside it, but no longer wants to be part of it and its falsehoods. 
In her self-respect, Lily doesn’t want to owe anyone, which is why she’s determined to return money to Gus Trenor, even though she needs the money from the legacy. She rejects Rosedale, which can be interpreted in multiple ways, but I think part of it is that she knows it’s just another transaction of sorts, nobody wants to help her unless it’s also useful to themselves (except for Gerty Farish), and she’s tired of being used. 
Her resignation is because of the awareness that she has herself to blame, for the choices she made which led to the disgrace. 
Most importantly, her resignation is a rejection of the values of the world that abandoned her, and its falsehoods. I thought Lily Bart was similar to Emma Bovary—she isn’t. She has been brought up to chase after comfort and luxury, but now she chooses dignity and self-respect. 
I can’t help thinking of what Azar Nafisi wrote about Washington Square and Henry James’s characters: 

“Only Catherine has the capacity to change and mature, although here, as in so many of James’s novels, our heroine pays a dear price for this change. And she does take a form of revenge on both her father and her suitor: she refuses to give in to them. In the end, she has her triumph. 
If we can call it that. One can believe James’s claim to an “imagination of disaster”; so many of his protagonists are unhappy in the end, and yet he gives them an aura of victory. It is because these characters depend to such a high degree on their own sense of integrity that for them, victory has nothing to do with happiness. It has more to do with a settling within oneself, a movement inward that makes them whole. Their reward is not happiness—a word that is central in Austen’s novels but is seldom used in James’s universe. What James’s characters gain is self-respect…” (Reading Lolita in Tehran) 

This is also true for Lily Bart. Throughout the story, especially as she tries to marry for money, Lily is filled with self-disgust. The terms “disgust”, “self-disgust”, “self-loathing” keep appearing throughout the entire novel. But now, in her defeat, Lily triumphs—she has her self-respect.    
This is a great, masterful novel. Edith Wharton earlier makes it very difficult to like Lily. But no one can leave The House of Mirth without feeling a profound sadness, and seeing Lily in a different light—she has her dignity at last.