The protagonist and the world of The House of Mirth

The House of Mirth has an interesting premise. If Jane Austen writes about courtship and a woman’s search for the right one to marry, and George Eliot, in Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda, writes about bad marriages and women’s suffering, Edith Wharton’s novel is about a woman in New York who wants to marry for money but has fears and hesitates to commit herself to a husband. In her search for freedom and happiness, Lily Bart makes some blunder and gets herself tangled in scandals. 
Reading The House of Mirth, I can’t help feeling that Edith Wharton doesn’t like people very much. The world she depicts is a world of such trivial, shallow, small-minded, petty, jealous, and hypocritical people. Her own contempt can be felt on the page. 

“How dreary and trivial these people were! Lily reviewed them with a scornful impatience: Carry Fisher, with her shoulders, her eyes, her divorces, her general air of embodying a "spicy paragraph"; young Silverton, who had meant to live on proof-reading and write an epic, and who now lived on his friends and had become critical of truffles; Alice Wetherall, an animated visiting-list, whose most fervid convictions turned on the wording of invitations and the engraving of dinner-cards; Wetherall, with his perpetual nervous nod of acquiescence, his air of agreeing with people before he knew what they were saying; Jack Stepney, with his confident smile and anxious eyes, half way between the sheriff and an heiress; Gwen Van Osburgh, with all the guileless confidence of a young girl who has always been told that there is no one richer than her father.
Lily smiled at her classification of her friends. How different they 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.” (B.1, Ch.5)  

This is a world of people who have lots of money but little to do, so they spend time going shopping, going to parties, playing bridge, having affairs, watching and judging others, then gossiping and spreading rumours. These people collect books for their collection, not for reading. These people marry for money, then have affairs. These people use others for their little scheme then discard them, or get back at someone for every little thing that makes them feel slighted and insulted. It is a shallow, materialistic, and money-obsessed world, and under Edith Wharton’s pen, it is claustrophobic. 
Placed next to the narrow, gossipy world Jane Austen depicts, this one feels even more spiteful and malicious.  
Mrs Peniston, who takes on Lily after her parents’ death, isn’t kind: 

“It would have been impossible for Mrs. Peniston to be heroic on a desert island, but with the eyes of her little world upon her she took a certain pleasure in her act.” (B.1, Ch.3) 

Even Gerty Farish, Lawrence Selden’s cousin and the only one who seems nice so far in the story, is jealous of Lily. 
What about Lawrence Selden? The man that Lily loves? 

“There had been a germ of truth in his declaration to Gerty Farish that he had never wanted to marry a "nice" girl: the adjective connoting, in his cousin's vocabulary, certain utilitarian qualities which are apt to preclude the luxury of charm. Now it had been Selden's fate to have a charming mother: her graceful portrait, all smiles and Cashmere, still emitted a faded scent of the undefinable quality. His father was the kind of man who delights in a charming woman: who quotes her, stimulates her, and keeps her perennially charming. Neither one of the couple cared for money, but their disdain of it took the form of always spending a little more than was prudent. If their house was shabby, it was exquisitely kept; if there were good books on the shelves there were also good dishes on the table. Selden senior had an eye for a picture, his wife an understanding of old lace; and both were so conscious of restraint and discrimination in buying that they never quite knew how it was that the bills mounted up.” (B.1, Ch.14) 

In short, he isn’t much different from Lily. At the same time, he also seems very cynical, and jokes about everything, perhaps to hide his true feelings. But maybe it’s too early to say, maybe my view of Selden will change later on. 
As I ponder over these trivial and shallow people, I can’t help wondering why I love Madame Bovary even though the characters in it are all philistines and hypocrites, but the world of The House of Mirth feels so claustrophobic, trivial, and dreary to me. Is it only because of Flaubert’s great prose? There must be something else. I suppose it’s the sense of sadness in Madame Bovary (also in Sentimental Education); in The House of Mirth, I only see disdain, there’s nothing beyond it. 
Perhaps I shouldn’t be writing—I’m on chapter 15. Things can change. Anything is possible. 
At the moment, I don’t like Lily Bart. A main character’s likeability or relatability is not a criterion of literary merit, but personally I don’t like her. I don’t like her choices, and don’t sympathise with her. 
Reviews of The House of Mirth usually talk about women as consumer items in society, and say that Lily’s trapped by rules and conventions. There’s no denying that women’s options are limited in New York in the early 20th century. But she’s not an innocent victim. Her aunt accepts her, gives her a home and an income, she chooses to play bridge and gets into debt. She wants to marry for money but looks down on everyone, and neglects Percy Pryce. She chooses to come to Gus Trenor. 
As I said quite a few times before, I have a rather strong dislike of stupid women. People generally have “rules”: a) don’t expect anything for free; b) don’t get involved with married people; c) stay away from your friend’s partner/ spouse—Lily Bart violates them all. Even if I empathise with her situation, having expensive tastes but little money, and even if I understand her need for a secure income but dislike of the prospects of a dull marriage, these are the choices she makes, and quite frankly, they are stupid choices. 
My judgment of her decisions and actions affects my reading of the book. 
This is the passage after the humiliating scene at the Trenors’: 

“But with the turn of the wheels reaction came, and shuddering darkness closed on her. "I can't think—I can't think," she moaned, and leaned her head against the rattling side of the cab. She seemed a stranger to herself, or rather there were two selves in her, the one she had always known, and a new abhorrent being to which it found itself chained. She had once picked up, in a house where she was staying, a translation of the Eumenides, and her imagination had been seized by the high terror of the scene where Orestes, in the cave of the oracle, finds his implacable huntresses asleep, and snatches an hour's repose. Yes, the Furies might sometimes sleep, but they were there, always there in the dark corners, and now they were awake and the iron clang of their wings was in her brain … She opened her eyes and saw the streets passing—the familiar alien streets. All she looked on was the same and yet changed. There was a great gulf fixed between today and yesterday. Everything in the past seemed simple, natural, full of daylight—and she was alone in a place of darkness and pollution.—Alone! It was the loneliness that frightened her. Her eyes fell on an illuminated clock at a street corner, and she saw that the hands marked the half hour after eleven. Only half-past eleven—there were hours and hours left of the night! And she must spend them alone, shuddering sleepless on her bed. Her soft nature recoiled from this ordeal, which had none of the stimulus of conflict to goad her through it. Oh, the slow cold drip of the minutes on her head! She had a vision of herself lying on the black walnut bed—and the darkness would frighten her, and if she left the light burning the dreary details of the room would brand themselves forever on her brain. She had always hated her room at Mrs. Peniston's—its ugliness, its impersonality, the fact that nothing in it was really hers. To a torn heart uncomforted by human nearness a room may open almost human arms, and the being to whom no four walls mean more than any others, is, at such hours, expatriate everywhere.
Lily had no heart to lean on. Her relation with her aunt was as superficial as that of chance lodgers who pass on the stairs. But even had the two been in closer contact, it was impossible to think of Mrs. Peniston's mind as offering shelter or comprehension to such misery as Lily's. As the pain that can be told is but half a pain, so the pity that questions has little healing in its touch. What Lily craved was the darkness made by enfolding arms, the silence which is not solitude, but compassion holding its breath.” (B.1, Ch.13) 

It is superbly written. I can’t help recognising Wharton’s talent. The passage is indeed very, very good. 
But part of me thinks, why is Lily shocked? How does she expect Gus Trenor to keep giving her money, or “tips” as he calls it, without wanting anything in return? 
Maybe I’m harsh. Let’s see if I’m going to see Lily Bart differently when I’ve finished the book.