Reading 2 Edith Wharton novels together can be a bit dreary and lead to some infuriating moments, because of the shallow rich people she portrays, and because of her misanthropy. But reading The Custom of the Country right after The House of Mirth can be interesting.
I’m currently on chapter 12—Undine’s honeymoon with Ralph Marvell. The main character is called Undine Spragg, from Apex (she is U. S. of A.), a spoilt, selfish, shallow, philistine, and mercenary young woman of unspecified age. The blurb of my copy says “Undine Spragg is the most repellent heroine we have encountered in many a long day”. A few glances here and there also tell me that Undine is a lot worse than Lily Bart, and has been compared to Kim Kardashian and called a female Trump. Fun stuff.
The introduction, written by Stephen Orgel, mentions that in the novel, Undine will have 3 marriages.
Reading this one right after The House of Mirth is interesting, because I’m starting to have the theory that it is a response to the earlier novel. If The House of Mirth is about women’s limited options, about how a woman (Lily Bart) is crushed by society when refusing to play its game, The Custom of the Country would be about a different kind of woman (Undine), who would play the game and use the system to her advantage, and get everything she wants.
I also have the theory that The Custom of the Country is Edith Wharton asking, what if Lily had married all the men—Lawrence Selden, Percy Pryce, and Simon Rosedale? At the moment, I know that Ralph Marvell is not Lawrence Selden, but he also studies law, reads books, doesn’t have much money, and can’t satisfy Undine’s thirst for extravagance. I happen to know that Undine’s 3rd husband would be her ex bf, Elmer Moffatt, who is not Jewish, but he’s also a calculating, ruthless social climber like Simon Rosedale. I don’t know who the 2nd husband will be—let’s hope that he’s similar to Percy Pryce to make my theory work.
But all that is for later. At the moment, Edith Wharton seems to come close to George Eliot in subject and theme (though not in style), as I read about the unhappy marriage between Undine and Ralph Marvell. They are incompatible.
“He had said a moment before, without conscious exaggeration, that her presence made any place the one place; yet how willingly would he have consented to share in such a life as she was leading before their marriage? […] An imagination like his, peopled with such varied images and associations, fed by so many currents from the long stream of human experience, could hardly picture the bareness of the small half-lit place in which his wife's spirit fluttered. Her mind was as destitute of beauty and mystery as the prairie school-house in which she had been educated; and her ideals seemed to Ralph as pathetic as the ornaments made of corks and cigar-bands with which her infant hands had been taught to adorn it. He was beginning to understand this, and learning to adapt himself to the narrow compass of her experience. The task of opening new windows in her mind was inspiring enough to give him infinite patience; and he would not yet own to himself that her pliancy and variety were imitative rather than spontaneous.” (Ch.11)
Ralph marries Undine for her beauty, and thinks she’s an ideal woman, the same way Lydgate chooses to marry Rosamond Vincy. But naively, he thinks she can change.
“[Mrs Shallum] saw at once Undine's value as a factor in her scheme, and the two formed an alliance on which Ralph refrained from shedding the cold light of depreciation. It was a point of honour with him not to seem to disdain any of Undine's amusements: the noisy interminable picnics, the hot promiscuous balls, the concerts, bridge-parties and theatricals which helped to disguise the difference between the high Alps and Paris or New York. He told himself that there is always a Narcissus-element in youth, and that what Undine really enjoyed was the image of her own charm mirrored in the general admiration. With her quick perceptions and adaptabilities she would soon learn to care more about the quality of the reflecting surface; and meanwhile no criticism of his should mar her pleasure.” (Ch.12)
So mistaken.
Ralph has a more sensitive mind. Look at this:
“As he lay there, fragments of past states of emotion, fugitive felicities of thought and sensation, rose and floated on the surface of his thoughts. It was one of those moments when the accumulated impressions of life converge on heart and brain, elucidating, enlacing each other, in a mysterious confusion of beauty. He had had glimpses of such a state before, of such mergings of the personal with the general life that one felt one's self a mere wave on the wild stream of being, yet thrilled with a sharper sense of individuality than can be known within the mere bounds of the actual. But now he knew the sensation in its fulness, and with it came the releasing power of language. Words were flashing like brilliant birds through the boughs overhead; he had but to wave his magic wand to have them flutter down to him. Only they were so beautiful up there, weaving their fantastic flights against the blue, that it was pleasanter, for the moment, to watch them and let the wand lie.” (Ch.11)
I didn’t need to share that to demonstrate my point, but it’s so good so why not? Same with this passage:
“… Siena grew vocal with that shrill diversity of sounds that breaks, on summer nights, from every cleft of the masonry in old Italian towns. Then the moon rose, unfolding depth by depth the lines of the antique land; and Ralph, leaning against an old brick parapet, and watching each silver-blue remoteness disclose itself between the dark masses of the middle distance, felt his spirit enlarged and pacified. For the first time, as his senses thrilled to the deep touch of beauty, he asked himself if out of these floating and fugitive vibrations he might not build something concrete and stable, if even such dull common cares as now oppressed him might not become the motive power of creation. If he could only, on the spot, do something with all the accumulated spoils of the last months—something that should both put money into his pocket and harmony into the rich confusion of his spirit! "I'll write—I'll write: that must be what the whole thing means," he said to himself, with a vague clutch at some solution which should keep him a little longer hanging half-way down the steep of disenchantment.
He would have stayed on, heedless of time, to trace the ramifications of his idea in the complex beauty of the scene, but for the longing to share his mood with Undine”. (ibid.)
Even though Ralph can’t write anything (perhaps he’s not much of a writer), it’s so much better to enter his mind after pages and pages of suffocation as we were following Undine. She’s a little philistine. She barely reads, goes to the gallery then forgets everything she has seen, then goes to the opera only to use her opera-glass to watch other people, and is also “insensible to the soft spell of the evening” (ibid.). She is vacuous.
In the 1st marriage, Undine marries Ralph for his name and gets disappointed as he doesn’t have as much money as expected, whereas he gets disillusioned because of their incompatibility. The point, of course, is that she uses marriage to get forward and move higher in society, and that she doesn’t have the intelligence and sensitivity to understand Ralph.
But it’s certainly nice to take a break from Undine’s empty, opportunistic mind by entering Ralph’s. Undine is unbearable.
1/ The House of Mirth has a range of interesting male characters.
Gus Trenor and George Dorset are well-drawn, especially the latter. When was the last time I encountered such a weak, pathetic, and spineless man in fiction? The way he stays up all night to wait for his wife returning from another man, then collapses and feels sorry for himself, or the way he comes to ask Lily for help, after doing nothing to help or defend her, is so pathetic, and it’s all so vivid.
The most fascinating male character in the book is Simon Rosedale, the Jew. I’m aware that Edith Wharton’s description of him is tinted with anti-Semitism, but in spite of it, the character is complex and becomes more humane throughout the story. He might be said to be better than most of the people in the book (apart from Gerty Farish).
Look at the scene where Lily Bart, after the disgrace, hopes Rosedale still wants to marry her:
“He met this with a steady gaze of his small stock-taking eyes, which made her feel herself no more than some superfine human merchandise. "I believe it does in novels; but I'm certain it don't in real life. You know that as well as I do: if we're speaking the truth, let's speak the whole truth. Last year I was wild to marry you, and you wouldn't look at me: this year—well, you appear to be willing. Now, what has changed in the interval? Your situation, that's all. Then you thought you could do better; now——"
"You think you can?" broke from her ironically.
"Why, yes, I do: in one way, that is."” (B.2, ch.7)
He explains in more detail. Then:
“She received this with a look from which all tinge of resentment had faded. After the tissue of social falsehoods in which she had so long moved it was refreshing to step into the open daylight of an avowed expediency.” (ibid.)
Out of all the characters, including Lawrence Selden, Rosedale is the most honest. He’s a social climber, but he’s perfectly frank about who he is and what he wants. Rosedale’s brutally honest when proposing marriage to Lily, presenting it as a transaction, a win-win situation, without attempting to sugar-coat it in corny expressions. He’s brutally honest when rejecting her, but also presents to her the different options and how the choice he persuades her to take would benefit them both.
Place him next to Selden—Selden may, in some way, understand Lily better because he, up to a point, still believes in a nobility in her, whereas Rosedale sees everything as a transaction and doesn’t understand that Lily is sick of high society and doesn’t want to blackmail Bertha Dorset. However, Rosedale is the one who tries to help and provides with practical solutions, the one who tries to and can save her from destitution, the one who is open and frank but also shows a tenderness when Lily’s reduced to living in a boarding house and working at a milliner’s. Selden often hides behind a light-hearted tone, and runs away.
Of course, I’m not saying that Lily should listen to Rosedale’s suggestion and marry him—he’s not right for her. I’m just saying that he loves her, and tries to help, in his way, whereas Selden runs away like a coward.
2/ I wonder why The Great Gatsby is much more acclaimed than The House of Mirth.
Both novels are about a character chasing false values, getting disillusioned, and having a tragic end. Both novels dissect the rich and explore their hypocrisy and rottenness, except that Edith Wharton has a colder, harder tone, her characters are more calculating and ruthless, treating each other like disposables. The House of Mirth, in addition, examines the conditions of women, having limited options and being brought up to be ornamental.
I used to have a Fitzgerald phase, but The House of Mirth is a greater novel, and Edith Wharton’s writing is much better.
3/ It’s always nice to discover another writer to like.
I’m reading The Custom of the Country, another book by Edith Wharton.
- Best actress:
Cynthia Erivo in Harriet
Scarlett Johansson in Marriage Story
Saoirse Ronan in Little Women
Charlize Theron in Bombshell
Renée Zellweger in Judy
My prediction: Renée Zellweger, because she has been winning other awards.
My wish: none, because I’ve only seen 1 of these films.
Winner: Renée Zellweger in Judy
- Best supporting actress:
Kathy Bates in Richard Jewell
Laura Dern in Marriage Story
Scarlett Johansson in Jojo Rabbit
Florence Pugh in Little Women
Margot Robbie in Bombshell
My prediction: Laura Dern, because the performance is highly praised and has got her other awards—I haven’t seen Marriage Story.
My wish: Florence Pugh, because she has a striking performance in Little Women and makes Amy a worthy rival for Jo. I think most people would find her speech about marriage as an economy proposition very memorable. However, I haven’t seen Marriage Story, so Laura Dern might be excellent in it, Florence Pugh is young and would have other opportunities if she doesn’t win.
Winner: Laura Dern in Marriage Story
- Best actor:
Antonio Banderas in Pain and Glory
Leonardo DiCaprio in Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood
Adam Driver in Marriage Story
Joaquin Phoenix in Joker
Jonathan Pryce in The Two Popes
My prediction: Joaquin Phoenix, because he’s among the best actors of his generation, and as Joker, he’s brilliant in an otherwise overhyped film.
My wish: anyone except Joaquin Phoenix, because I don’t want to hear another shitty speech from him after the Golden Globes and BAFTAs and who knows what else. His speech at the BAFTAs was full of shit; awards should be given to the best works. People of colour should be given opportunities to enter the film industry, make films, get roles, and tell their stories; they should have the opportunities to compete. When it comes to awards, do these people know what it means when they keep pushing for diversity over quality and talent? It’s insulting to non-white actors and filmmakers—if it keeps going, at some point whenever a non-white person gets an award, others will say that they get it for diversity, for a quota, not because they deserve it.
In the case of Joaquin Phoenix, I don’t think he really cares—for a long time there was controversy surrounding Joker, the film was accused of racism, sexism, misogyny, ableism, “white male rage”, etc. so he says these things to make himself look better, then comfortably accepts the award and changes nothing. If he feels so bad, why does he not give it to someone who he thinks deserves the award more? Why not give it away? Why not refuse to accept it, or refuse to turn up?
Winner: Joaquin Phoenix in Joker. Guess what he did in the acceptance speech.
- Best supporting actor:
Tom Hanks in A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood
Anthony Hopkins in The Two Popes
Al Pacino in The Irishman
Joe Pesci in The Irishman
Brad Pitt in Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood
My prediction: Brad Pitt, because he has been winning other awards.
My wish: Joe Pesci, because of his cold, subtle, nuanced performance—in The Irishman, he’s much better than both Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. In fact, I don’t know why Al Pacino’s nominated, even though I love him as an actor.
Winner: Brad Pitt in Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood
- Best adapted screenplay:
The Irishman: Screenplay by Steven Zaillian
Jojo Rabbit: Screenplay by Taika Waititi
Joker: Written by Todd Phillips & Scott Silver
Little Women: Written for the screen by Greta Gerwig
The Two Popes: Written by Anthony McCarten
My prediction: Greta Gerwig.
My wish: Greta Gerwig, because her adaptation of Little Women is excellent. See my 2 blog posts about Little Women: comparison to the 1994 film, and defence of the changes to the character of Amy. The metafictional ending is brilliant, and works perfectly well.
Winner: Jojo Rabbit: Screenplay by Taika Waititi
- Best original screenplay:
Knives Out: Written by Rian Johnson
Marriage Story: Written by Noah Baumbach
1917: Written by Sam Mendes & Krysty Wilson-Cairns
Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood: Written by Quentin Tarantino
Parasite: Screenplay by Bong Joon Ho, Han Jin Won; Story by Bong Joon Ho
My prediction: Parasite or Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood.
My wish: Parasite, because it’s very good, and for the film that it is, it is perfect—all the details serve the plot and/or introduce the geography of the house, and everything fits together. Parasite should also win Best editing, for the pacing and rhythm.
I don’t understand why 1917 is nominated—as a film, it is fantastic technically, but the story is thin, there’s barely anything to it.
Winner: Parasite: Screenplay by Bong Joon Ho, Han Jin Won; Story by Bong Joon Ho
- Best picture:
Ford v Ferrari
The Irishman
Jojo Rabbit
Joker
Little Women
Marriage Story
1917
Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood
Parasite
My prediction: 1917
My wish: 1917, because technically it’s impressive, and breath-taking. 1917 should be seen on the big screen. The illusion of the single take is not a gimmick, but a way of drawing the audience in and letting the audience experience the story in real time. I think 1917 has a thin story, and a few details that I find corny, but as a whole, it’s still very impressive. At the beginning, and now and then throughout the film, I kept counting the possible cuts, but later on, I was fully immersed in the story. Emotionally, I felt more watching it than when watching Dunkirk. 1917 should also win Best cinematography and Best production design.
On a side note, I prefer a film that has the illusion of a single take than a film that is actually a single take (e.g. Russian Ark). A film such as Russian Ark is more like a technical challenge than a work of art, it also goes against the strengths of cinema and its most interesting tool, namely editing.
Parasite of course would win Best foreign language film.
Winner: Parasite! Parasite became the 1st film to win both Best picture and Best international feature (previously known as Best foreign language film), after winning Best original screenplay and Best director!
1917 won Best cinematography as expected, as well as Best visual effects and Best sound mixing.
- Best director:
Martin Scorsese—The Irishman
Todd Phillips—Joker
Sam Mendes—1917
Quentin Tarantino—Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood
Bong Joon Ho—Parasite
My prediction: Sam Mendes or Bong Joon Ho.
My wish: Sam Mendes or Bong Joon Ho. Part of me wants Sam Mendes to win because it’s a behemoth task to direct something like 1917. Part of me thinks it should only win Best picture, for the efforts of the entire crew, and thinks that Bong Joon Ho should win for the idea and execution of Parasite—from the pacing and rhythm and the unexpected change of tone, to the details and the way they all fit together.
Winner: Bong Joon Ho—Parasite. Which also means that Parasite got the most Oscars this year. 4.
I picked up The House of Mirth, expecting to like Edith Wharton—her prose seemed good, and her style seemed to match my personal aesthetics. As it turns out, I’m starting to like her, and like to read her other works.
Edith Wharton, probably influenced by Flaubert, Tolstoy, and Henry James, creates complex, multifaceted characters, and presents things as they are, with a cool detachment (even if there’s an underlying misanthropy in the tone). The House of Mirth doesn’t have an intrusive, moralising narrator as in the works of George Eliot, which is good.
I’ve seen people compare her to Henry James (and see her as an inferior James). It’s easy to see why—both write about the American upper class; both are detached; The House of Mirth tells a single story and has a perfect form like the novels of James, i.e. isn’t a “loose baggy monster”; and he’s her mentor. In the previous post, I mentioned a similarity in the idea of victory—victory has nothing to do with happiness, but with self-respect and a sense of dignity.
However, such comparison is unfair, as they’re different. I, for one, am glad that she doesn’t write Jamesian sentences. Wharton’s also more of a visual writer—I can’t imagine James writing about light as she does, for instance.
Above all, The House of Mirth has such depth, and profound sadness.
Take this line:
“Society did not turn away from her, it simply drifted by, preoccupied and inattentive, letting her feel, to the full measure of her humbled pride, how completely she had been the creature of its favour.” (B.2, ch.8)
Or these heart-breaking lines, from Lily Bart herself:
“"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!"” (B.2, ch.12)
Lily’s love for Lawrence Selden is deeply sad and haunting. This is the scene when he comes to talk to her and convince her to leave Mrs Hatch:
“Though she kept the even tone of light intercourse, the question was framed in a way to remind him that his good offices were unsought; and for a moment Selden was checked by it. The situation between them was one which could have been cleared up only by a sudden explosion of feeling; and their whole training and habit of mind were against the chances of such an explosion. Selden's calmness seemed rather to harden into resistance, and Miss Bart's into a surface of glittering irony, as they faced each other from the opposite corners of one of Mrs. Hatch's elephantine sofas.” (B.2, ch.9)
The scene reminds me of the silences in Henry James—the moments where people leave things unsaid.
Then:
“In spite of the moderation of his tone, each word he spoke had the effect of confirming Lily's resistance. The very apprehensions he aroused hardened her against him: she had been on the alert for the note of personal sympathy, for any sign of recovered power over him; and his attitude of sober impartiality, the absence of all response to her appeal, turned her hurt pride to blind resentment of his interference. The conviction that he had been sent by Gerty, and that, whatever straits he conceived her to be in, he would never voluntarily have come to her aid, strengthened her resolve not to admit him a hair's breadth farther into her confidence. However doubtful she might feel her situation to be, she would rather persist in darkness than owe her enlightenment to Selden.” (ibid.)
It is a subtle scene.
Later, at their last meeting:
“Selden continued to stand near her, leaning against the mantelpiece. The tinge of constraint was beginning to be more distinctly perceptible under the friendly ease of his manner. Her self-absorption had not allowed her to perceive it at first; but now that her consciousness was once more putting forth its eager feelers, she saw that her presence was becoming an embarrassment to him. Such a situation can be saved only by an immediate outrush of feeling; and on Selden's side the determining impulse was still lacking.
The discovery did not disturb Lily as it might once have done. She had passed beyond the phase of well-bred reciprocity, in which every demonstration must be scrupulously proportioned to the emotion it elicits, and generosity of feeling is the only ostentation condemned. But the sense of loneliness returned with redoubled force as she saw herself forever shut out from Selden's inmost self. She had come to him with no definite purpose; the mere longing to see him had directed her; but the secret hope she had carried with her suddenly revealed itself in its death-pang.” (B.2, ch.12)
Others might not call him worthless and despicable as I did, but he’s a coward who hides behind a light-hearted, joking tone and runs away in crucial moments. He pushes her away, and she is lonely. Gerty is kind and tender to Lily, but their values are so different that she can’t understand her. Lily is lonely.
“It was no longer, however, from the vision of material poverty that she turned with the greatest shrinking. She had a sense of deeper empoverishment—of an inner destitution compared to which outward conditions dwindled into insignificance. It was indeed miserable to be poor—to look forward to a shabby, anxious middle-age, leading by dreary degrees of economy and self-denial to gradual absorption in the dingy communal existence of the boarding-house. But there was something more miserable still—it was the clutch of solitude at her heart, the sense of being swept like a stray uprooted growth down the heedless current of the years. That was the feeling which possessed her now—the feeling of being something rootless and ephemeral, mere spin-drift of the whirling surface of existence, without anything to which the poor little tentacles of self could cling before the awful flood submerged them. And as she looked back she saw that there had never been a time when she had had any real relation to life. Her parents too had been rootless, blown hither and thither on every wind of fashion, without any personal existence to shelter them from its shifting gusts.” (B.2, ch.13)
That’s a wonderful passage.
Throughout the novel, Edith Wharton has the same detachment, but in Book 2, mostly after Lily Bart’s disgrace, Lily becomes more likeable and admirable—she becomes more aware, and there’s a very slight, very subtle shift in the tone, particularly when her values start to change.
I like that before letting her die, Wharton lets her see a woman from Gerty’s Girls’ Club. Lily has saved her by giving her money to go to the hospital, so now, before her death, she knows she has done some good.
The meeting with her and the baby also makes Lily realise something she never knew before about life:
“All the men and women she knew were like atoms whirling away from each other in some wild centrifugal dance: her first glimpse of the continuity of life had come to her that evening in Nettie Struther's kitchen.
The poor little working-girl who had found strength to gather up the fragments of her life, and build herself a shelter with them, seemed to Lily to have reached the central truth of existence. It was a meagre enough life, on the grim edge of poverty, with scant margin for possibilities of sickness or mischance, but it had the frail audacious permanence of a bird's nest built on the edge of a cliff—a mere wisp of leaves and straw, yet so put together that the lives entrusted to it may hang safely over the abyss.” (ibid.)
The House of Mirth is a profound book. Wharton achieves something remarkable here: she creates a superficial, selfish, and frivolous character, and now and then seems to “make sure” that readers don’t sympathise with her, but gradually gives her depth and strength, and turns her into such a tragic, heroic figure. The final chapters are haunting.
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.
The House of Mirth is about Lily Bart, a New York socialite who wants to marry for money but hesitates to commit, unable to choose between money and love (for Lawrence Selden), and whilst wavering, makes some blunders. Ultimately, she’s ruined by a scandal.
Any reader might consider the ethics of Lily’s choices and actions, and wonder “Would I have done the same?”.
The interesting part is that, I’ve realised, Edith Wharton doesn’t want readers to sympathise with Lily Bart.
From the beginning, it’s clear that, as with Anna Karenina and Emma Bovary, her personality would cause her own downfall. She doesn’t have money, but has expensive tastes; she wants money, and knows that her only option is to marry a rich man, but can’t commit. Lily can neither reconcile with her love of comfort and luxury, nor reconcile with her own lack of money and need for a mercenary marriage. As Carry Fisher nicely puts it, “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” (B.2, ch.1).
The contradictions, of course, give Lily Bart complexity and humanity—after all, it’s a critique of society that women’s options are so limited that the only way to be rich is to marry into money.
But she also makes choices—bad choices. As I wrote before, Lily chooses to play bridge and get into debt, despite her aunt’s disapproval and her own dependence on her aunt, Mrs Peniston. She chooses to ask for money, or “tips”, from her friend’s husband Gus Trenor. She lets herself be seen with him, and gives the small-minded people around something to gossip about. The gossip involving Gus Trenor becomes a fatal element when she later becomes entangled in the Dorsets drama.
There may be people who argue for her, citing individual freedom and all that, and think I’m harsh. However, Lily Bart is in a situation where her father was ruined and both her parents are dead, she is dependent on her aunt, who gives her an income and lets her buy dresses, jewellery, and go to dinners and parties, without controlling or watching her. See it from Mrs Peniston’s point of view—her anger is justifiable, her reasoning makes perfect sense, why should she give her niece money to play cards? Of course the aunt doesn’t know Lily asks for money in order to pay back Gus Trenor, but she takes money from him because of gambling debt and other luxuries.
Throughout the novel, Edith Wharton makes it very hard to like and sympathise with Lily Bart, because she is shallow, frivolous, thoughtless, sometimes even ungrateful; she is a bad judge of character, and makes bad choices; and she looks down on everyone. The only person she seems to respect is Lawrence Selden—otherwise, she sees everyone as dingy, including her aunt, and is unkind to Gerty Ferish, the only person who is kind to her.
Someone who sees herself as mentally superior and despises everyone is bad enough—in her case, when she’s not particularly better in any way (except the awareness that high society is hypocritical and rotten, including herself), it is insufferable.
Look at this passage:
“Lily's taste of beneficence had wakened in her a momentary appetite for well-doing. […]
But it is one thing to live comfortably with the abstract conception of poverty, another to be brought in contact with its human embodiments. Lily had never conceived of these victims of fate otherwise than in the mass. That the mass was composed of individual lives, innumerable separate centres of sensation, with her own eager reachings for pleasure, her own fierce revulsions from pain—that some of these bundles of feeling were clothed in shapes not so unlike her own, with eyes meant to look on gladness, and young lips shaped for love—this discovery gave Lily one of those sudden shocks of pity that sometimes decentralize a life. Lily's nature was incapable of such renewal: she could feel other demands only through her own, and no pain was long vivid which did not press on an answering nerve. But for the moment she was drawn out of herself by the interest of her direct relation with a world so unlike her own. She had supplemented her first gift by personal assistance to one or two of Miss Farish's most appealing subjects, and the admiration and interest her presence excited among the tired workers at the club ministered in a new form to her insatiable desire to please.” (B.1, ch.14)
(my emphasis)
Lily Bart is privileged and selfish, that’s what Edith Wharton is saying—she does charity to feel good about herself, and feels drawn out of herself for a moment, only a moment. Such a reaction, I can’t help feeling, is common—most people, when brought into contact with people much poorer and less privileged than themselves, have strong feelings such as pity and anger, and gratitude for their own situation, just for a moment, then they get back to their normal lives. Wharton may not jump on the page like George Eliot would, but she puts it in a way to condemn Lily Bart as selfish and frivolous.
It is partly her frivolity and partly her stupidity that Lily Bart is caught up in the Dorsets drama and scandal.
“…she had been perfectly aware from the outset that her part in the affair was, as Carry Fisher brutally put it, to distract Dorset's attention from his wife. That was what she was "there for": it was the price she had chosen to pay for three months of luxury and freedom from care. Her habit of resolutely facing the facts, in her rare moments of introspection, did not now allow her to put any false gloss on the situation.” (B.2, ch.4)
Lily is frivolous, impulsive, and reckless. She accepts the invitation, despite Mrs Peniston’s disapproval, despite her own dislike of Bertha Dorset, and despite the awareness that she is being used. Each of the reasons alone should be enough to prevent her from going, but she gets on the yacht anyway. She knows that Bertha Dorset is unfaithful to her husband, but she participates in the game and plays her role. She makes the choice.
When “the disaster” occurs and the Dorsets are on the verge of separation, Wharton makes Lily more compassionate and therefore more likeable:
“A chill of fear passed over Miss Bart: a sense of remembered treachery that was like the gleam of a knife in the dusk. But compassion, in a moment, got the better of her instinctive recoil. What was this outpouring of senseless bitterness but the tracked creature's attempt to cloud the medium through which it was fleeing? It was on Lily's lips to exclaim: "You poor soul, don't double and turn—come straight back to me, and we'll find a way out!" But the words died under the impenetrable insolence of Bertha's smile. Lily sat silent, taking the brunt of it quietly, letting it spend itself on her to the last drop of its accumulated falseness; then, without a word, she rose and went down to her cabin.” (B.2, ch.2)
But if this shows her kindness and compassion, it also shows her stupidity and misjudgement of character. Lawrence Selden, for example, knows that “Bertha would fight to the last round of powder: the rashness of her conduct was illogically combined with a cold determination to escape its consequences” (B.2, ch.3). Other people know Bertha’s dangerous. Only Lily seems to be unaware.
Bertha’s reaction, when confronted by Lily, should imply the game she’s playing and the next step she would take. Sadly our poor protagonist doesn’t get it—she ignores Selden’s advice to leave the yacht and save herself. Worse, she later ignores his advice to come back to her aunt at once.
I may feel sorry for Lily Bart, but I don’t sympathise with her—she makes the choices herself, and the disinheritance comes as no surprise. I suppose readers may have different reactions to the character of Lily Bart, and her choices—many readers would be more sympathetic and understanding than me.
But I’m convinced that Edith Wharton doesn’t want readers to sympathise with her character. Why? Look at this passage:
“It was the first time that she had faced her family since her return from Europe, two weeks earlier; but if she perceived any uncertainty in their welcome, it served only to add a tinge of irony to the usual composure of her bearing. The shock of dismay with which, on the dock, she had heard from Gerty Farish of Mrs. Peniston's sudden death, had been mitigated, almost at once, by the irrepressible thought that now, at last, she would be able to pay her debts. She had looked forward with considerable uneasiness to her first encounter with her aunt. Mrs. Peniston had vehemently opposed her niece's departure with the Dorsets, and had marked her continued disapproval by not writing during Lily's absence. The certainty that she had heard of the rupture with the Dorsets made the prospect of the meeting more formidable; and how should Lily have repressed a quick sense of relief at the thought that, instead of undergoing the anticipated ordeal, she had only to enter gracefully on a long-assured inheritance? It had been, in the consecrated phrase, "always understood" that Mrs. Peniston was to provide handsomely for her niece; and in the latter's mind the understanding had long since crystallized into fact.” (B.2, ch.4)
It’s hard to like Lily Bart.
Look at this passage:
“… Lily leaned awhile over the side, giving herself up to a leisurely enjoyment of the spectacle before her. Unclouded sunlight enveloped sea and shore in a bath of purest radiancy. The purpling waters drew a sharp white line of foam at the base of the shore; against its irregular eminences, hotels and villas flashed from the greyish verdure of olive and eucalyptus; and the background of bare and finely-pencilled mountains quivered in a pale intensity of light.” (B.2, ch.2)
What a scene that is. I do like Edith Wharton’s prose and descriptions. There is a lot in that passage, but particularly interesting is “a pale intensity of light”.
In fact, do you notice the way Wharton uses light in the novel?
From Book 1:
“On the crimson carpet a deer-hound and two or three spaniels dozed luxuriously before the fire, and the light from the great central lantern overhead shed a brightness on the women's hair and struck sparks from their jewels as they moved.” (Ch.3)
Imagine if she had been a director or cinematographer—how she would have used light!
“As she entered her bedroom, with its softly-shaded lights, her lace dressing-gown lying across the silken bedspread, her little embroidered slippers before the fire, a vase of carnations filling the air with perfume, and the last novels and magazines lying uncut on a table beside the reading-lamp, she had a vision of Miss Farish's cramped flat, with its cheap conveniences and hideous wall-papers.” (ibid.)
Soft light.
“She turned out the wall-lights, and peered at herself between the candle-flames. The white oval of her face swam out waveringly from a background of shadows, the uncertain light blurring it like a haze; but the two lines about the mouth remained.” (ibid.)
All of these are examples of practical lighting (I’m using film language). Here’s some daylight:
“In the foreground glowed the warm tints of the gardens. Beyond the lawn, with its pyramidal pale-gold maples and velvety firs, sloped pastures dotted with cattle; and through a long glade the river widened like a lake under the silver light of September.” (Ch.4)
Later:
“She hardly knew what she had been seeking, or why the failure to find it had so blotted the light from her sky: she was only aware of a vague sense of failure, of an inner isolation deeper than the loneliness about her.” (ibid.)
I can’t be the only one noticing the masterful use of light in the novel.
“She took one with an unsteady hand, and putting it to her lips, leaned forward to draw her light from his. In the indistinctness the little red gleam lit up the lower part of her face, and he saw her mouth tremble into a smile.” (Ch.6)
She writes about a gleam lighting up a face, and about light reflected on jewellery:
“They had paused before the table on which the bride's jewels were displayed, and Lily's heart gave an envious throb as she caught the refraction of light from their surfaces—the milky gleam of perfectly matched pearls, the flash of rubies relieved against contrasting velvet, the intense blue rays of sapphires kindled into light by surrounding diamonds: all these precious tints enhanced and deepened by the varied art of their setting.” (Ch.8)
This is the scene after the successful tableaux vivant:
“The faces about her flowed by like the streaming images of sleep: she hardly noticed where Selden was leading her, till they passed through a glass doorway at the end of the long suite of rooms and stood suddenly in the fragrant hush of a garden. Gravel grated beneath their feet, and about them was the transparent dimness of a midsummer night. Hanging lights made emerald caverns in the depths of foliage, and whitened the spray of a fountain falling among lilies. The magic place was deserted: there was no sound but the splash of the water on the lily-pads, and a distant drift of music that might have been blown across a sleeping lake.
Selden and Lily stood still, accepting the unreality of the scene as a part of their own dream-like sensations. It would not have surprised them to feel a summer breeze on their faces, or to see the lights among the boughs reduplicated in the arch of a starry sky. The strange solitude about them was no stranger than the sweetness of being alone in it together.” (Ch.12)
That is wonderful.
Light can also make things ugly:
“When Lily woke she had the bed to herself, and the winter light was in the room.
She sat up, bewildered by the strangeness of her surroundings; then memory returned, and she looked about her with a shiver. In the cold slant of light reflected from the back wall of a neighbouring building, she saw her evening dress and opera cloak lying in a tawdry heap on a chair. […]
The door opened, and Gerty, dressed and hatted, entered with a cup of tea. Her face looked sallow and swollen in the dreary light, and her dull hair shaded imperceptibly into the tones of her skin.” (Ch.15)
Edith Wharton writes about light, how light is reflected on objects, how people look in different light; she also writes about light as metaphor. Apart from the cliché of shedding light on [something] or seeing [something] in a new light, she writes:
“Gerty Farish, the morning after the Wellington Brys' entertainment, woke from dreams as happy as Lily's. If they were less vivid in hue, more subdued to the half-tints of her personality and her experience, they were for that very reason better suited to her mental vision. Such flashes of joy as Lily moved in would have blinded Miss Farish, who was accustomed, in the way of happiness, to such scant light as shone through the cracks of other people's lives.” (Ch.14)
Gerty Farish is rather dim—earlier, Wharton uses the phase “unfurnished mind” to describe her, but now conveys the same idea in a much more interesting, brilliant way.
Also:
“Now she was the centre of a little illumination of her own: a mild but unmistakable beam, compounded of Lawrence Selden's growing kindness to herself and the discovery that he extended his liking to Lily Bart.” (ibid.)
Poor Gerty. Soon she realises that it’s just an illusion.
Again light is used as a metaphor, in these lines about Lawrence Selden:
“He yielded himself to the charm of trivial preoccupations, wondering at what hour her reply would be sent, with what words it would begin. As to its import he had no doubt—he was as sure of her surrender as of his own. And so he had leisure to muse on all its exquisite details, as a hard worker, on a holiday morning, might lie still and watch the beam of light travel gradually across his room. But if the new light dazzled, it did not blind him. He could still discern the outline of facts, though his own relation to them had changed.” (ibid.)
There are a lot more examples throughout the novel—sunlight, moonlight, shadows, silhouettes, darkness, lamps, candles, illuminated surfaces, and so on. But that’s enough to demonstrate the point. Those of you who want to steal my blog post for an essay, do your own homework.
I noticed the use of light whilst reading The House of Mirth, but now that I’ve collected the passages and put them together, they’re impressive.
I wonder where Wharton learnt this from.
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.
A while back, I wrote a blog post about Gwendolen Harleth, Dorothea Brooke, and Isabel Archer as readers: Gwendolen reads a bit for idle amusement, Dorothea reads for self-improvement, whilst Isabel is a bookworm.
Emma Bovary reads a range of things, from great literature to sentimental trash, but reads everything badly, identifies with characters, and wants life to be like books. I don’t remember about Anna Karenina—probably similar.
Among Jane Austen’s characters, Emma Woodhouse is meant to read more, whilst Fanny Price immerses herself in poetry and has good taste. I’ve forgotten about the other heroines.
What about Edith Wharton’s Lily Bart?
In chapter 1, Lily Bart looks at Selden’s bookshelf and they talk about books:
“"And Americana—do you collect Americana?"
Selden stared and laughed.
"No, that's rather out of my line. I'm not really a collector, you see; I simply like to have good editions of the books I am fond of."
She made a slight grimace. "And Americana are horribly dull, I suppose?"
"I should fancy so—except to the historian. But your real collector values a thing for its rarity. I don't suppose the buyers of Americana sit up reading them all night—old Jefferson Gryce certainly didn't."
She was listening with keen attention.”
She asks about Americana so later she can talk to Percy Pryce about his collection, and try to seduce him.
Then:
“"Don't you ever mind," she asked suddenly, "not being rich enough to buy all the books you want?"
He followed her glance about the room, with its worn furniture and shabby walls.
"Don't I just? Do you take me for a saint on a pillar?"
"And having to work—do you mind that?"”
Again, the question is not about books as much as about having money to buy everything you want. Lily’s standing before a bookshelf, but her interest lies elsewhere.
Hermione Lee covers the subject in her Obligations (at the end of The House of Mirth):
“Lily likes to think of herself as a reader, and one of the things that attracts her to Selden is that he makes her into a better one. When she scans her world through his ‘retina’, she finds she can ‘classify’ the people in it more sharply, and ‘review’ them as if they were second-rate literature […]. She envies Selden his library; she prides herself on her ‘broadminded recognition of literature’; and her responses to hearing Theocritus read on the coast of Sicily confirms ‘her belief in her intellectual superiority’. But she has no real literary interests. We see her cutting the pages of a novel on the train going to Bellomont, but she never reads it: she is too busy seducing Percy Pryce. The only book which sticks in her mind is a copy of the Eumenides she once happened to pick up in someone’s house, which teachers her about the implacable, vengeful Furies. Wharton often applied Aeschylus’s Furies to her own life. But, unlike Wharton, when Lily is pursued by the Furies, the idea of solace through reading never occurs to her.”
It’s interesting that Hermione Lee talks about Lily as a reader of people, because she is a bad one.
She misreads Rosedale, for example:
“Though usually adroit enough where her own interests were concerned, she made the mistake, not uncommon to persons in whom the social habits are instinctive, of supposing that the inability to acquire them quickly implies a general dulness. Because a blue-bottle bangs irrationally against a window-pane, the drawing-room naturalist may forget that under less artificial conditions it is capable of measuring distances and drawing conclusions with all the accuracy needful to its welfare; and the fact that Mr. Rosedale's drawing-room manner lacked perspective made Lily class him with Trenor and the other dull men she knew, and assume that a little flattery, and the occasional acceptance of his hospitality, would suffice to render him innocuous…” (B.1, Ch.10)
This is repeated:
“[Rosedale] was sensitive to shades of difference which Miss Bart would never have credited him with perceiving, because he had no corresponding variations of manner…” (B.1, Ch.11)
She is wrong about Grace Stepney:
“She was quite aware that she was of interest to dingy people, but she assumed that there is only one form of dinginess, and that admiration for brilliancy is the natural expression of its inferior state. She knew that Gerty Farish admired her blindly, and therefore supposed that she inspired the same sentiments in Grace Stepney, whom she classified as a Gerty Farish without the saving traits of youth and enthusiasm.
In reality, the two differed from each other as much as they differed from the object of their mutual contemplation.” (ibid.)
Lily misjudges Grace and slights her, not realising how petty the woman could be and that something as simple as moving a dinner could make Grace rat on her.
In both cases, she cannot see the difference beneath the superficial similarities. If she read Jane Austen, I can tell she would think Elizabeth Bennet and Mary Crawford are very much alike.
Lily also makes several blunders throughout the story, such as going to Selden’s flat alone and being seen and making up a bad story to cover it like she has something to hide; or taking tips from her friend’s husband Trenor and being seen as friendly to him, and misjudging people’s reactions.
In short, she doesn’t seem to have much interest in books, and as a reader of people, she’s quite a bad one.
