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3.92 AVERAGE
3.92 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
medium-paced
I am thrilled to have finally discovered Wharton, no idea what took me so long. This account of social snobbery in early 20th century New York was at times surprising and frustrating. I will always regret the ending but in retrospect it seemed inevitable. The author knew her characters too well.
This was a great book! The life of the different social classes all played out on a melodramatic stage. The politics of society in New York City was intensely illustrated in the rise and fall of Lily Bart. One of my favorite lines was spoken by Lily Bart about Gert, "But we're so different, you know; she likes being good, and I like being happy."
And the measure of emotions, "She had passed beyod 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."
The pursuit of a husband was as necessary then, as the pursuit of a career is today except for Lily it was illusive like trying to hold purpose in your hand. The Selden/Lily connection was enrapturing.
And the measure of emotions, "She had passed beyod 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."
The pursuit of a husband was as necessary then, as the pursuit of a career is today except for Lily it was illusive like trying to hold purpose in your hand. The Selden/Lily connection was enrapturing.
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Perhaps if I hadn't just read "Madame Bovary" and "The Blind Assassin", I would have enjoyed this book more, but my sympathy for rich-people-problems was exhausted. "Oh, it's so troubling sometimes to be part of society." Barf. While I did enjoy that Lily's attitudes were closer to that of a modern woman, the first 9/10ths of this book felt like homework and I was only able to get through it by sheer determination. I couldn't wait for someone to die in this book.
The limitations on women's lives, the hypocrisy of the upper classes, the hardship in the working class, seem foreign to me now. But the system in place at that time has given birth to the continuing hypocrisies, the glass ceiling, leaning in, and all the continuing legal stumbling blocks and economic disparities we live with now. The limitation is also evident in the ending of the book...only one fate for an unsuccessful woman!
Wonderful book about tolerance and understanding each other! I so admire the doctor!
challenging
emotional
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The House of Mirth is a wonderful novel that gives an empathetic look into the mind of Lily Bart, a high society socialite in New York at the turn of the century. I loved pretty much everything about it from characterisations to descriptions, however the weakest link of it is the second half - at a certain point of the novel the plot just kind of stops progressing and instead goes back and forth until the the book ends on a decidedly depressing note.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Suicide
My incredibly uneducated opinion of this book is that it was a less-good version of The Age of Innocence. Many of the same themes are explored and the same obstacles encountered and succumbed to, but this book is a straight and traditional tragedy, where Age of Innocence is a more tempered, more nuanced, more elegant, and therefore more impactful story.
Wharton writes exquisitely and in House of Mirth (as in the other works of hers I've read) there were passages that were so beautiful that I had to stop and write them down. However, as do many writers of sumptuous and emotional prose, she leans toward melodrama. In The Age of Innocence, I thought she toed the line deftly. This book... not so much. There were some parts that dragged and dragged, sodden with the tears of the beautiful heroine and her "few true friends," and also every man in the book (Lily is irresistibly beautiful and any man she so much as looks at falls truly, madly, deeply in love with her).By the last quarter of the novel, every possible mitigating circumstance had been resolved and all that was left was to follow Lily's inexorable descent. It did not make for very compelling reading.
Still, I loved Lily. I know people who share her faults and virtues, whose want to be good and want to be comfortable are in conflict, like me for instance (though thankfully the stakes are generally a bit lower for us all these days). I also resonate with Wharton's proto-feminism, and breathe a deep sigh of relief that I am not a woman of any stripe on pre-1960s Earth.
Overall, this is an insightful and often well-written book. But if anything described on its back cover sounds interesting to you, you'd do better to put it down and grab The Age of Innocence first.
Wharton writes exquisitely and in House of Mirth (as in the other works of hers I've read) there were passages that were so beautiful that I had to stop and write them down. However, as do many writers of sumptuous and emotional prose, she leans toward melodrama. In The Age of Innocence, I thought she toed the line deftly. This book... not so much. There were some parts that dragged and dragged, sodden with the tears of the beautiful heroine and her "few true friends," and also every man in the book (Lily is irresistibly beautiful and any man she so much as looks at falls truly, madly, deeply in love with her).
Still, I loved Lily. I know people who share her faults and virtues, whose want to be good and want to be comfortable are in conflict, like me for instance (though thankfully the stakes are generally a bit lower for us all these days). I also resonate with Wharton's proto-feminism, and breathe a deep sigh of relief that I am not a woman of any stripe on pre-1960s Earth.
Overall, this is an insightful and often well-written book. But if anything described on its back cover sounds interesting to you, you'd do better to put it down and grab The Age of Innocence first.