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dvlavieri 's review for:
The House of Mirth
by Edith Wharton
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.
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.
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.
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.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.