'The House of Mirth' - Lily's struggle with the New York Society

Seminar paper from the year 2000 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1 (A), Martin Luther University (Anglistics/American Studies), course: SS2000 Qualifying Test, 6 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: The House of Mirth is one of Edith Wharton's most famous and most discussed novels. The novel is the story of Lily Bart who is a product of the society of New York. This society is hypocritical and unkind to those who do not completely conform to their rules and expectations. In The House of Mirth Lily's struggle with the New York society and her fall from this circle of people is traced.
Critics loved this book. E.E.Hale, JR., a contemporary critic, wrote in his review: "we should gloat over a book, be rapt clean out of ourselves, and rise from the perusal, our mind filled with the bussiest kaleidoscopic dance of images, incapable of sleep or of continuous thought. That is the exact description of a mental state that many will probably experience on reading The House of Mirth" (Ammons 1990: 309). The Saturday Review (a contemporary London paper) wrote in 1906 "It is the striking art of Miss Wharton as a writer that keeps the reader's sympathy from first to last. She can evoke the emotions of pity, horror and love. In Lily Bart she has created a character that will haunt the imagination of the reader and live in his memory. The book is one of the few novels which can claim to rank as literature" (Ammons 1990: 313). Edith Wharton reflects in her fiction issues and arguments, such as criticism on conspicuous consumption in the leisure class, the economics of marriage for women and "the physical rigors and deprivations of working-class life for many Americans" (Ammons 1990: ix), broadly current in her culture.

The tension between the real and the ideal is expressed throughout the novel, and also from Wharton's choice of title to her imagery and characterization. She selected the title for her book from the bible, from Ecclesiastes 7.4 - "The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth" (Singley 1995: 70). Ecclesiastes is a skeptical and pessimistic text that had, at the turn of the century, a special relevance for a society engaged in material and spiritual debate. "Wharton's use of this biblical text emphazises the tragedy of the novel: the human failure to distinguish the authentic from the inauthentic." (Singley 1995: 70).