House of Mirth

I honestly cannot remember when a novel has affected me quite so deeply as The House of Mirth. This novel packs a wallop, especially when you consider it was written in 1905, over 100 years ago; except for surface details and social mannerisms it could have been written today. To this I can attest: Lily Bart—c’est moi! I make this claim as a woman who, like Lily, began adult life from the privileged place of the upper middle-class, clueless about the machinations of money, unprepared for a journey of downward mobility that slammed me against the wall more times than I care to count. Like Lily I knew nothing about money—how to get it, how not to spend it, and the consequences of this ignorance. Unlike Lily, however, my social milieu provided plenty of information on chemical accessories, thus saving me from her method of self-annihilation. Lily Bart is a great beauty (here she and I part company) born and bred to be ornamental—she lights up the rooms of the rich and decorates the halls of art and culture whenever she graces them with her presence. Lily understands this role, as well as her obligations as an object of beauty, and in return she expects to be taken care of in the style to which she is accustomed. Not only has Lily never been taught self-sufficiency, she received no intimation that she might have to learn. With this calamity never even imagined, Lily drifts through high society, pleasing others and beautifying her surroundings. Until she doesn’t—and therein lies a tale. A series of almost trivial events are set in motion that cause Lily’s wealthy friends to snub her, until eventually she’s cast out of their gilded circles. These so-called friends treat her abominably: a woman alone is always vulnerable to becoming the scapegoat in other people's dramas. Thus, a manipulative “friend” sets her up as wrongdoer to deflect blame from the actual culprit in her marital strife, i.e., herself. Rumors about Lily’s alleged part in this melodrama spread before she can defend herself. Real disaster hits when her aunt, believing the rumors, disinherits her and with exquisitely bad timing dies almost immediately afterwards, leaving Lily with barely enough income to survive, much less enjoy her usual high lifestyle. And yet, when Lily comes into possession of some incriminating letters that could be used to restore her good name, she inexplicably rejects the opportunity to save herself. While this gives her integrity, I found her reluctance to lower herself frustrating under the circumstances. Lily was so badly treated, and the people around her so despicable, I thought she had every right to bring them down by any means necessary. It occurred to me that perhaps Wharton meant for the reader to see Lily as a spoiled brat deserving of her tribulations--but if this is what Wharton intended, she failed, at least with this reader. I rooted for Lily from beginning to end, and wished she would dump New York society into the Hudson River. In case I haven't made it abundantly clear, I strongly identified with Lily as a single woman living by her wits alone. Unfortunately she doesn’t dump high society; they dump her, and Lily’s circumstances continue on a downward spiral, until she's living “the boarding-house life” of single working women at the turn of the 20th century in New York. Alone, poor and lonely, she meets the challenge with a valiant attempt at honest labor in the milliners’ trade. With an instinct for charming design, Lily has always thought herself adept at hat trimming —but she soon discovers there’s more drudgery in millinery work than she ever imagined. The hats Lily produces are devastatingly inferior to those done by the ordinary girls working next to her. Failing dismally at a simple trade makes Lily even more despondent, and as each pathway systematically closes off to her, the reader senses we're heading towards a very bad, sad ending. The House of Mirth contains many elements of any contemporary woman’s story, and could have been written in 1780 or 1968 or 2013, serving to remind us that the unfair disadvantages of women’s lives have been operational since Day One and continue to the present. The economic system we in the U.S. live by forces women into marriage whether we want it or not. The patriarchy is organized in such a way that what women can do in life is limited by its unwritten rules and regulations. No matter which segment of society a woman travels among—the rich, the unconventional, the artistic, the poor—all are governed by an invisible machine that benefits men and oppresses women. With Lily Bart, Wharton—herself a member of the upper crust—captured the lives of millions of women, not only of her own time but throughout history. This is only the second Wharton novel I’ve read (the first was The Age of Innocence). Unlike Jane Austen with her little pile of eight novels, Edith Wharton wrote 31. Lucky lucky me!

The House of Mirth, published in 1905, is Edith Wharton's first major work of fiction, and it established her reputation as a brilliant novelist and harsh critic of her society. Because I came to it after reading The Age of Innocence, which shows Wharton at the height of her power, I can't help giving Mirth four stars, where Innocence rated five. Mirth is an excellent novel, finely crafted, beautifully written and alive with Wharton's darkly humorous outlook. Wharton writes of the world she lived in, among the wealthy elite of turn-of-the-twentieth-century New York City, and her characters are frighteningly real: flawed and damaged, the best of them sometimes unsure how to act or whom to trust, and the worst... Oh God, the worst of them are as unspeakably horrible as the idle rich of any time and place. So why the lower rating? Mirth is, for me, the lesser work because of its extremes. Where Innocence relied on a more nuanced look at its characters and central situation, Mirth follows the formula of many writers' early works, with too much "goodness" on the side of its protagonist, and too much unrelieved wickedness on the other side. Lily Bart, the unmarried, beautiful, twenty-nine-year-old woman at the center of the story, who has been brought up to be merely an "ornament" in her world, not a worker or contributor, is emotionally incapable of marrying without love or, as the story progresses, unwilling to sink to the level of her abusers, to use blackmail to regain her lost position in the world. The degree to which she grows in self-knowledge is remarkable, and her ethical restraint, while suffering the worst reversals of poverty and ostracism, is not always believable. Part of what made Innocence such an enjoyable story was its "historical" aspect, the way Wharton contrasted the limited, blinkered world of the 1870s with the freer, more sophisticated world of 1900, when that story ends. In Mirth, we see the other side of that "modern" freedom, and what it means for women who are alone in the world, without family or close friends to protect or guide them. For Lily, it's an unrelenting downward spiral, and it's a heartbreaking read. I've noticed, as often with stories like this, some readers' contempt for Lily as someone who makes "stupid" choices. And I've often wondered what makes these readers think they would have done any better, assuming they were products of that same time and place, and did not have their hundred-years' worth of twenty-twenty hindsight. For me, my sympathy for Lily makes reading about her downfall too painful to be enjoyable, despite Wharton's engaging writing style. Lily sabotages all her near successes, precisely because she has too much intelligence and "sensibility," in the Jane Austen meaning, to marry without love, to spend the next forty years tied to a man she can't respect. The comparison with Austen is apt, because Wharton's writing is Austen without the gloss of two centuries of cultural change, the separation of the Atlantic Ocean, or a "quaint" country setting. It's New York City, not Netherfield, and it has this city's unabashed brutality. I was astonished at how similar the NYC of 1900 was to the city I grew up in and still inhabit. Austen's world is every bit as tough, but we don't always see it, because we're too easily lulled by her elegant, eighteenth-century manner to feel the stiletto blade until it pierces our heart. Wharton carries her cavalry saber unconcealed, and we (at least I do) sometimes shrink from its slashing force, dreading the inevitable bloody end. As Lily destroys one chance after another for herself, I found myself wishing that she would use the means at hand to defeat or at least control her female enemy, and not worry about hurting the man she loves in the process. In Wharton's world, as in Austen's, it's the women who pay the price for sexual indiscretions, gambling losses and other misbehavior, no matter who commits the actual sins. When one minor character, a silly young man, gambles away his fortune, it's his two unmarried sisters who are reduced to shabby spinsterhood, trying to earn a living, a mode of existence for which they are woefully unprepared. "Miss Jane reads aloud very nicely--but it's so hard to find anyone who is willing to be read to." Wharton writes with the kind of magical style that draws a reader in no matter what. Even if we know the story from having seen the movie version(s); even if we aren't happy about how it ends; even if we find some of the extreme duality of good and bad characters a little tedious--still, we want to spend time with this narrator. Like Jonathan Franzen, another author with this specific talent, Wharton can tell us any story she chooses, about any characters, and most readers will only say, "More, please." On that level alone, Wharton's work deserves five stars, but what I'm doing here is ranking her against herself, not everybody else. At the end of The Age of Innocence, I felt that it was a perfect work of art, the final scenes just right; a somewhat ambiguous, sad but not tragic ending that was the only acceptable resolution for the main characters. Mirth, by contrast, leaves most readers dissatisfied. "No," we think, "that can't be right." It's an argument in Wharton's favor that her ending is in many ways more realistic than the happier one most of us wish for. People do kill themselves, not literally by suicide, but by making one misstep after another, until they reach a place where death is the only possibility. Wharton's only "mistake" is in allowing us to see each of her heroine's missteps all too clearly, and with no way of turning her in a different direction. Perhaps this book deserves five stars after all.

I didn't have high expectations when I bought this novel since the author and the novel itself were very unknown to me. Now I must confess that The House of Mirth is one of the best English/American classics I have read so far. I don't understand why it has not received its due praises. It was very insightful and thought-provoking. The end was very unexpected and sad and for these reasons this novel deserves five stars. .

Maravilhoso

Amazon classics edition is well done unlike some of the others who try to digitize wonderful classics & garble them. This one was perfectly rendered as well as being free. It's terrific to be able to read the classics on a plane.

A really sad and moving story which was written beautifully. Through Lily Bart, Edith Wharton criticizes the constraints on women of that era, and also the greed and superficiality of the upper classes and society in general. How rumours, gossip and privilege (and also the lack of it) affects everybody. What I like about this book is that while it a social critique , all of the books characters are complex and well drawn. While Lily is shunned by the upper class society after one of the characters hurls a false accusation at her, there are also few who try to help her during those difficult time. This is obviously is contrast with those novels of social critique which look at these issues in black and white. Lily herself is a complex, ambiguous character. Throughout the book ,I was asking myself, is Lily principled ? or is she holding onto the society's idea of "perfection" which makes her act in a certain way. Was it her independence or her false pride which made her seek for employment.? We never really are given clear answers. But what is clear that Lily's upbringing (and those of other upper class women of her time) is limited , and there weren't many options for her . Thus Edith Wharton makes us sympathize with Lily despite her flaws. The ending was sad but beautiful in a certain way . The language was very flowery, and the sentences exquisite. A lot was said in many words signifying the strength of Wharton's writing. A must read book for lovers of Classic literature.

Edith Wharton's 'The House of Mirth' focuses on the beautiful socialite Lily Barton, who is in her late twenties and, after ten years on the 'marriage market', is still looking for a suitably rich husband. Brought up to be purely decorative, Lily seemingly leads a life of luxury and pleasure, but we soon learn that she actually has only a very small income and lives on the charity of a rich aunt who is becoming increasingly disapproving of Lily's gadabout life. Worried about her gambling debts and desperately trying to keep up with the rich set, Lily sets her sights on the very wealthy, if boring Percy Grace, but her plans to snare Mr Gryce are ruined when she becomes attracted to the dark and handsome Lawrence Selden. Mr Selden, however, despite finding Lily breathtakingly beautiful, is a man of only modest means and being aware of Lily's ambitions to marry well, he tries to avoid taking her too seriously. As Lily and Selden circle around each other, both attracted to one another but neither of them willing to commit themselves, Lily becomes desperately worried about her increasing debts and she foolishly approaches the husband of one of her friends to help her to invest her small amount of capital. When it becomes apparent to Lily that the money she has been receiving is not from the dividends on her own money, Lily finds herself embroiled in a whole series of events that eventually lead to her fall from grace, but to reveal more would spoil the story for those who have yet to read it. Beautifully written and perceptively observed, Edith Wharton's story of New York society and the lives of the rich and idle, juxtaposed with the lot of the much less wealthy and those who fall by the wayside, makes for a compelling read. Aside from the story's main protagonists, this novel is filled with a whole cast of interesting characters and is it easy to become drawn right into Lily Barton's life and watch her as she travels towards her downfall. Although, as bystanders, we can see the mistakes Lily is making and we may become exasperated with her for her foolhardiness, Lily is not as shallow as she initially seems, she does have scruples and she avoids taking others down with her, and the reader (or this one anyhow) feels for her in her predicament. First published in 1905 and one of Edith Wharton's best novels, this is a poignant and resonant story and one to read, to think about and to then put back in the bookcase to read again later. Recommended. 5 Stars.