Review: The House of Mirth

Lily Bart is a tragic heroine. I don't know whether she was the first such in literature, but she does seem unusual when considered alongside Jane Eyre, Elisabeth Bennet, or Fanny Price (Mansfield Park, Jane Austen). Maybe she'd be more in the vein of Catherine Earnshaw (Wuthering Heights). In my mind, she fits somewhere in the neighborhood of Holly Golightly (Breakfast at Tiffanys), but not quite as fallen as Moll Flanders and Becky Sharp (Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray).

We discussed how responsible Lily was for her fate. How much did she understand about her condition? How much could she have changed? Using my Kindle as a highlighter, I was able to find a surprising number of quotes that show she knew (or should have known) she skated on thin ice:

Hitherto Lily had been undisturbed by scruples.

Miss Bart had in fact been treading a devious way, and none of her critics could have been more alive to the fact than herself; but she had a fatalistic sense of being drawn from one wrong turning to another, without ever perceiving the right road until it was too late to take it.

All her past weaknesses were like so many eager accomplices drawing her toward the path their feet had already smoothed.

[T]here had been nothing in her training to develop any continuity of moral strength: what she craved, and really felt herself entitled to, was a situation in which the noblest attitude should also be the easiest.

Just looking at those sentences, it's a wonder we can root for her, but we do. We want her to find love on her own terms. We like her, even though, if we met her today we might find her impossible to bear. A woman who literally lived off beauty and charm? Perhaps we would find her vain and consider her useless. Who would be her modern equivalent? Paris Hilton? Jessica Simpson?

No, Lily was not vapid. Grace as she possessed does go a long way. Today she'd at least have a high school education and would be more equipped for gainful employment. She'd resist being thought of as mere decoration.

To Carrie Fisher, Lily is a fascinating study. Lily wanted to be regarded for her mind. She wanted freedom, but barely knew what it was. She only got whiffs of if from Selden. He tells her,

"My idea of success . . . is personal freedom."

"Freedom? Freedom from worries?"

"From everything--from money, from poverty, from ease and anxiety, from all the material accidents. To keep a kind of republic of the spirit--that's what I call success."

The idea intoxicated her and led to her downfall. She didn't have the luxury. The "republic of the spirit" -- what I take to be self-possession, self-direction, being true to oneself -- was beyond her reach. She "had never learned to live with her own thoughts." "She could not acquire the air of doing things because she wanted to." As beautiful and sophisticated (in a certain sense) as she was, she was only a slave. She was beyond dingy.

What did Edith Wharton want us to think? She herself was a member of the society she critiqued. She loved beauty; built an opulent mansion; wrote a book on house decor. She also was unhappily married. Was Lily an alter-ego? Her cry for help?

The title suggests something deeper in her mind. The brief glimpse we're given near the end of the book is a clue. The introduction of a new homescape -- simple and spotlessly clean, sheltering a family that lives within its means and is founded on compassion, redemption, and forgiveness. These aren't accidental. Is The House of Mirth a parable of the deceitfulness of pleasure? Is Lily the female version of the Proverbial simpleton -- enticed by beauty and lured by love, who "does not know that it will cost him his life" and is "all at once" hopelessly ensnared?

It's a nice coincidence that the same night we discussed this we also discussed The Beautiful Side of Evil. Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain.

Postscript: I forgot to say something about why Lily is heroic. She's likeable too in that she sacrifices herself for others. Selden and Bertha Dorset never know what she did for them at such a cost. Ironically and tragically, she is judged as having done the very thing from which she spared them. In a sense, she dies for them.

Final word:  "It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting [mirth]: for that is the end of all men; and the living will lay it to his heart." (Ecclesiastes 7:2)