The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

First published: 1905

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Naturalism

Time of plot: Early twentieth century

Locale: New York

Principal characters

• Lily Bart, a young woman
• Lawrence Selden, her friend
• Simon Rosedale, a financier
• Percy Gryce, an eligible young man
• Gus Trenor, a wealthy socialite
• Judy Trenor, his wife
• Bertha Dorset, a woman who hates Lily
• George Dorset, her husband

The Story:

Lawrence Selden enjoys watching Lily Bart put a new plan into operation. She is a very beautiful and clever young lady, and no matter how impromptu any action of hers appears, Selden knows that she never makes an unplanned move. Lily has almost no money of her own; her beauty and her good family background are her only assets. Her father died soon after a reversal of his financial affairs, and her mother drilled into her the idea that a wealthy marriage is her only salvation. After her mother’s death, Lily is taken in by her aunt, Mrs. Peniston, who supplies her with a good home. However, Lily needs jewels, gowns, and cash to play bridge if she is to move in a social circle of wealthy and eligible men.

Simon Rosedale, a Jewish financier, would gladly have married Lily and provided her with a huge fortune, for he wants to be accepted into the society in which Lily moves. Lily, however, thinks that she still has better prospects, the most likely one being Percy Gryce, who lives with his watchful widowed mother.

Lily uses her knowledge of his quiet life to her advantage. Selden, Lily, and Gryce are all houseguests at the home of Gus and Judy Trenor, an ideal opportunity for Lily, who assumed the part of a shy, demure young girl. However, when Gryce is ready to propose, she lets the chance slip away, for Lily abhors the kind of scheming, manipulative person she has become. Even more important, perhaps, she is attracted to Selden, who truly understands her, even though he is poor and can offer her no escape from her own poverty.

Gus Trenor offers to invest some of Lily’s small income, and over a period of time, he gives her more than eight thousand dollars, which he assures her is profit on the transaction. With that amount, she is able to pay most of her creditors and reopen her charge accounts. Gus seems to think, however, that his wise investment on her account should make them better friends than Lily feels is desirable.

Lily unexpectedly comes into possession of letters that Bertha Dorset wrote to Selden, whom she once loved. She preferred to marry George Dorset’s fortune, but she continues to write to Selden after her marriage.

When Gus begins to get more insistent in his demands for Lily’s companionship, she becomes worried. She knows that people are talking about her and that her position in society is precarious. She turns to Selden for advice. He tells her that he loves her for what she can be, but that he can give her nothing now. He has no money, and he will not even offer her his love because he cannot love her as the scheming, ruthless fortune hunter she is.

One night, Lily receives a message that Judy Trenor wants her to call. When she arrives at the Trenor home, Lily finds Gus there alone; he sent the message. Gus tells her then that the money was not profit on her investment but a gift from him. When he intimates that she always knew the money was from him personally, Lily is terrified, but at last she manages to get out of the house. She knows then that there is only one thing for her to do. She must accept Rosedale’s offer of marriage. She puts off writing to him, though, and accepts the Dorsets’ invitation to accompany them on a Mediterranean cruise on their yacht.

Selden also leaves New York. Unbeknown to Lily, he saw her leave the Trenor house on the night Gus tricked her into thinking Judy wanted her to call. Selden always refused to believe the unsavory stories circulating about Lily, but the evidence of his own eyes, he thinks, is too plain to be ignored. When he meets Lily abroad, he treats her with cool courtesy.

Lily returns to New York when her aunt, Mrs. Peniston, dies; her aunt leaves Lily ten thousand dollars. Lily plans to repay Gus with her inheritance, and she finds the delay in settling her aunt’s estate intolerable. Meanwhile, Bertha’s insinuations about Lily’s conduct abroad, coupled with the talk about Lily and Gus, tarnishes Lily’s reputation. She takes various positions, until at last she is reduced to working in the factory of a milliner. She first offers to accept Rosedale’s former proposal of marriage, but since her fall she is no longer useful to Rosedale, and he now refuses to marry her. He knows that Lily has the letters Bertha wrote to Selden, and he also knows that George Dorset no longer loves his wife and will gladly marry Lily. It seems to Rosedale that Lily has only two alternatives: to take George away from Bertha or to go to Bertha with the letters and force her once again to receive her.

At first, Lily’s warm feeling for Selden makes her shrink from doing anything that will harm him. Then she loses even her menial job. Without money to buy food or to pay for her room in a dingy boardinghouse, she reluctantly takes the letters and starts to the Dorset home. On the way, she stops to see Selden. When he again tells her that he loves her, or rather that he could love her if she will give up her greed for wealth and position, she abandons her plan and, unseen by him, drops the letters into the fireplace. She thanks him for the kindness he, and he alone, has given her and walks out into the night.

When she returns to her room, she finds the check for the ten thousand dollars of her inheritance. She sits down at once and writes a check to Gus for the amount she owes him and puts it in an envelope. In another envelope, she places the ten-thousand-dollar check and addresses the envelope to her bank. She puts the two envelopes side by side on her desk before she lies down to sleep; but sleep will not come. At last, she takes from her bureau a bottle of chloral. She pours the contents of the bottle into a glass and drinks it all, then lies down again.

The next morning, feeling a sudden need to see Lily at once, Selden goes early to her rooming house. There he finds a doctor already in attendance and Lily dead from an overdose of chloral. On her desk, he sees the two envelopes. The stub of the open checkbook beside them tells the story of Lily’s last effort to square her accounts. He knows then that his love for her was justified, but the words he speaks as he kneels by her bed come too late.

Bibliography

Bell, Millicent, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Edith Wharton. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Collection of essays, including a critical history of Wharton’s work, discussions of Wharton, race and the science of manners, and “The House of Mirth: The Bachelor and the Baby” by Maureen Howard.

Esch, Deborah, ed. New Essays on “The House of Mirth.” New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Contains four essays that assert the historical and critical significance of the novel. Includes discussions of the novel and the Anglo-American realist tradition, the “conspicuous wasting” of Lily Bart, and Wharton’s use of architectural references.

Farwell, Tricia M. Love and Death in Edith Wharton’s Fiction. New York: Peter Lang, 2006. An insightful look at Wharton’s beliefs about the nature of love and the way they reflect her philosophical views, namely those of Plato and Charles Darwin. Wharton’s own shifting feelings on the role of love in life are revealed in conjunction with the shifting role that love played for her fictional characters. Chapter 3 focuses on The House of Mirth.

Goodman, Susan. Edith Wharton’s Women: Friends and Rivals. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1990. A study that moves back and forth between Wharton’s relationships in life and her fictional characters.

Haytock, Jennifer. Edith Wharton and the Conversations of Literary Modernism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Although Wharton denied she was a modernist writer, Haytock argues that Wharton’s fiction contained elements of modernism, as demonstrated by her writing style and by the cultural issues she addresses.

Howe, Irving, ed. Edith Wharton: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1962. A collection of some of the pioneering essays on Wharton. Irving Howe’s essay “A Reading of The House of Mirth” praises Wharton’s style though he regrets her somewhat overcharged rhetoric. Diane Trilling in “The House of Mirth Revisited” stresses the heroine’s moral ambiguity.

Lawson, Richard H. Edith Wharton. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1977. Discusses the ways in which The House of Mirth was a turning point in the development of Wharton’s professional writing skills.

Lee, Hermione. Edith Wharton. New York: Knopf, 2007. An exhaustive study of Wharton’s life, offering valuable insights and pointing out interesting analogies between her life and her fiction.

McDowell, Margaret B. Edith Wharton. Boston: Twayne, 1976. In chapter 2, McDowell draws a parallel between Lily Bart’s gradual destruction by a hostile society and her growing aspiration to become independent and responsible. Contains an excellent annotated bibliography and chronology.

Singley, Carol J. Edith Wharton’s “The House of Mirth”: A Casebook. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Collection of critical essays, including discussions of narcissism in the novel and the book’s depiction of race, class, and Jews. In “The Death of the Lady (Novelist): Wharton’s House of Mirth,” Elaine Showalter, a feminist critic, sees the death of the “lady” as necessary for the birth of the woman artist.

Wharton, Edith. The House of Mirth. Edited by Shari Benstock. Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press, 1994. Contains the complete, authoritative text, as well as a brief biography and historical context, critical history, and essays from cultural, Marxist, feminist, deconstructive, and psychoanalytic perspectives.