Reading the classics: The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
The book:
“The House of Mirth” was serialized in Scribner’s Magazine in 1905, and describes the customs and ways of the wealthy class in New York in the early 1900s. The book is considered her first major work, and Wharton is thought to skillfully criticize and satirize the society it describes.
The author:
Edith Wharton was born in 1862 into the rich society, which she writes about in her books. She was taught at home by a governess, and at an early age started writing stories. At 15 her parents had some of her poems privately published, and at 16 she had finished her first novella; Fast and Loose. At 17 she made her debut into society and was a great success, despite being very shy.
In 1885 Edith married Edward R. “Teddy” Wharton (her maiden name was Jones) and settled in New York City and Newport, Rhode Island. As Edith became more famous the marriage suffered, and in 1913 they divorced, both having had affairs. Edith settled in France and stayed there during World War I, writing essays influencing Americans to support the Allies, and doing charity work for the soldiers and refugees.
Edith’s life mirrors that which she depicted in “The House of Mirth” in many ways, I feel. She was born into high society and while she mocked it, she was determined to remain part of it.
Review:
I will go pretty in depth with this review, so beware of spoilers below.
I read this over a couple of days, but it felt like it had taken me weeks when I finally finished, because I did not enjoy it one bit. Only in about the last 100 pages or so, did the story even begin to interest me.
Our protagonist is Lily Bart, who is 29 when the novel begins. This means that she is past her sell-by date in the society in which she moves, although she is still much admired because of her beauty and social skills. The society in question is the rich and mighty of New York in the early 20th century, in which Lily has grown up, although her parents were never that rich. Even so her mother managed to instill in Lily the importance of money and the feeling that to be rich is the highest achievement in life. Lily is absolutely petrified of being poor and does her very best to secure a rich husband.
These plans to marry rich always come to nothing though. Sometimes because she sabotages herself, because in the end she is too scared to marry someone she doesn’t love, and sometimes because she is sabotaged by her so-called friends. When she meets Lawrence Selden, the two find something true in each other, and they circle around each other a couple of times, but one or both of them is always too afraid to take the plunge and commit. Lily tries to fix a marriage to a rich man, almost any rich man, but in one instance she chickens out, because she doesn’t feel he is suited to her. If she would just then accept that she can’t marry for money, it would have been fine, but she cannot settle for a life without the riches to which she has become accustomed. So she tries again and again to find a husband with money, and her standards gradually lower. In the end she decides to marry a man she used to despise and had once turned down, simply because she is desperate, but by that time her star has sunk low in the society, and he won’t have her after all.
I found Lily to be so frustrating. She would navigate the society rules with great skill, but then she would do something stupid and ruin it for herself. Or she would become involved in something and by the time she found out that her morals were not cut out for it and she left, everyone would already think she was involved and judge her anyway. This lead to a vicious cycle of Lily sinking farther and farther down the ranks of society, and in the end she was unable to climb back up.
I find that I could sympathize with Lily to a certain degree. She was definitely a product of the society that spurned her in the end, and she didn’t know how to live outside the ranks of the wealthy. But my sympathy was cut short when she time and time again would ruin it for herself. She would ruin her chances of rising among the wealthy, but at the same time she would not commit to a life without obscene amounts of money. I would have been better able to sympathize with her, I think, if she would have just chosen one or the other and be done with it. I hate this weaving back and forth and not making decisions. It’s the reason I hate love triangles. Just pick one!!
And in the end Lily makes things much worse for herself, as she ends up much poorer than she would have been had she married Selden for example.
So I didn’t like this book at all and I gave it 1 star out of 5 on Goodreads. I just couldn’t connect with Lily, and while I understood her motives, it frustrated me to no end that she wouldn’t just pick one course of action and stick with it!!
Is it still a classic to me:
I don’t think this is a classic for me. As you can see above I didn’t really enjoy it too much, and I didn’t feel like the theme was very relevant for me today. If you really wanted to, I guess you could say that the theme of letting things pass you by, because you are too scared to commit, is still relevant today, but the setting of this thing being the right marriage just makes it feel out of date for me. And a classic should be timeless.
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