How Does The House Of Mirth Interact With Contemporary Economic

Individuals seek to make themselves as marketable as possible. The second is that all firms attempt to amplify the amount of money that they make.The author states that “maximizing utility is not synonymous with acting selfishly” (pg.8). He uses the example of the 91-year-old woman who spent her life working as a laundress in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. She lived by herself and owned a black-and-white television with only one channel (pg.8). Before her death, the woman had given $150,000 to the University of Southern Mississippi to endow a scholarship for poor students. The woman derived more utility from saving money and giving it away than spending it on herself. The author talks about how the prices of goods affect everyday life. Most people probably do not realize the effects prices have on us. The author mentions the spike in gas prices in 2008. The high price of gas forced Americans to buy smaller cars. The high price also increased the use of public transportation. It also caused many Americans to switch from cars to motorcycle. This increase in the use of motorcycles in turn raised the number of motorcycle deaths in the U.S. This change in the price of a single item shows the significance that prices play in the lives of

The Gilded Age had many relevant people arguing about economy at that time. Three of the people that argued about economic issues in society are Sumner, Lloyd, and Carnegie. Sumner had a biased approached towards economy in favor of the powerful wealthy class. While Lloyd had a completely contradictory view from Sumner’s opposing most of Sumner’s ideas. On the other hand, Carnegie had a favorable argument for economic equality by offering help to the poor class in his way. Although these authors have opposing views on the economic inequality, they support their views with valid solutions and proposals.

In 1879 Henry George wrote an article titled “Progress and Poverty”. In this article he discussed the ongoing industry and he stated that “the wealthy class is becoming more wealthy; but the poorer class is becoming more dependent.

Two main focuses that encompass life are love and money. Since the invention of money, it has been a competition to see who can become the wealthiest and therefore the most successful. But are people really successful if they are unhappy without a person to love in their lives? This essay will investigate the importance of love and money in the novels The Great Gatsby and Pride and Prejudice. Therefore, the essay will focus on the research question: “What effects do love and money have on the authors’ portrayal of the main female characters in the novels The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen?”

To understand literature is to not only understand human nature, but to also understand how the surrounding conditions affect humans. It is often the situation that people are placed in which drives their actions. Similarly, the Marxist approach to studying literature focuses on how certain economic conditions can affect character’s values and actions. In addition, Marxism teaches that wealth is a critical part of society, as without it many opportunities are no longer present. For example, an individual with wealth can go through life leisurely, while a person without it is subject to greater hardships. In the play A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, the struggle due to economic conditions is evident, as the dreams and aspirations of the Younger family become deferred due to their struggles with poverty. The economic conditions of the Younger family not only lead to the deferral of their dreams, but also to the neglect of their moral values as they begin to see wealth as a necessity.

As civilization has evolved, economic inequality has existed since the feudal era and has made its place in modern society. It is a dilemma that examines the gap between the low wealth of the middle-class worker and the profitable earnings of the monopolizing upper-class business owner. It is a socio- economic issue that can best explored through the lens of the conflict theory; thoroughly explaining as to how the wealth gap came to exist and the consequences of such an economic state on the interaction between the middle-class worker and the wealthy businessman.

The readings examined how classism has negatively affected economics in the United States, how oppression manifests in taking financial advantage of groups of people who cannot advance financially, and systemic issues contributing to low wage and inability to move out of one’s social class. I was struck by the idea that most people in the United States are disadvantaged financially based on the way the country has set up its economic policies. From the beginning, black people have been oppressed by the inability to attain wealth, which continued through the end of WWII. I unnecessarily read a chapter speaking about financial companies targeting poor people, particularly people of color, with money schemes so they are losing their hard-earned money to fees and interest rates. This scheme continues to keep people in debt and living paycheck to paycheck. I related to the reading about college loans creating a paradox that students with degrees enter the workforce unable to find a job in their their field of study. Then the added paradox of not being able to find work making

Have you ever wondered what life is like for people in specific social classes and all the baggage that comes with being wealthy? In the article “Amber Waves of Green”, author Jon Ronson has sit downs with hard working americans making a income of $200 a week all the way up to $625,000 a week. In another writing titled “The Mansion”, written by Michael Lewis, allows the reader to get insight on what life is like as a middle class individual taking on a higher style of living. Within the two articles the reader can point out that both Jon Ronson and Michael Lewis disagree on living styles, what wealth can do for you, and how it can affect the people around you.

Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby, and Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn all explore the effects of wealth and class on society. On closer inspection, a common strand seems to form between these three classic novels. The idea that wealth (and the social class that comes with it) determines a person is refuted via the use of deep characterization. In the end, it seems, wealth and class don’t determine a person’s moral integrity and value, but rather how they interact those two things. Ultimately, Twain makes a case for the lower-classes, that even the poor (and enslaved) can be truly good, setting a better example than the wealthy. Fitzgerald, on the other hand, shows that rich aren’t entirely superficial, rather, that they can be great men. Bronte’s Jane Eyre is a bit more of an oddball than the other two novels, focusing instead on a protagonist that leaps from riches (under the supervision of a cruel aunt), to rags, then back to riches once again. Still, this common strand holds true between the three books: no class, poor or rich, is entirely exempt from moral bankruptcy. A poor person like Pap Finn can be morally corrupt, while a rich man like Jay Gatsby can be good. All character-based judgments in these books lay solely on the person they are judging, blind of the class and wealth that surrounds them.

      Near the beginning of The House of Mirth, Wharton establishes that Lily would not indeed have cared to marry a man who was merely rich: "she was secretly ashamed of her mothers crude passion for money" (38). Lily, like the affluent world she loves, has a strange relationship with money. She needs money to buy the type of life she has been raised to live, and her relative poverty makes her situation precarious. Unfortunately, Lily has not been trained to obtain money through a wide variety of methods. Wharton's wealthy socialites do not all procure money in the same way: money can be inherited, earned working in a hat shop, won at cards, traded scandalously between married men and

This passage demonstrates how deeply rooted wealth and marriage are to Lily’s character. Lily cannot survive without money and she can never find a perfect marriage. At the time of this passage Lily is

Throughout the novel, The Romance of a Shop, by Amy Levy, money was constantly brought up and referenced in almost all decisions being made. As the novel starts out it shows how important money is going to be throughout the rest of the book. The book is based around four sisters, Fanny, Gertrude, Lucy, and Phyllis, and how they must adapt to life after their father passes away leaving the sisters very poor. This leads them to open a photography shop as a way of making money. Which leads to see how money impacted courtship in the late nineteenth century, as it was seen in the novel that the sisters Aunt Caroline told Fanny to not waste her time on a Mr. Marsh because he simply was not rich enough to advance her in her life. Lastly, for

Wealth and greed are common themes in countless works of media, as the effects of such have a timelessly negative impact on society. Throughout the Victorian period, where industrialization was a catalyst for a large expansion of the wealth gap, authors such as Charles Dickens looked to illustrate the effects that greed and wealth had in his world. Our Mutual Friend is such a work that shows the effects of wealth on numerous characters, both rich and poor. An example of the effects of wealth for the rich is in what I will refer to as the “Society,”party, a group comprised of aristocrats that socialize and take pride in their wealth. The “Society,” party in Our Mutual Friend works to encapsulate the role of distinct placements in society, the

Life can at times seem bad, even in the lives of some of the most prestigious, rich, popular people in the world. Bad hair, lack of sleep, abundance of homework, and an absence of money have the tendency to put a damper on some people's days, among other things. Too many times, though, in today's society things are taken for granted. Imagine not having a place to sleep, having no means of education, or having all hard-earned funds taken by the government, not even leaving enough to feed the family. This is how it was for Englanders in the 1800s. The condition of the working-class in 19thcentury England was, without a doubt, disgusting and miserable. The circumstances were spiraling out of control and the working class was

    Wealth and it’s relationship to poverty figures in heavily in two of the plays we have read thus far in class. In both Antony and Cleopatra and The Tempest we are treated to characters and situations that deal with wealth and poverty. Specifically however, both plays have visions of an abundance of wealth that seems at times both corruptible and foolish. In Antony and Cleopatra we have their excessive behavior and flaunting, which proves to be a vice that grips them much to tightly. In The Tempest, characters stranded on a deserted island have their own unique versions of achieving that said abundance. Shakespeare treats the topic similarly in both plays, and