Lily In Edith Wharton's The House Of Mirth

She even had to take charge of problematic situations. She performed like a mother towards her younger siblings, while her mother, by contrast, refused to do the chores, for she named herself a "lady". Not only Lily´s childhood wasn´t easy, but also her future life was full of tough occurrences. She found her purpose of life in teaching. For her first job offer, she had to ride 500 miles with her horse Patches.

When reading this story it felt as though Lily lacked emotions. She, like the main character in Dead Confederates, lacked guilt. She tricks the soldier into thinking she was going to please him sexually in order to keep her horse and other items he was going to take. Any normal nineteen year old may have thought about actually having sex with him but not her, she had the plan of killing him. Part of the problem with this character is that she felt nothing after she succeeded in killing the man, she simply went back to her

everything changed for both her father and her. While Lily was living in Sylvan, South

Lily starts off stuck living in an unloving, abusive household and decides to free herself from the negative atmosphere that she had been living in her whole life. Lily is perpetually abused by her father. He forces her to kneel on Martha White's, gets exasperated every time she speaks, and yells at her for no reason. Lily is not the only one noticing the terrible treatment, Rosaleen does too. Once after Lily had to kneel on the Martha White's Rosaleen said to her, “Look at you, child. Look what he’s done to you” (Kidd 25). Noticing the unloving treatment Lily gets, Rosaleen knew that their household was demoralizing place for Lily to be in, which is why she didn’t question when Lily when she later runs away. Lily one day realizes she needs to do something about her horrible life at home. While sitting in her room she hears a voice in her

At the beginning of the novel, Lily is aware of and acts according to the rules which subscribe to the Manichean principle: One must consistently act in one way or the other--there is no in between. There is no distance between the internal and the external for Lily at this point, which is the root of her innocence, but she is vaguely aware that something is happening to her. She longs for "escape from routine" (19) but is still conscious of the fact that escape does not come without a price. Lily is never able to "do a natural thing without having to screen it behind a structure of artifice" (19). She is innocent in intent, and because of this she indulges herself with her little "escapes" from time to time without much thought to the consequences until after the fact. Her attempts to ignore or mask her social indiscretions

This is not a good sign for Lily because she does not have love, respect, or acceptance from anyone.

      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

Mullen describes Lily’s situation as “Lily Bart has been predominantly framed as a tragic victim caught within the irresistible market forces of capitalism and the fatal contradictions of gender and class politics” (45). The novel, “The House of Mirth” filled with nuances of gender and class politics. Mullen points out a weakness in Lily’s character, her position in the forces of the capitalist circle. The females in the novel face the pressures from the social circle as well. Lily is a product of her culture and upbringing. Success is measured by the capital worth and how one would survive in their social class. Unfortunately, Lily didn’t have to chance to remain in her former social class circle, after trying to pay off her debts. She died the night that she received her

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

Her first and recurring risk is with Lawrence Selden, a bachelor who tries to distances himself from Old New York. Lily’s first decision in the book was to go on walk alone and away from Grand Central Station with Selden, she gets caught coming from Selden’s apartment by Mr. Rosedale and risks again by lying about why she was in that building. Lily goes on another walk with Selden, but this time at Bellomont, as a result of this walk Mr. Percy Gryce decided to leave Bellomont without giving Lily a marriage proposal, which left her still in debt and financial ruin. Lily will “pay the ultimate price for throwing her lot in with Selden” since her risks with him always leave her in a worse off state than she was before she decided to interact with him (Shinbrot 41). Another person that Lily takes a serious risk with is Gus Trenor; he gives Lily financial advice and loans her some money and in return he wants sex from her (Wharton 116). This is a scary scene for Lily because it is a near rape situation and also because it starts rumors about Lily and Gus Trenor having relations which does not help her social standing, marriage prospects, or financial situation. Another big risk that Lily takes is going to Monte Carlo with the Dorsets, Lily accepts their invitation after the previously mentioned Gus rape scene happens, and she just decided to run away from her

Indeed, Lily finds herself distinctly above Gerty in the social ladder. As she mulls about her “hateful fate,” she distinguishes herself from Gerty, posing the question “What choice had she? To be herself, or a Gerty Farish” (Wharton 19). Within this clear social food chain, Lawrence Selden, almost exclusively, has the ability to traverse the tiers on his own accord as he “had preserved a certain social detachment, a happy air of viewing the show objectively, of having points of contact outside the great gilt cage” (Wharton 41). He is unique in his abilities to maintain his position in the chain and elevate himself when he so chooses, which Lily often envies. However, Lily also wishes to ascend permanently on the social hierarchy because “her whole being dilated in an atmosphere of luxury; it was the background she required, the only climate she could breathe in” (Wharton 19). Truly, as shown later in the novel, once Lily falls from her natural system, she fails to adapt and survive. Lily’s society, of which she is a product, acts as a harsh environment that Lily must navigate, as a character does in a naturalistic novel.

Unlike the kids at her school, Lily doesn't have fashionable clothes nor does she have a proper family. It's hard for her to make friends with the people around her age, because her father rarely permit her to appear in public places. As a result, the people at her school stay away from her, because her lifestyle doesn't fit what is considered as a 'normal'

Edith Wharton develops Lady Bart as a character who is a product of her environment, preyed upon by circumstance and fate. Lily's name, referring to a highly ornamental flower, immediately creates the image of a delicate creature who is grown in the rich soils of society and who, if uprooted from this societal soil, would wither and perish. Lily, as any living organism, is not simply a static figure in her environment. Instead, she is a true naturalistic character, responsive and subject to the conditions of her surroundings. For example, when Lily and Selden meet at Bellomont, "Lily's beauty expanded like a flower in sunlight" (108) and, "her face turned toward him with the soft motion of a flower" (109). Thus, although it can be argued that Lily is not a naturalistic character because of Wharton's emphasis on

She cannot fully possess herself – could this be the meaning behind the word that is left unsaid? Could the word she wanted to tell Selden be ‘freedom’? Earlier in the novel when walking with Selden in the park, Lily listens as he defines what ‘success’ means for him, ‘My idea of success,...is personal freedom...from everything – from money, from poverty...from all the material accidents’ (p.60). It appears that both Lily and Selden were too late in realising that it was in fact this freedom they both desired. The withholding of the word ultimately denies the reader access to Lily’s dying thoughts. However, it is this switch from omniscient narration to free indirect discourse that allows the reader to fill this “textual space”. Wharton manages to position the novel as psychological realism bordering on modernism. 7

Yet, this very society that demand its women be superficial creatures that merit worth only by appearance is also one which immediately rejects a woman who seems intent on marrying a man with wealth-the one course open to women who wish to be accepted in society.  This may be where one of Lily's character qualities prevents her from being able to join such a society.  She is no good at hiding her desire to marry a man of wealth.  In fact, she even tells Selden, her true love, that she "is very expensive" and "must have a great deal of money" (Wharton  31).  These kinds of admissions make Lily appear to be the one thing this superficial society cannot bear-a scheming adventuress out to snag a rich