Lily was raised to believe that marriage was her reason for existence, she was simply business transaction. The men sit back and wait for a girl to marry, “whereas I have to calculate and contrive, and retreat and advance, as if I were going through and intricate dance, where one misstep would throw me hopelessly out of time” (Wharton 38). Yet Wharton establishes that Lily would not merely marry a man just for his money, “She leaned forward, holding the tip of her cigarette to his” (Wharton 7), Lawrence Selden. A Lawyer who makes Lily question that possibly the business nature of marriage could adapt into an act of love and pleasure. Wharton questions the motivations behind marriage through Lily’s conflicts of the life she has always known …show more content…
Whether she was prepared to admit it or not pleasure was the life Lily needed to uncover to move on. A life without love was no life for Miss Lily Bart, for after each failed attempt at business she ran to Selden. The “real” Lily Bart was only ever alive when Selden was near, Lily realised it, but it was too late, “I have kept her with me all this time, but now we are going to part, and I have brought her back to you - I am going to leave her here. When I go out presently she will not go with me. I shall like to think that she has stayed with you - and she’ll be no trouble. she’ll take up no room” (Wharton 251). Lily chooses pleasure, but she has chosen too late in her life, for her to truly take pleasure from Selden. She leaves the “real” Lily Bart in Selden’s care, so she knows the will be happy and live a pleasurable life, “She went up to him and laid her hands on his shoulders. “Goodbye,” she said, and as he bent over her she touched his forehead with her lips” (Wharton 252). Lily had lived her life and made it to the most important, “She had been unhappy, and now she was happy - she had felt herself alone, and now the sense of loneliness had vanished” (Wharton 262) Then there was Selden, “she must tell Selden, some word she had found that should make life clear between them” (Wharton
The Flowers By Alice Walker Written in the 1970's The Flowers is set in the deep south of America and is about Myop, a small 10-year old African American girl who explores the grounds in which she lives. Walker explores how Myop reacts in different situations. She writes from a third person perspective of Myop's exploration. In the first two paragraph Walker clearly emphasises Myop's purity and young innocence.
Eugenia Collier, the author of Marigolds evokes empathy in the audience to inspire action and bring about a deeper understanding of the world by using first person point of view in her text, so she used Lizabeth an imaginary person to tell a story from her point of view. She uses Lizabeth as the narrator of the story, so Lizabeth tells a story about her life experience in dusty depression-era town. In the text where it mentions “whatever verve, there was left in her, whatever was of love and beauty and joy that had…. Awkward and ashamed”(Lizabeth 62-63) and “She never planted marigolds again….. And I too have planted marigolds”(Lizabeth 64), she is trying to describe something. She is trying to describe that the marigolds brought happiness
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
In “Debasing Exchange: Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth,” author Wai-Chee Dimock argues that the society portrayed in the novel, which is a reflection of 19th century upper class New York, revolves around the idea that the business ethics of the economic “marketplace” determines all aspects of the culture. More specifically, this causes all forms of social interactions to be viewed as “currency,” with the precise value of a certain act or relationship determined by whoever possesses the most power. As Dimock herself puts it, “as a controlling logic, a mode of human conduct and human association, the marketplace is everywhere and nowhere, ubiquitous and invisible” (375). While some might wonder whether the marketplace really is the ultimate guiding structure for this particular fictionalized society, Dimock contends nevertheless that this interpretation is a viable one, due to the marketplace’s “ability to reproduce itself,” and thus “assimilate everything… into its domain” (375). I myself find Dimock’s argument both interesting and useful in interpreting The House of Mirth because of the clarity with which she presents the often complicated, critical lens of Marxism.
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
“The Flowers” by Alice Walker is a short story written in the 1970’s. The story focuses on Myop, a ten year old African American girl who loves to explore the land in which she lives. Carefree and naïve, Myop decides to travel further away from her ‘Sharecropper cabin’ and travels deep inside the woods to unfamiliar land where she discovers the decomposed body of an African American man. It is then Myop quickly grows up and suddenly becomes aware of the world in which she lives. The story relies on setting and symbolism to convey the theme of departing innocence.
Instead of relying on another power that is above her, she takes her fate into her own hands and tries to save her own home. This self reliance develops early, and can also be seen much later in her life. When she is twenty-seven, Lily learns that her husband has a secret second family. She leaves him immediately and manages to annul the marriage. Although he had taken all of her money from their joint bank account, she does not go back to her parents in Arizona or try to find another husband to take care of her. Instead, she begins preparing for her future alone. “Since I obviously couldn't count on a man to take care of me, what I needed more than ever was a profession. I needed to get my college education and become a teacher . . . the time flew by, and when both the dispensation and the acceptance letter arrived, I had enough money for a year of college” (p. 90). Instead of wondering what to do and moping about her ex-husband, Lily is practical and knows what she wants to do next. She also mentions that she cannot depend on a husband to take care of her. If she did not have to fend for
Poovey exhibits a nice pace in her essay by following up her thesis with an immediate example breaking down Emma Woodhouse’s view on marriage and love. Poovey states that Emma’s reluctant nature to marry is her awareness that based off her current social status marriage couldn’t give her anything she already has
“A rose is a rose is a rose” Gertrude Stein. Gertrude Stein who many consider her a “major author, the founder of a new literary style, the great apologist for Modernism, and the discoverer and promoter of the French school of contemporary painting.” She was the beginning of a new era, some looked up to her while others thought she was an insignificant person (but how wrong they were). Gertrude Stein influenced a new generation in the arts. She helped encourage new and old authors and painters. Gertrude Stein enjoyed writing simple phrases that can be interpreted into masterpieces. She was an activist, out of the box thinker and internationally known during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Gertrude Stein’s monument is one out of the only
First, in the novel money is the most important thing and social standing depends just on how much wealth one has. Therefore, it makes sense that Lily’s whole demeanor and emotional state is almost completely dependent on money. Lily has acquired lots of debt from gambling and when in this state she feels as if she owes something to the people who have lent her money. She absolutely hates that feeling, as she wants to solely be independent and have a man give her wealth. “She was realizing for the first time that ... the maintenance of a moral attribute should be dependent on dollars and cents”, this quote was describing
In Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen introduces the major thematic concept of marriage and financial wealth. Throughout the novel, Austen depicts various relationships that exhibit the two recurring themes. Set during the regency period, the perception of marriage revolves around a universal truth. Austen claims that a single man “must be in want of a wife.” Hence, the social stature and wealth of men were of principal importance for women. Austen, however, hints that the opposite may prove more exact: a single woman, under the social limitations, is in want of a husband. Through this speculation, Austen acknowledges that the economic pressure of social acceptance serves as a foundation for a proper marriage.
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
Lily Briscoe is working on a painting throughout the book To The Lighthouse. She does not want anyone to see her painting and considers throwing it to the grass when someone walks by (Woolf 17-18). Other characters in the book seem to have different opinions about her painting. Mrs. Ramsay, William Bankes, and Charles Tansley all have differing views about Lily’s painting. While showing her painting to William Bankes, Lily realizes that she doesn’t like it. During Mrs. Ramsay’s dinner party, Lily realizes what she needs to do to fix her painting but doesn’t until the end of the story. The painting itself grows and changes throughout the book, just as Lily grows and changes as a person as she lives her life (Woolf 102).
At the turn of the 20th century, the social and economic climate of urban America saw a boom in industry and productivity. Within this microcosm of economic prosperity, social elites participated in a constant exchange of opportunities, ideas, and social exploitations. In Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth, the atmosphere of high society deeply emulates the atmosphere of the market itself. Wharton utilizes economic terminology and vocabulary in this novel to establish the principles of courtship in post-Victorian society. In this society, women, marriage, and social favors serve as commodities which are traded back and forth between the masters of both the monetary and social economies.