The Significance of Lily Bart's Death (House of Mirth)

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

Since her mother died she has had to put up with her abusive father who doesn't really care about Lily. Having to not only deal with this but the fact that she doesn't have any friends in school doesn't really help. “People who think dying is the worst thing don’t know a thing about life.” Lily says this in the beginning of the novel. This is an important quote showing Lily’s bravery because Lily’s life has been profoundly affected by her mother’s death. This statement suggests that living with someone else’s death can be more painful than dying. She grew up without a mother and the taunting guiltiness that she killed her own mother. In some ways I share this quality with Lily. At times I can be a brave person but like everybody else I'm not always so brave. One time when I was brave was when I was first coming into the high school. I was always so nervous at just the thought of high school so when the big day came I was very anxious. I was brave enough to get through it all and now I'm more comfortable in the

The life of a lady in the 19th century is painted in a romantic light. Pictured in her parlor, the lady sips tea from delicate china while writing letters with a white feathered quill. Her maid stands silently off in the background, waiting for orders to serve her mistress. What is not typically pictured, is the sadness or boredom echoed on the lady’s face. Perhaps the letter is to a dear friend, not seen in ages, pleading with the friend to visit, in hopes that the friend will fill the void in the lady’s life made from years spent in a loveless marriage; or possiblyk20 the lady isn’t writing a letter at all, but a novel or a poem, never to be read by anyone but her. Edith Warton and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, are 19th Century ladies who dare to share their writing with the world. Through their works, the darker side of a woman’s life in the late 1800’s is exposed. Gender politics in the 19th dictates that a lady is dependent on her husband for her financial security and social standing; that is if she is fortunate enough to marry at all. In Edith Warton’s The House of Mirth, Lily Bart is a beautiful woman in her late 20’s, who fails to marry a wealthy man. The narrator in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper slowly goes insane under her physician husbands misguided attempts to cure her of depression. The downfall of Lily Bart and the narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper is

Lily feels alone in this world. She is ostracized at school, treated with an absence of love and lives day to day knowing that she has committed irreversible acts. When she thinks about her mother all of these complications melt away in the warm allure she feels.

Lily, feeling burdened with the guilt of her mother's death becomes terrified of her father, T. Ray. Lily, feeling burdened with the guilt from the circumstances of her mother’s death when she is told that she killed her mother. T. Ray scares Lily when he says “We turned around and you were standing holding the gun. You picked it up off the floor. Then it just went off.”(Kidd, 19). Lily’s only memory of her mother is this time, when her mother died, when T. Ray confirms Lily’s suspicions, this makes Lily unable to forgive herself. Lily becomes terrified of her father T. Ray when he abuses Lily. T. Ray abuses Lily by making her kneel on grits, “I walked toward them with those feathery steps you expect of a girl in Japan, and lowered myself to the floor determined not to cry, but the sting was already gathering in my eyes.” (24). Lily was so afraid of T. Ray that she refused to

Throughout the novel The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, the characters are determined to achieve a goal or get some answers in some way. The novel’s main character and narrator is Lily Owens, a fourteen year old girl; the story is set in South Carolina during the summer of 1964. During this summer, Lily searches for answers about her mother’s life. Hardships cause people to show their determination in life because they strive to achieve a specific goal as demonstrated by Lily, T. Ray, and Rosaleen.

Lily longed for love and attention, something her father and caregiver, Rosaleen couldn't seem to give her. The reality was that Lily lived in a time that segregation was intact and John Fitzgerald Kennedy was trying to launch rockets to the moon. The author used symbolism, for example space, to show the lost nature of Lily’s character. “Fourteen and my life went spinning off into a whole new orbit” (1). Lost in thought, Lily always was thinking about what would happen if her mother was around. She was forced to follow her father's orders or she would be hit or shoved. This made her want to create as much distance between her and her father as possible. On the back of her mother's picture it said Tiburon, South Carolina. Maybe in Tiburon she could have a better life and bring her closer to her mother? Lily and Rosaleen hatched a plan to escape. As they left town they were confronted by a group of white men. Rosaleen spat on their shoes in protest of her rights. Then she was beaten up and sent to jail. T. Ray (Lily’s father) was furious! At this pivotal moment Lily knew she must leave. Confidence grew throughout Lily, she got Rosaleen out of the hospital and left to Tiburon. Before she left she gave T. Ray a note saying, “Dear T. Ray don’t bother looking for me. Lily P.S. People who tell lies like you should rot in hell” (42). This is a major turning point in this book because Lily had never stood up to her father like that.

As readers first start the novel, the main character, and protagonist, Lily Owens is seen as a determined 14-year-old girl who will stop at nothing to find out more about her mother. After getting into a fight with T. Ray, Lily Owens thinks to herself, “That's when it came to me. What if my mother wasn’t leaving true? What if T. Ray made it up to punish me? … But I had such a moment right then, standing in my own ordinary room. I heard a voice say, Lily Melissa Owens, your jar is open. In a matter of seconds, I knew exactly what I had to do -leave.” (Kidd 41) This quote gives the readers a sneak peek at how determined Lily truly is. She takes the risk of running away from her abusive father and the house she calls home. Once Lily runs away and breaks Rosaleen out of jail, she comes up with a plan as to how they will escape Sylvan. “‘We’re going to Highway Forty and

Edith Wharton wrote and set The House Of Mirth in the American Gilded Age. Wharton uses Lily Bart, the protagonist, as a symbol for a common unmarried women living in that time period. However, Wharton’s

An impression that stood out to me personally as I began to read the book was the hurt and suffering that Lily carried in her everyday life

First, the author indirectly characterizes Lily as an ungrateful, pessimistic teenager to create a likeable character for teenage readers. For example, Lily complains about T. Ray, her father, “...and T. Ray, naturally, refused to buy me bristle rollers, so all year I’d had to roll it on Welch’s grape juice cans…”(3) which suggests Lily as being ungrateful. To further explain, T. Ray provides her with food and shelter, yet all she does is complain about what she does not have. In addition, Lily does not explain about the positive components in her life, such as, her education or shelter, and only dwells on the bad. To conclude, Lily’s ungrateful and pessimistic feelings revealed through indirect characterization, relates her to the teenage audience, because, the teenage readers would react in the same

When “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter” and To The Lighthouse were written, women were fighting fiercely for the right to vote. When To The Lighthouse was published, woman had gained that right, but it was not common or even accepted for a woman to be an independent, unmarried woman. “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter” shows us the anxiety of Mabel, a woman who has no prospects for marriage who see her only choices as being a “spinster” or suicide. She is rescued by Dr. Ferguson after submerging herself into a pond. Her attitude of being a passive guest in her own life are strongly disputed in “Some Men’s Daughters” by Sandra Mallett. While the text has been read in the light that Mabel’s decision to end her life was a strong, independent decision for someone who had to choose between everyone taking care of her when they didn’t want to and becoming a working class person after living with

In the novel The House of Mirth, readers have concluded that femininity was the main issue. Along with it, the themes that supported the issue are the love, death, and freedom versus slavery when it came to money.

The House of Mirth explores the place of women (particularly Lily Bart) in society and the social effect that marriage had on them. The book showcases the problems that came with being a single woman during the late 1800s and the need and struggle to conform to society's expectations, and, therefore, falls under the title of a novel of manners. Women had little chance to play any role other that a wife or a mother, and could acquire respect and power only through marriage. Edith Wharton explores the themes of the female body, gender roles and manners in order to achieve this.

Patriarchal and the male dominant society doesn’t not allow woman to have the same privileges as a man in which man’s principals guide woman to be the perfect Victorian Woman that society expected her to be, however if a woman does not accept and does not agree to a Victorian man’s principals, she will remain spouseless. Because every man almost in our society wants women like Victorians, and that is why the marriage of Paul and Minta doesn’t survived. They parted so soon. The understanding is necessary. The relationship between Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay proves that marriage is not a guarantee of mature and healthy relationship between husband and wife. On the other hand, Lily has the first inspiration about her painting the moment she acknowledges that her work is masculine and also embodies pursuance of truth. But as we all see at the end she has a moment of personal wholeness when she accepts the feminity that she has always denied. And it ends with Lily’s vision that feminist and