The House of Mirth Essay

and assumption come and transform the fib into reality. One of the most significant myths in the novel is the idea that Lily is an object. It follows her where ever she goes in her society and warps people’s actions directed towards her. In The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton the myth of Lily being an object makes people treat her like a decoration or a prize to be won instead of an actual human being, which causes Lily to have the skills of an object and the soul of a being.

The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence The author Edith Wharton has a tendency to write her books around the same themes and structures. The two books that are being compared in this essay have related themes and characters that share similar traits and struggles throughout their storylines. The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence both deal with a protagonist who is trying to climb the social ladder of the high New York City society. Taking place in the upper echelons of

monopoly game, each player races to riches and financial stability while forcing other players into bankruptcy. In the end, the winner is the one who has bankrupted all his opponents and becomes the wealthiest out of all his peers. In Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth, Lily’s life represents a player in monopoly wherein the end, the winner takes all. The first move can be the most important, most vital move. It sets the speed, the tone, and the direction of the game. Lily Bart has her mind set on the lavish

Selden, in The House of Mirth, is a character that is part of the Elite class, but that doesn’t allow the constraints of the elites shadow his vision. In her essay, Lara Saltz argues “Selden is able to see “real,” poetic Lily because he possesses both an acute eye for what is materially in front of him (Saltz 1).” She continues on with this thesis, arguing that Selden posses a balance between realism and imagination, that allows him to see the real Lily, during her performance of Sir Joshua Reynold’s

A name is a powerful thing. People often change their names later in life, or go by nicknames, because the one given to them at birth is either disliked, or seems unfitting. In The House of Mirth, written by Edith Wharton, refers to the main character Lily Bart as either ‘Lily’ or ‘Miss Bart’ in what appears to be a random manner. The two names seem to happen interchangeably, one paragraph addressing her by her first name, and the next by her last. In the final few pages and in the last moments of

personal challenges in the two novels, Beloved by Toni Morrison, and The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton. In Beloved, I explored the consequences of slavery after the Civil War, on the social development of the daughter of a former slave. Despite an extraordinarily difficult childhood, Denver broke free of the psychological chains that bound her, transforming herself to embrace a productive adulthood. Conversely, in The House of Mirth, I examined the consequences of a different form of slavery during

Shattering the Glass House "where ignorance is bliss, / 'Tis folly to be wise." - Thomas Gray The title of Edith Wharton's novel The House of Mirth waxes poetic irony in the case of the old money society of turn-of-the-century New York. The individual as part of the collective of society which seeks to oppress individuality is representative of the "house" in the novel's title. To remain ignorant and play by the "rules," therein lies the "mirth." Clearly, the victimization of the story's

characters in The House of Mirth are not affected by gambling and risk-taking as severely as Lily is because they have the financial means and power to gamble or recover from their mistakes. In the nineteenth-century and more specifically the Gilded Age of New York City, marriage and money were what measured power, so since Lily had neither of those, her position in that society was very fragile. In Victoria Shinbrot’s article “Risk and Subversion in Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth”, she ponders the

Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth serves as a strict model of etiquette for high society in the Gilded Age. It teaches one the intricate art of keeping up appearances and assimilating into the fickle leisure class. At the same time, the novel’s underlying purpose is to subtly critique this social order. Lily Bart’s perpetual, although often reluctant quest for financial stability and mass approval is a vehicle for demonstrating the numerous absurdities and

being excluded from society and eventually dies. Lily certainly makes some wrong choices and puts her chance of happiness in the wrong goals, but does she really deserve this fate? Despite her faults Lily, the protagonist in Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth, deserves sympathy from the reader. While Lily does make many