The House of Mirth Essay

The narrator in the novel “The Yellow Wallpaper ” and the main character, Lily, in the novel “The House of Mirth” are both women in the 19th century. They both face the gender roles driven by the society they live in. The gender politics imprison the women physically and mentally. While both women struggle to find their place in their gender roles, only the narrator survives, whereas, Lily falls victim to society and perishes. Quawas gives insight on the gender roles of women during the nineteenth

Lily as the Goddess Diana in The House of Mirth        One of the tragedies in The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton is that Lily Bart is unable to marry Laurence Selden and thereby secure a safe position in society. Their relationship fluctuates from casual intimacy to outright love depending on how and where Selden perceives Lily. Selden sees a beautious quality in Lily Bart that is not present in any of the other women in the novel. This mysterious beauty that is so often alluded to, in addition

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

Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth chronicles the tale of Lily Bart, a young socialite stuck at the crossroads of rejection her society to pursue her ambitions or relenting to societal expectations placed on her. In literature, naturalism, a philosophy that frequently overlaps with the theory of Social Darwinism, applies “scientific principles of objective observation to the study of human behavior and characters within the context of their surroundings” (“American Literary Naturalism” Twentieth-Century)

The female protagonist, Lily in the novel, The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton and the female protagonist, Jane in the short story, The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman encounter the gender politics of the nineteenth century. In The House of Mirth and The Yellow Wallpaper there are several reasons why the gender roles during this time hinder the female protagonist’s inherent potential. For instance, society expects the male to be dominate, to make all the money, and to have all the knowledge

In Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth, she presents us the real New York City in late nineteenth century. Due to the rapid development of industry, the wealth gap got wider and wider. Money functions extremely important in people’s social lives. People from upper class can purchase anything they want: luxury goods, artworks, even women. As the main part of consumption, women’s consumption reflects the gender relation in American society during this time period. The protagonist Lily Bart is a representative

In the novel The House of Mirth and the short stories Little Miss Sophie and The German Senator there are many different ways in which characters interact with contemporary economics. Firstly in the Novel by Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth, there are few contemporary economics that matter or are brought up due to the status of the characters. The only economic factors that matter in the novel are those that would further one social status. Secondly in the short story Little Miss Sophie by Alice

Jane Eyre vs House of Mirth Lily The novels, Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte, and House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton, contain many similarities and differences of which I will discuss in this essay. The focus will be on the main characters of each book, Jane Eyre, and Lily Bart and will include important points and ideas demonstrated in these novels. To begin, Jane, from Charlotte Bronte’s novel, Jane Eyre, was an orphan who was raised by an upper-class family who resented her and did not

When I first started reading chapters 8-15 of the House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, I thought about the effects of money on a person’s identity in the late Victorian Era in New York. The novel, The House of Mirth depicts a woman named Lily Bard trying to make a name for herself in New York’s high society. While for many during the later part of the 1800s, times were rough and money was tight, those who were wealthy separated themselves into a higher social class. To become a highly-esteemed member

Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth creates a subtle, ironic, and superbly crafted picture of the social operation of turn-of-the-century New York. In her harsh expression of community, she succeeds in portraying a world of calculation operating under the pretenses of politeness. The characters become competitors in the highly complex game of social positioning with an amorphous body of socially formed laws. Through her presentation of Lily Barton's ongoing struggles to "recover her footing-each time