The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton
I thought to read Henry James’ Washington Square and this novel, together. Both novels take place in New York. Both feature a young woman and her difficult and disastrous decisions about marriage. James and Wharton knew each other and admired each other’s work. Washington Square, written in 1880, is set about 1850 and ends in 1870. This novel was published in 1905 and takes place over the course of two years around 1900.
Pity poor Lily Bart, born to wealth and a snobby mother. At age nineteen her father announces that he is “ruined.” Wharton doesn’t tell us what happened to the money but it’s gone. The father dies shortly after the bad news and Lily’s mother dies shortly after that, leaving Lily alone and accustomed to a lifestyle she can no longer afford and prepared for nothing else. She’s taken in by an aunt, Julia Peniston, who supports Lily financially but who is not herself interested in the social scene that Lily aspires to.
We meet Lily at age twenty-nine. Without money of her own, her only hope to secure the lifestyle she requires is marriage. She’s got beauty, and she has enough money from her aunt to afford the fancy dresses and so on required of the wealthy social life, and at the beginning of the book she has the connections she needs, too, to be invited to the best houses. But time is running out. She needs to make her marriage match soon.
The most likely candidate is Lawrence Seldon. His name is actually the first word in the novel, and the novel ends with him as well. We meet Lily through Seldon’s eyes at Grand Central Station. Lily has been invited to Bellomont, the country house of her married friend Judy Trenor, but she’s missed her train connection and has a few hours to wait. Missed connections is a persistent theme in Lily’s story. Seldon invites her to tea. They decide to walk to the restaurant and as their way passes his bachelor apartment, he invites her up to have tea in his room. Here, Lily makes mistakes of two kinds, which she continues to make throughout the novel.
Her first mistake is not seeing the impropriety of being alone with an unmarried man in his apartment. Actually she knows the problem but thinks she can risk it. She’s spotted as she leaves the apartment by two people, Simon Rosedale, the wealthy owner of the apartment building, and a woman cleaning the front stairs. Confronted by Mr. Rosedale she compounds her error by lying about her visit, a lie that he instantly catches her in. Lily continues to commit these innocent but doubtful acts and is never condemned for them directly, but they contribute to an air of suspicion about her character that eventually dooms her beneath a vicious false accusation.
The second mistake is not taking the opportunities for her salvation that are offered to her. Seldon is handsome, and available, and they are fond of each other. It’s clear he’s the one she should marry, and if this were a RomCom instead of a RomTrag, the novel would consist of resolving the complications and end with their wedding. But he won’t do for her. He earns his money as an attorney (instead of inheriting it) and he doesn’t have enough for the lifestyle she desires. (He lives in an apartment for God’s sake!) She tells him he’s a valuable friend, but can only ever be that.
Instead she has her eyes set on Percy Gryce. He has the right sort of money. But he’s dreadfully dull. At Bellomont she pursues him, halfheartedly. She gambles at bridge. Percy is against ladies gambling. She loses at bridge and acquires a debt she can’t afford to pay. Seldon shows up suddenly and Lily takes a romantic walk with him. Again she misses the chance to say yes to happiness. Another guest at the party, Bertha Dorset, though married, to George Dorset, takes a jealous dislike to Lily because of Seldon’s interest in her so Bertha makes sure Percy hears about Lily’s gambling and Lily loses that opportunity as well.
To address her money problem, Lily decides to invest the last of her savings. Knowing nothing about the market she entrusts the money to Gus Trenor, Judy’s husband. The investment seems to pay off. But soon Lily realizes that Gus is actually paying her out of his own money and expects Lily to re-pay him with romantic companionship. She rebuffs him and resolves to return the money he gave her: nearly $10,000 that she doesn’t have.
Now Lily avoids Bellomont, to avoid seeing Gus in private, but still sees him in public situations to retain his friendship. She sees Rosedale and George Dorset, too, arousing suspicion because George is married and Rosedale is not the right sort for Lily’s social set. Percy marries another girl, embarrassing Lily, who appears to have lost a man everyone expected her to marry. And word of her gambling has gotten back to her aunt, who disapproves and refuses to give Lily the money to settle her debts.
In Chapter Nine an interesting bit of intrigue is introduced. Lily, in her aunt’s home is approached by a servant woman. It’s the same woman who was cleaning the steps of Seldon’s apartment building in the opening chapter. The woman recognized Lily and brought her a packet of letters that she fished out of Seldon’s trash, torn in half but pieced back together. The letters reveal an affair between Seldon and a woman that the servant assumes is Lily. She wants money for them. Lily discovers the letters actually reveal an affair between Seldon and Bertha Dorset. She buys them to protect Seldon and then hides them away.
At a party hosted by the Wellington Rhys, up-and-comers who have money but are still climbing their way into society, Lily takes part in a tableau vivant entertainment. She poses alone, personifying a portrait of Mrs. Lloyd by Joshua Reynolds. Her dress is revealing and her beauty entrancing, but her scene is also somewhat shocking. Again, not quite a scandal, but also not something proper for women of her station.
Seldon, though, is beguiled. He’s attracted to her looks, as are other men at the party, but he also sees in her boldness a quality that marks her worth something more than the other women of her set. They talk at the party. He realizes his love for her and determines to make another try for her. The next day she receives a note from him saying he has to go away on business for the day but asking could he call on her the following day at 4pm? She agrees. Lily receives another invitation as well, from Judy Trenor inviting her to dinner that evening at their home in the city. Lily has dinner plans she can’t get out of, but sees the invitation as a welcome overture from Judy so she arranges to see her after dinner, at 10pm.
At 10pm she goes to the Trenor’s home. Gus Trenor is there, alone. Judy decided not to come to the city after all and Gus purposefully neglected to notify Lily so he could be alone with her. He pressures her to give herself to him. She keeps him away and leaves the house, but as she leaves she is seen, by Seldon and another man.
Disturbed by the incident, Lily spends the night with her friend Gerty Farish, The next day, Lily waits in vain for Seldon to arrive for the 4pm appointment. Instead, she receives an unexpected visit from Simon Rosedale with an offer of marriage. He’s growing richer quickly but being Jewish and crass, he can’t crack the high social set. He also saw Lily’s tableau vivant at the Brys’ party and realizes Lily has the social connections to grant him entrance, and his money would give her the life she wants. From a mercenary point of view she should say yes, but she turns him down. He leaves. In rapid succession she learns that Seldon has suddenly left town on business, to Cuba and then Europe. He’s cutting her off. And then, equally suddenly, she receives an invitation from Bertha Dorset to cruise on their boat in the Mediterranean. Lily at loose ends, accepts.
That’s the end of Book One, and Chapter 15. Book Two is slightly shorter, and fourteen chapters.
The first three chapters of Book Two take place in Monte Carlo. Several of our characters from New York are vacationing there. Bertha and George Dorset’s boat arrives from Sicily with the Dorsets, Lily and Ned Silverton on board. It soon becomes apparent, as Lily had herself quickly realized, that Bertha was conducting an affair with Ned, and that Lily had been invited in order to distract George from what was going on under his nose. Now, though, even George has become aware of his wife’s behavior and he’s had enough. He decides to divorce her and seeks a lawyer. Seldon (remember he had business in Europe?) turns up and counsels George.
But Bertha sees that she has finally pushed her husband too far, and is afraid to lose his money. So, in order to win George back, Bertha publicly accuses Lily of seducing her husband and kicks her off the boat. This hides her own scandal and convinces George that Bertha must really love him, being so jealous of him. No matter that innocent Lily is effectively ruined by the false accusation.
It’s precipitously downhill from there.
When Lily gets back to New York she finds that her aunt has died, but not before her aunt heard of Lily’s scandal in Monte Carlo and rewrote her will. She leaves everything to a friend and gives Lily only a small legacy of (what a coincidence) $10,000, the exact amount she owes Gus Trenor. But even that won’t come to Lily until a year has passed and the lawyers finish up the paperwork. Lily is forced to move to a hotel and live off her own very small income.
Lily reaches out to an old acquaintance, Carry Fisher, who has some success being useful to rich persons and sponging off their largess. Carry hooks Lily up with a Mr. and Mrs. Gormer. But Bertha poisons that opportunity, too, making sure Mrs. Gormer hears rumors about Lily’s supposedly scandalous past.
Her position gets increasingly desperate. She takes a job as a social secretary for a disreputable woman named Mrs. Hatch. Then she discovers that Mrs. Hatch is plotting to marry an unsuspecting young man from Lily’s former social set. Lily quits, but not before creating the impression that she was in on the plot to use her friend.
Lily moves to a boarding house. She begins to treat her depression, chronic anxiety and sleeplessness with chloral hydrate. The pharmacist warns her not to take too much.
Lily gets a job as a milliner. But never having trained to do work with her hands she can’t do the job properly. At the end of the season she’s let go.
Meanwhile, Simon Rosedale has reappeared. He knows about the torn love letters that Lily has been keeping. (There’s a bit of a plot hole here covered over by Rosedale reminding Lily that he is Seldon’s landlord). Rosedale sees two possibilities for how Lily could save herself using the letters. She could show them to George Dorset, proving Betha’s infidelity, and then agree to marry George after he divorces Bertha. Or, what Rosedale would rather she do, show the letters to Bertha, and then force Bertha to rehabilitate Lily’s social position under threat of exposure. And then, once restored, Lily could marry Rosedale. But Lily refuses. The letters would be a scandal for Seldon as well as Bertha and she won’t do that to him. Instead she takes the letters with her when she sees Seldon a final time, back at his apartment where the novel began. She asks him to build up the fire because she’s sick and so cold, and then, when he isn’t looking she drops the packet of letters into the fire.
There’s a penultimate odd and sentimental scene. Lily stops to rest in a park on her way home after leaving Seldon. She’s surprised by a woman who she helped long ago, through a charity operated by her friend Gerty Farish. The woman, Nettie Struther, had been sick and Lily had paid for her convalescence at a sanitarium. Now the woman is well, and married, and with a new baby, and Nettie feels she owes her happiness to Lily and thinks of her kindness often. She takes Lily to her small home and shows Lily a lovely moment devoid of any of the trappings of high society.
Finally at home, Lily discovers that the $10,000 check from her aunt’s legacy has arrived. She prepares an envelope to mail the check to her bank. Then she writes a check to Gus Trenor paying off the debt, and puts that in an envelope. She goes to bed and takes too much chloral hydrate, deliberately or accidentally we don’t know. She drifts off thinking of the happiness of Nettie and her baby.
And finally, one more missed connection. Seldon had been moved by Lily’s last visit and decided despite everything that he still loves her and wants her. He comes early to her boarding house to tell her his feelings but discovers Gerty Farish already there, and Lily dead. In her room he discovers the checks and realizes that Lily had behaved honorably all along. (Although he will never know how she had spared him from his own scandal.)
This is Wharton’s second novel, though she was already 43 when it was published. It was a huge success at the time and has retained its popularity ever since. Wharton was born to wealth and her writing made her wealthier. Her descriptions of the upper classes, and her critique of their shallowness and immorality are from her own experience. Her novel The Age of Innocence won the Pulitzer Prize in 1920. She also wrote plays and short stories and non-fiction books about home design and other subjects.
The House of Mirth is in some ways a satire, but there isn’t much mirth in it. It’s pretty dark, especially the last several chapters with Lily poor and sick. Actually, the title is taken from Ecclesiastes 7:4, “The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.” Wharton thinks of Lily’s set as fools, concerned only with themselves and their own pleasure.
But it’s also a novel of manners. Lily gets in trouble when she violates social conventions, like being alone in a man’s home, going around in public with married men, gambling (which is accepted at Judy Trenor’s house, but unacceptable to Aunt Peniston), or posing in a revealing costume. But even when actually innocent of social violations she’s suspected of them and constrained by those same social conventions from simply explaining why her actions are in fact innocent and clearing her name.
Lily is part of the upper class, materialist, pleasure-seeking world but also stands apart. She rejects several expedient offers of marriage that would give her status and wealth, because she also wants affection and fulfillment. She doesn’t trade her beauty for wealth, which she could easily do. Seeing that she is more than that is why Seldon keeps coming back to her. She treats others with kindness, such as Seldon, and with generosity such as Nettie Struther, without expecting to gain by it. But she also doesn’t accept Seldon’s love when it’s offered because part of her does want the status and wealth he can’t offer. Her death is heroic, partly, in that she pays off her debts and sacrifices herself to preserve her friend’s reputation, but it’s also a pathetic act when she turned aside so many opportunities to rescue herself.