Book Review: House of Mirth

[osprey_archer]

I just finished Edith Wharton's House of Mirth. I think there is only one way to express the range and depths of my feelings about this book, and that is to scream, "What the fuck, Edith Wharton! What the fuck?"

So our heroine - I use this word loosely - our heroine is Lily Bart, scion of Old New York, whose chief object in life is to marry a rich husband and live in luxury. But! She is tragically incapable of fulfilling this goal, because her immense sensitivity makes it impossible for her to marry a man she does not love: she keeps coming to the cusp of a proposal, then sabotaging herself.

This would be an infinitely more sympathetic story if Lily's sensitivity did not seem to consist chiefly of an exquisite scorn for everyone who is not exactly to her taste. This means everyone in the world except for Lawrence Selden, the man she loves but will not marry because...because...it's never quite explained. Selden's part of high society, so it's not his position, and he seems to have a reasonable amount of money.

It's not just that I think her goals are unlikely to bring her happiness (though I do), and therefore find it frustrating that she clings to them. Not is it solely that I think she's a shallow, petty person, far less sympathetic than Wharton seems to believe (though I think that too).

She's so bloody helpless. The narrative offers her dozens of ways out of her predicament. She gets marriage offers, both from her beloved Selden and from sundry other rich men; she gets a legacy from her aunt; she has it in her power to blackmail her enemies; she has a friend who would be happy to let her move in till she gets back on her feet.

But no! None of these are acceptable to Lily! They all somehow offend her scruples - we get dragged through every vicissitude of her scruples. Her scruples are exactly nice enough to make it impossible for her to extricate herself from her difficulties, though not fine enough to prevent any of them.



And none of it matters anyway because Lily accidentally kills herself at the end. Accidentally! I ask you! And on the very next morning Selden comes to ask her to marry him. AGAIN.

I mean, not that I want to read books about characters purposefully committing suicide, but at least if Lily had actually made that choice then the book would feel less completely pointless. At least she would have stopped letting herself get buffeted helplessly by the winds of fate.

Comments

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I have read that Edith Wharton had an unhappy life, so perhaps she was taking it out on her readers?

Or maybe it's the classical novel version of trolling. "You thought this was going somewhere! Ha! Ha! Ha!"

Or...I really don't know. All her books are like this.

[tea-for-lupin.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Sounds painful. I suffered through The Age of Innocence in high schooling have had no desire to delve deeper into Wharton's oeuvre. Well done on sticking through to the end.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

We read Ethan Frome in high school, which ends with the lovers trying to commit suicide by sledding down a very steep hill together and ending up hopelessly crippled instead. (What did they expect would happen? I mean, really.)

You would have thought that would have warned me off, but NOOOO.