The House of Mirth Edith Wharton, 1905, Social Criticism

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She had nothingto do for the rest of the day, nor for the days to come; for the seasonwas over in millinery as well as in society, and a week earlier Mme.Regina had notified her that her services were no longer required. Mme.Regina always reduced her staff on the first of May, and Miss Bart’sattendance had of late been so irregular—she had so often been unwell,and had done so little work when she came—that it was only as a favourthat her dismissal had hitherto been deferred. “Too soft—one might have sunk in too deep.” Lily rested one arm on theedge of the table, and sat looking at him more intently than she had everlooked before. An uncontrollable impulse was urging her to put her caseto this man, from whose curiosity she had always so fiercely defendedherself. The dread lest he should question her, or keep the bottle back, chokedthe murmur of acquiescence in her throat; and when at length she emergedsafely from the shop she was almost dizzy with the intensity of herrelief. The mere touch of the packet thrilled her tired nerves with thedelicious promise of a night of sleep, and in the reaction from hermomentary fear she felt as if the first fumes of drowsiness were alreadystealing over her.

Appreciation: Terence Davies, a master filmmaker, brought quiet passion and lyrical beauty to the screen

Therehad been a third at the feast she had spread for him, and that third hadtaken her own place. She tried to follow what he was saying, to cling toher own part in the talk—but it was all as meaningless as the boom ofwaves in a drowning head, and she felt, as the drowning may feel, that tosink would be nothing beside the pain of struggling to keep up. One was from Mrs. Trenor, who announced that she was coming to town thatafternoon for a flying visit, and hoped Miss Bart would be able to dinewith her. He wrote briefly that an importantcase called him to Albany, whence he would be unable to return till theevening, and asked Lily to let him know at what hour on the following dayshe would see him. Selden, who had put one of these seats to the test, found himself, froman angle of the ball-room, surveying the scene with frank enjoyment.

Review: In ‘Unsung Hero,’ a family’s musical success story comes to life via the clan itself

Lily Bart— Wharton paints Lily, the heroine of her novel, as a complex personality with a given name that suggests purity and a surname that implies defiance. Her extraordinary beauty should have served her well to find a wealthy husband with the requisite social status that would have secured her place in upper-class New York society. However, her inner longing to become free of her society's social conventions, her sense of what is right, and her desire for love as well as money and status have thwarted her success in spite of a number of eligible admirers over the ten years she has been on the marriage market. To protect Lawrence Selden's reputation, she refuses to use damning evidence against her nemesis, Bertha Dorset, which would have recouped her ruined social standing.

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“Ah, don’t say that—don’t say that what you have told me has made nodifference. It seems to shut me out—to leave me all alone with the otherpeople.” She had risen and stood before him, once more completelymastered by the inner urgency of the moment. Whether he wished it or not, hemust see her wholly for once before they parted. Selden continued to stand near her, leaning against the mantelpiece. Thetinge of constraint was beginning to be more distinctly perceptible underthe friendly ease of his manner.

It was the one subject which enabled him toforget himself, or allowed him, rather, to remember himself withoutconstraint, because he was at home in it, and could assert a superioritythat there were few to dispute. Hardly any of his acquaintances cared forAmericana, or knew anything about them; and the consciousness of thisignorance threw Mr. Gryce’s knowledge into agreeable relief. The onlydifficulty was to introduce the topic and to keep it to the front; mostpeople showed no desire to have their ignorance dispelled, and Mr. Grycewas like a merchant whose warehouses are crammed with an unmarketablecommodity. It struck her as providential that she should be the instrument of hisinitiation.

It was not till some two weeks after her visit from Lily that Gerty hadthe opportunity of communicating her fears to Selden. The latter, havingpresented himself on a Sunday afternoon, had lingered on through thedowdy animation of his cousin’s tea-hour, conscious of something in hervoice and eye which solicited a word apart; and as soon as the lastvisitor was gone Gerty opened her case by asking how lately he had seenMiss Bart. “I like your frankness; but I am afraid ourfriendship can hardly continue on those terms.” She turned away, asthough to mark that its final term had in fact been reached, and hefollowed her for a few steps with a baffled sense of her having after allkept the game in her own hands.

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The dinner, meanwhile, was moving to its triumphant close, to the evidentsatisfaction of Mrs. Bry, who, throned in apoplectic majesty between LordSkiddaw and Lord Hubert, seemed in spirit to be calling on Mrs. Fisher towitness her achievement. Short of Mrs. Fisher her audience might havebeen called complete; for the restaurant was crowded with persons mainlygathered there for the purpose of spectatorship, and accurately posted asto the names and faces of the celebrities they had come to see. Mrs. Bry,conscious that all her feminine guests came under that heading, and thateach one looked her part to admiration, shone on Lily with all thepent-up gratitude that Mrs. Fisher had failed to deserve. Selden,catching the glance, wondered what part Miss Bart had played inorganizing the entertainment.

Walter Dellinger's House of Mirth - Washington Monthly

Walter Dellinger's House of Mirth.

Posted: Sat, 19 Feb 2022 08:00:00 GMT [source]

She had firstimagined some physical shock, some peril of the crowded streets, sinceLily was presumably on her way home from Carry Fisher’s; but she now sawthat other nerve-centres were smitten, and her mind trembled back fromconjecture. She shrank back as thoughLily’s presence flashed too sudden a light upon her misery. Then sheheard her name in a cry, had a glimpse of her friend’s face, and feltherself caught and clung to.

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While Lily admires the handsome and ambitious lawyer Lawrence Selden, he is too poor for her to seriously consider marrying; instead, her only prospects are the coarse and vulgar Simon Rosedale, a financier, and the wealthy but dull Percy Gryce. In Monte Carlo, Mrs. Carry Fisher meets with Selden, who has arrived from London. They are both worried about Lily, travelling on the Dorsets’ yacht.

She clung to the note bravely, though its futility was now plain to herin the glare of his miserable eyes. Again she was disconcerted by the abrupt change in his tone, and as inone flash she saw the peril of the moment, and the need of keeping hersense of it out of her eyes. She detected in him at once all the signs of extreme nervous tension.The skin was puffed out under his sunken eyes, and its sallowness hadpaled to a leaden white against which his irregular eyebrows and longreddish moustache were relieved with a saturnine effect. His appearance,in short, presented an odd mixture of the bedraggled and the ferocious. They grew to sudden acuteness as she caught sight of George Dorsetdescending the steps of the Hotel de Paris and making for her across thesquare. She had meant to drive down to the quay and regain the yacht; butshe now had the immediate impression that something more was to happenfirst.

She returned his profound bow with a slight nod, made more disdainful bythe sense of Selden’s surprise that she should number Rosedale among heracquaintances. Trenor had turned away, and his companion continued tostand before Miss Bart, alert and expectant, his lips parted in a smileat whatever she might be about to say, and his very back conscious of theprivilege of being seen with her. The appeal of her helplessness touched in him, as it always did, a latentchord of inclination.

Selden rose too, and they stood facing each other.Suddenly she caught his hand and pressed it a moment against her cheek. Such details did not fall within the range of Mrs. Peniston’s vision.Like many minds of panoramic sweep, hers was apt to overlook the MINUTIAEof the foreground, and she was much more likely to know where CarryFisher had found the Welly Brys’ CHEF for them, than what was happeningto her own niece. She was not, however, without purveyors of informationready to supplement her deficiencies. Grace Stepney’s mind was like akind of moral fly-paper, to which the buzzing items of gossip were drawnby a fatal attraction, and where they hung fast in the toils of aninexorable memory. Lily would have been surprised to know how manytrivial facts concerning herself were lodged in Miss Stepney’s head.

If only she could reach there before thislabouring anguish burst from her breast to her lips—if only she couldfeel the hold of Gerty’s arms while she shook in the ague-fit of fearthat was coming upon her! She pushed up the door in the roof and calledthe address to the driver. And even if she were not, the sound of the bell would penetrateevery recess of her tiny apartment, and rouse her to answer her friend’scall. To her surprise, Trenor answered the look with a speechless stare. Withhis last gust of words the flame had died out, leaving him chill andhumbled.

Selden and Lily stood still, accepting the unreality of the scene as apart of their own dream-like sensations. It would not have surprised themto feel a summer breeze on their faces, or to see the lights among theboughs reduplicated in the arch of a starry sky. The strange solitudeabout them was no stranger than the sweetness of being alone in ittogether. At length Lily withdrew her hand, and moved away a step, sothat her white-robed slimness was outlined against the dusk of thebranches. Selden followed her, and still without speaking they seatedthemselves on a bench beside the fountain. In the long moment before the curtain fell, he had time to feel the wholetragedy of her life.

She had learned inadvance that the presence of a large party would protect her from toogreat assiduity on Trenor’s part, and his wife’s telegraphic “come by allmeans” seemed to assure her of her usual welcome. All means seemed justifiable to attain such an end, or rather, by a happyshifting of lights with which practice had familiarized Miss Bart, thecause shrank to a pin-point in the general brightness of the effect. Butbrilliant young ladies, a little blinded by their own effulgence, are aptto forget that the modest satellite drowned in their light is stillperforming its own revolutions and generating heat at its own rate.

He was aplump rosy man of the blond Jewish type, with smart London clothesfitting him like upholstery, and small sidelong eyes which gave him theair of appraising people as if they were bric-a-brac. There were a thousandchances to one against her meeting anybody, but one could never tell, andshe always paid for her rare indiscretions by a violent reaction ofprudence. There was no one in sight, however, but a char-woman who wasscrubbing the stairs.