The House of Mirth is a work of
social realism that criticizes a very specific world—that of wealthy, nineteenth
century New York society—yet it is also much more than that. It is a moral fable with timeless insight into the problem of finding and keeping clarity of vision in a corrupt culture. The novel also reflects aspects of the feminine experience that are common, in one form or another, to modern Western culture. Lily Bart’s moral failures are those of the world in which she lives. Edith Wharton leaves little doubt about her condemnation of that world. She does, however, leave some doubt about her protagonist.
From the very start, Lily both attracts and repels the reader. Her keen sense of independence, her astuteness about what motivates other people, her desire to rise above the petty concerns of those around her—all make her seem like a sound heroine. Yet repeatedly, Lily Bart disappoints the reader by making foolish choices that she seems not to have thought through. She cannot bear to plunge into the values of her
social world, blinding herself to their stupidity, but she also fails to pull away from them altogether.
The reason for that failure is basic: money. Having grown up with luxury, with no real sense of how to manage money but a clear sense of how much power comes with having it, Lily wants badly to have a large fortune at her disposal. She has always been led to believe that her beauty alone will suffice to secure her the right
marriage proposal, that she need only play the game right. Repeatedly, in the novel, one finds her on the brink of receiving a proposal; each time, she dodges it by committing some minor indiscretion that makes the match impossible. As the indiscretions add up, it becomes increasingly difficult for her to be marketed by her friends. They begin to seek some distance from their somewhat tainted acquaintance.
Lily’s downward spiral is already hinted at in the novel’s first scene, when she unwisely yields to the impulse to take tea in Lawrence Selden’s flat. It is a typical move: Morally sound, like all of her indiscretions, it nevertheless breaks the rules of behavior for unmarried women in her set. It also gives two other characters some power over her reputation. A much more far-reaching indiscretion is the acceptance of a loan—disguised as a return on an investment—from Gus Trenor, her friend’s husband. This move not only costs her the friendship of her primary protector on the marriage market but also results in the complete (and unjust) destruction of her reputation once it has become known.
Only after Trenor has tried to impose himself on her in the most alarming way does Lily turn to Simon Rosedale, the wealthy Jewish businessman who has long eyed her as a woman who might be the perfect wife to ensure his success in her social set. By this time, however, even Rosedale will not have her. Disinherited by her aunt, penniless, and denounced publicly by Bertha Dorset in most damaging (but again unjust) terms, she struggles to maintain herself as something of a social guide and parasite with a series of unappealing women. Eventually, she leaves that sorry business to try to support herself by working for a milliner.
Near the end of the novel, Lawrence Selden finds her in abject poverty and determines to try to help her. He comes too late: Before he returns to her rooms, she has taken an overdose of chloroform perhaps intentionally. Her death, readers realize, was already implicit in the novel’s very first scene. At Selden’s flat, Lily has both resisted playing by the rules and failed to find an effective substitute for them. There too, Selden appears to offer a tantalizing, real alternative to the vacuous bridge games of Bellomont, but he seems to fall just short. There, she is seen by the charwoman, who will be something of an emblem of her downfall: all the beautiful gowns and mansions of New York cannot protect her from the basic lowness, mean-spiritedness, and moral bankruptcy of most human beings around her.