Lily's House Of Mirth

2079 Words5 Pages

The tableaux vivants scene in Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth is pivotal to the understanding of Lily Bart as a character. The passage not only highlights her precarious state in high-society, but it also contains one of the only instances where Lily feels truly comfortable and confident. Over the course of the description of Lily’s staging of her own tableaux, she goes from being a piece of art on display, to an artist carefully working to exhibit her own beauty. However, the contradictory reception from the audience to her intentions when her tableaux is presented, conveys her hubris in both her beauty and her ability to create visual representations of art. The scene concludes with, Gerty Farish, in response to seeing Lily’s tableaux, saying, …show more content…

The portion of the description written from Lily’s perspective explores how while she seems to have a genuine talent and is energized by the opportunity to be a creator, it is revealed that what she is truly excited about is the opportunity to exhibit her beauty. The shift to Lily’s point of view opens with how she was “in her element on such occasions” (XX). At this point, it is unclear what is meant by “her element”, but it can safely be assumed that it beyond just being comfortable. Nevertheless, she feels “in her element” in the tableaux. It goes on to describe how “Under Morpeth's guidance her vivid plastic sense, hitherto nurtured on no higher food than dress-making and upholstery, found eager expression in the disposal of draperies, the study of attitudes, the shifting of lights and shadows” (XX). “Vivid plastic sense” refers to Lily’s keen ability to create visual representations, even though she has had little experience doing so. One possible explanation could be that Lily has spent so much time crafting her own public persona that her skills of manipulation and representation translate over. While “disposal of draperies” and “the shifting of lights and shadows” clearly have to do …show more content…

The scene concludes with Selden noting that “noble buoyancy of her attitude, its suggestion of soaring grace, revealed the touch of poetry in her beauty that Selden always felt in her presence, yet lost the sense of when he was not with her. Its expression was now so vivid that for the first time he seemed to see before him the real Lily Bart, divested of the trivialities of her little world, and catching for a moment a note of that eternal harmony of which her beauty was a part”, shortly followed by the exchange between Gerty and Selden mentioned at the outset wherein Gerty says “Don't you like her best in that simple dress? It makes her look like the real Lily—the Lily I know” (XX). For Selden the “real Lily Bart” is her staged beauty and that she truly is just a beautiful spectacle to be admired from afar, shown through how the “poetry in her beauty that Selden always felt in her presence” is very much temporary because once he is not viewing the spectacle that is Lily’s beauty, it is gone, and it takes Selden literally seeing Lily as a work of art in the tableaux to realize this. Gerty, on the other hand, believes that this is the “real Lily” because she chose a simple painting and is presented in an unostentatious way. The problem with the “real Lily” therefore is that her

Open Document