Objectification of Women in The House of Mirth
Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth is an affront to the false social values of fashionable New York society. The heroine is Lily Bart, a woman who is destroyed by the very society that produces her. Lily is well-born but poor. The story traces the decline of Lily as she moves through a series of living residences, from houses to hotel lodgings. Lily lives in a New York society where appearances are all. Women have a decorative function in such an environment, and even her name, Lily, suggests she is a flower of femininity, i.e. an object of decoration as well as of desirability to the male element. We see this is very true once Lily's bloom fades, as it were, a time when she is cast aside by her peers no longer being useful as something to admire on the surface. The theme of the novel in this aspect is that identity based on mere appearance is not enough to sustain the human soul physically or metaphysically. Once she is no longer able to keep the "eye" of her peers, Lily finds herself with no identity and dies. This analysis will discuss the theme of the objectification of women in a male dominated society inherent throughout the novel.
Lily Bart and her mother have been socially "ruined" in a sense because of the economic failures of their father and husband respectfully. However, Lily's mother teaches her that she can still maintain a high social status if she marries well, i.e. a rich man. In fact, Lily's mother is known for making the most out of the least as she is "famous for the unlimited effect she produced on limited means" (Wharton 48). In a society where women are considered valuable only for the appearance they present, it is impossible f...
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...vel could possibly be that women are commodified from the cradle to the grave and that never in a male dominated society will they ever be fully appreciated as separate entities with whole identities equal and separate from males.
WORKS CITED
Restuccia, F. L. "The Name of the Lily: Edith Wharton's Feminism(s)." The House of Mirth: Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. Benstock, S. (ed.). New York, Bedford Books, 1994, 404-418.
Robinson, L. S. "The Traffic in Women: A Cultural Critique of The House of Mirth." The House of Mirth: Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. Benstock, S. (ed.). New York, Bedford Books, 1994, 340-58.
Wharton, E. The House of Mirth. New York, Bedford Books, 1994.
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In the Victorian era, in New York City, men and women roles within the society were as different as night and day. A man regardless of his extra curricular activities could still maintain a very prevalent place in society. A woman’s worth was not only based family name which distinguished her class and worth, but also her profession if that was applicable.
Both Vanity Fair and A Room of One’s Own explore and challenge the idea that women are incapable of creating a name and a living for themselves, thus are completely dependent on a masculine figure to provide meaning and purpose to their lives. Thackeray, having published Vanity Fair in 1848, conforms to the widely accepted idea that women lack independence when he makes a note on Ms Pinkerton and remarks “the Lexicographer’s name was always on the lips of the majestic woman… [He] was the cause of her reputation and her fortune.” The way that a man’s name was metaphorically “always on the lips of the majestic woman” and how he was the source of “her reputation and her fortune” expresses this idea, especially through Thackeray’s skilful use of a sanguine tone to communicate that this cultural value, or rather inequality, was not thought of as out of the ordinary. From viewing this in a current light and modernised perspective...
Haney-Peritz, Janice. "Monumental feminism and literature's ancestral house: Another look at The Yellow Wallpaper". Women's Studies. 12:2 (1986): 113-128.
In her biographical and analytical book about Edith Warton and The House of Mirth, titled House of Mirth: A Novel of Admonition, Linda Wagner-Martin claims that, “Male physicians became specialists in women’s mental health, as well as obstetrics and gynecology. The message was clear: everything that touched a woman’s life was in the control of the patriarchy” (Wagner-Martin 3). In The House of Mirth, Lily Bart must marry a wealthy man, and ultimately it is up to the men to decide if they want to marry her or not. Lily attempts to procure her own wealth by asking her friend, Gus Trenor, to help her get into trading, only to discover that Gus uses his own money to invest, and asserts that Lily must repay him with her attentions and affection. Had Lily been a man, she would have been free to openly discuss trading, and had been able to conduct her own deals. Selden, who believes that he loves Lily, still views her as an object and a fool. Even after her death, he judges her character when he sees that she had addressed an envelope to Gus Trenor. He came to her apartment to tell her that he loved her, but just by seeing that she had addressed a letter to Trenor before she died, he casts away his feelings and continues sorting through Lily’s things, thinking that, “after all, that task would be easier to perform, now that his personal stake in it was annulled” (Wharton
When Nettie first introduces her newborn child to Lily, she tells her “Marry Anto’nette-that’s what we call her: after the French queen in the play” (Wharton 334). The significance of the baby’s name is because it is an allusion to Marie Antoinette. Her lavish lifestyle is similar to the aristocrats of New York, but she was soon murdered during the French Revolution. Her murder represents an imminent downfall, as Lily experienced. However, Wharton changes the spelling in order to signify that Marry will not belong among the wealthy, such as Lily did not. Therefore, Wharton creates a connection between Lily and Marry, because both will obtain wealth, but diverge from society causing their decline and untimely death. When Lily dies, Wharton continues to highlight Lily’s connection to Marry. After she has overdosed, Lily begins to hallucinate that she is holding Marry, in which “…the baby more likely symbolizes [Lily’s] desire to born again” (Dixon). From this wish, Wharton is able to symbolize that Marry will embody Lily, and then is doomed. But Marry is a child, who cannot control her life, and according to Social Darwinism, is forced to endure her unsuccessful future. By making Marry a futile and naive baby, Wharton employs a sense of pathos, so she can censure Social Darwinism for harming a child and
Many readers follow Descartes with fascination and pleasure as he descends into the pit of skepticism in the first two Meditations, defeats the skeptics by finding the a version of the cogito, his nature, and that of bodies, only to find them selves baffled and repulsed when they come to his proof for the existence of God in Meditation III. In large measure this change of attitude results from a number of factors. One is that the proof is complicated in ways which the earlier discourse is not. Second is that the complications include the use of scholastic machinery for which the reader is generally quite unprepared -- including such doctrines as a Cartesian version of the Great Chain of Being, the Heirloom theory of causaltiy, and confusi ng terms such as "eminent," "objective" and "formal reality" used in technical ways which require explanation. Third, we live in an age which is largely skeptical of the whole enterprise of giving proofs for the existence of God. A puzzled student once remaked, "If it were possible to prove that God exists, what would one need faith for?" So, even those inclined to grant the truth of the conclusion of Descartes' proof are often skeptical about the process of reaching it.
In his book Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes tries to accomplish several subject concerns. Firstly, Descartes attempts to accomplish the use of methodological doubt to rid himself of all beliefs that could be false. Then, he arrives at particular beliefs that could not possibly be false. Next, he discovers a criterion of knowledge. Also, he proves that the mind is distinct from the body and also the existence of God.
Haney-Peritz, Janice. "Monumental Feminism and Literature's Ancestral House: Another Look at 'The Yellow Wallpaper'" Women's Studies. 12 (1986): 113-128.
In society, there has always been a gap between men and women. Women are generally expected to be homebodies, and seen as inferior to their husbands. The man is always correct, as he is more educated, and a woman must respect the man as they provide for the woman’s life. During the Victorian Era, women were very accommodating to fit the “house wife” stereotype. Women were to be a representation of love, purity and family; abandoning this stereotype would be seen as churlish living and a depredation of family status. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" and Henry Isben’s play A Doll's House depict women in the Victorian Era who were very much menial to their husbands. Nora Helmer, the protagonist in A Doll’s House and the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” both prove that living in complete inferiority to others is unhealthy as one must live for them self. However, attempts to obtain such desired freedom during the Victorian Era only end in complications.
Nussbaum, Felicity. “Risky Business: Feminism Now and Then.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 26.1 (Spring 2007): 81-86. JSTOR. Web. 11 Mar. 2014.
A. A. Edith Wharton’s Women: Friends & Rivals.
Different aspects of femininity are introduced by how Wharton depicts women in the society. By looking at how Wharton portrays women in the society, readers will have a representation of the role of women as they deal with their morals, money, privileges and affections. In the beginning of the novel, Wharton introduces Lily Bart as an alluring and delicate woman with a desire to live a prosperous life. We also see that Lily recognizes that her solution to saving herself from a life that “to her last breath she [means] to fight against” is marriage (39). In this novel, marriage is prevalent because, as said before, women used marriage to grant themselves a wealthier life.
In general, Plato’s theory discusses how recollection, immortality of the soul, and the Forms are essential to understand and reason knowledge. The reader believes that his theory has a strong foundation, where one recollects knowledge and if that is the case, then said knowledge is eternal. As well, the reader also believes with Plato that knowledge can only be obtained through understanding and reasoning and using the forms to see the knowledge that we have. Intelligence is within all; it just has to be discovered.
...y the same reason for doubting any other intuition, including further intuitions about God himself." (131-132 lines 37-40, 1-2 Wilson)
“in order to think, it is necessary to exist, I judged that I could take as a general rule that the things we conceive very clearly and very distinctly are all true, but that there is merely some difficulty in properly discerning” (Descartes