Lily Bart lived in the upper part of New York society. She loves nice things and extravagance. However, throughout the House of Mirth Lily plays a game. She wants to be virtuous, stay in the social circle, and have the money to keep up with the demands of her so called friends. She involves herself so much into the social life she loses all chance of gaining her riches virtuously or through true love. She misses her chances inevitably: from Percy to her dear aunt to her indecisiveness of men and marriage. In the end she cannot get what she believes is satisfactory to her so she drags herself into infinite slumber.
Edith Wharton wrote the House of Mirth during the Realist Movement. Realism in Wharton's writing is influenced by Darwinism. When rumors spread of Lily and George’s conquests, Lily’s reputation is smashed. Even though she survived through being broke, gossip stops her existence. The past will always haunt her. When Lily decides to keep her morals intact and not smash George’s wife Bertha back by exposing Bertha’s escapades with the man Lily fancies, the readers know she is doomed to unhappiness.
More than Darwinism, Wharton’s writing correlates with Lamarkism, which is quite interesting in itself. Wharton justifies Lily’s death, because in her final moments of life Lily recognizes that she has never had "any real relation to life" (248). In Lily's epiphany, Wharton exposes Lily's separation from the superior life of the city that she once desired and the hand she is dealt. Through Lily, Wharton criticizes the traditional paths of this society and the disillusion of happiness and the inevitable fall and destruction of Lily’s society.
Wharton blames New York society for Lily's fate. Lily is not destroyed by the culture s...
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...hat is not about wealth and class. He is the only one that knew all sides of her. Selden is the last view the reader witnesses in this novel. His viewpoint helps the reader conclude that her death is the right thing to happen contextually. No matter what, nothing could happen the way Lily wanted. Nothing could happen the way Selden wanted. “[T]he conditions of life had conspired to keep them apart” (267). Her death is the end of Lily and Selden’s disjointed love. The ending of the novel does what the end is supposed to do. It ties up loose ends. Everything is “made all clear” (268).
Works Cited
Wharton, Edith. The House of Mirth. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1905. Kindle.
Kim, Sharon. "Lamarckism And The Construction Of Transcendence In “The House Of Mirth”." Studies In The Novel 38.2 (2006): 187. Biography Reference Bank (H.W. Wilson). Web. 18 Mar. 2014.
Edith Wharton's tale of Ethan Frome is a classic story of hopeful romance ending in tragedy. We are introduced to Ethan as he's walking to pick up his wife's cousin Mattie, at a church social. On the way, we witness some of Ethan's thoughts about his life and the people in it. By the end of Chapter One, the readers begin to understand the way Ethan views himself, Mattie, and Zeena, and the way these characters might influence the events in the novel.
Throughout “Ethan Frome,” Edith Wharton renders the idea that freedom is just out of reach from the protagonist, Ethan Frome. The presence of a doomed love affair and an unforgiving love triangle forces Ethan to choose between his duty and his personal desire. Wharton’s use of archetypes in the novella emphasizes how Ethan will make choices that will ultimately lead to his downfall. In Edith Wharton’s, “Ethan Frome.” Ethan is wedged between his duty as a husband and his desire for happiness; however, rather than choosing one or the other, Ethan’s indecisiveness makes not only himself, but Mattie and Zeena miserable.
...seems to have endured the most in his life. Not only did he spend his youth caring for his sick mother and then wife, but he now must live in the painful memory of how his life could have been if the accident never happened. The end of the book leaves the readers saddened and frustrated. Though the novella began with a plotline seemingly leading to an ending as cheery as that of Snow White, in the end, this beautiful maiden turned sour. In this storybook tragedy, “the lovers do not live happily ever after. The witch wins” (Ammons 1).
Perhaps Edith Wharton's reason for writing Ethan Frome, was that it so vividly reflected her own dreary life. Abandoned of any love as a child from her mother and trapped in a marriage similar to that of Zeena and Ethan, Wharton found herself relying on illicit love. This illicit love was also her favorite topic of writing, which helped her to escape her own tragedies. She spent many nights in the arms of other men searching desperately for the love she believed existed, but had never felt, which is evident in all of her writings.
Edith Wharton’s brief, yet tragic novella, Ethan Frome, presents a crippled and lonely man – Ethan Frome – who is trapped in a loveless marriage with a hypochondriacal wife, Zenobia “Zeena” Frome. Set during a harsh, “sluggish” winter in Starkfield, Massachusetts, Ethan and his sickly wife live in a dilapidated and “unusually forlorn and stunted” New-England farmhouse (Wharton 18). Due to Zeena’s numerous complications, they employ her cousin to help around the house, a vivacious young girl – Mattie Silver. With Mattie’s presence, Starkfield seems to emerge from its desolateness, and Ethan’s vacant world seems to be awoken from his discontented life and empty marriage. And so begins Ethan’s love adventure – a desperate desire to have Mattie as his own; however, his morals along with his duty to Zeena and his natural streak of honesty hinder him in his ability to realize his own dreams. Throughout this suspenseful and disastrous novella, Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton effectively employs situational irony enabling readers to experience a sudden shock and an unexpected twist of events that ultimately lead to a final tragedy in a living nightmare.
The creative writing techniques that Wharton uses within her writing enhance the story and make it worth reading. Wharton is very descriptive in almost every aspect of her story. This gives the reader another element to the story rather than just reading dialogue or general descriptions. A point where Wharton gets descriptive, is when she starts to explain Frome’s house and how “ the image (of itself) presents of a life linked with the soil, and enclosing in itself the chief sources of warmth and nourishment, or whether merely because of the consolatory thought that it enables the dwellers in that harsh climate to get to their mornings’ work without facing the weather, it is certain that the ‘L’ rather the house itself seems to be the center, the actual hearth-stone of the New England farm” (Wharton 11). This shows how detailed Wharton can get. It not only gives the reader a g...
Wharton’s parents raised her in aristocratic society. Her father, George supported the family working in real estate, while her mother Lucerita was a stay at home mom. Her mother was devoted to high society, and was unsupportive of her interests in writing. (Todd and Wetzel) Unlike her mother, Morton Fullerton supported Wharton. While in England, Wharton met Fullerton. As their relationship progressed, she became close friends with Katharine Fullerton. Katharine was Morton’s orphaned sister, that his family took in. (Witkosky) While Wharton was in England her husband was seeking “cures” for his depression. As portrayed in the novel, Ethan Frome’s wife Zeena was constantly seeking cures for her illness. Like Teddy, Zeena was isolated from society and kept to herself. Ethan’s wife was devoted to high society because she came from an aristocratic home. Therefore, Zeena never supported Ethan’s interest in becoming an engineer. Wharton’s mother was alike to Zeena when it came to how her life was lived. Ethan’s lover, Mattie Silver, was taken in by the Frome’s in the novel. She had no family who wanted her just like Katharine Fullerton. Mattie was raised by the Frome’s in a society she did not know how to adapt to because she was never taught how. “Mattie is attempting unsuccessfully to fit in a society she does not understand.”
Edith Wharton grew up with a wealthy family who lived in a controlling society which prohibited women to achieve anything a man could. This book, published by Wharton in 1911, is one of the few pieces in her fiction novels
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,
Edith Wharton, a famous author of many outstanding books, wrote a chaotic love story entitled Ethan Frome. The story took place in the wintery town of Starkfield, Massachusetts. Wharton was a sophisticated young woman who found love in sitting down and holding people’s attention by way of a pen. Wharton wrote yet another thriller that told the tale of two love stricken people that barely found it possible to be together; which later forced them to fall into the temptation of love that cannot be controlled. Wharton had many different writing styles but for different books meant different needs. In Edith Wharton’s novel, Ethan Frome, frustration and loneliness play roles in disappointment while imagery, symbolism, and individual responsibility provide the novel with a tortuous plot.
My favorite thing about this passage is that even then there was still some type of woman empowerment, even if it was rare. That she didn’t encourage her or tell her to just stay in the house. Lily’s teacher says this to her when Lily hints that she wants to be a hairdresser. This is significant because it shows that Lily’s self-esteem is low from living with T. Ray (her father). After Mrs. Henry says this to Lily, Lily
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.
Like Alice, who divorced was twice. Another example of how Edith and this particular story is compares to her life is Alice’s daughter is sick with typhoid and when Edith was 10 she suffered from typhoid fever and almost died. Also like Lily and most children her age Edith Wharton also had a governess. Wharton’s main concept in the story was the theme of divorce and survival of the fittest. By having the other two men being around the current marriage and dealing with some of struggles of divorced and being able to survive New York’s
Since Wharton’s conception of art has an element of chance, in that the spectator may not be manipulated/convinced by the artist’s artifice and, therefore, would not affirm/abet the artist’s desire/cause (i.e. the artist’s individual self), Lily’s artifice must be desirable so that she may further her own cause. In this regard, Bertha Dorset’s sullying Lily’s reputation by insinuating that Lily attempted to be romantically involved with Mr. Dorset combined with both Lily’s monetary debt to Gus Trenor (in place of her refusal of his desire of an erotic payment) and with Lily being broke resulting from Mrs. Peniston’s devaluing the amount Lily would receive from her will all work together to completely devastate Lily’s reputation (and, in turn, the effectiveness of her artifice) by the end of this novel (NEED QUOTES). Furthermore, since Lily’s mother had instilled the belief that she should desire only to become a part of affluent society and that she could do so by the means of constructing an artifice based primarily on her natural beauty, when Lily’s artifice has been completely destroyed by her various debts, Lily declares that these “inherited tendencies [from her mother’s molding of her]...combined with early training [to] make her the highly specialized product she was: an organism as helpless out of its narrow range as the sea-anemone torn from a rock” (Wharton 293). In this regard, Lily’s identity was her artifice (or, perhaps, her artifice veiled no actual identity for which it wished to maintain and to further), and, therefore, she has no sense of self on which she could rely after her artifice had been
Lily definitely undergoes a transformation, from being unable to make sense of her painting to an artist who completes her painting, through which she finally establishes her homosexual identity aesthetically through art. From “the Lighthouse had become almost invisible, had melted away into a blue haze, and the effort of looking at it and the effort of thinking him landing there, which both seemed to be one and the same effort, had stretched her body and mind to the utmost. Ah, but she was relieved” (169), Woolf highlights Lily’s enthusiasm when she was able to eliminate Mr Ramsay from her physical, emotional and psychological realm. By mentioning that the Lighthouse has melted away, Woolf metaphorically emphasizes the deconstruction of the patriarchal conditions through which Lily has come to terms with her homosexual identity. Lily clearly feels liberated and independent, although after undergoing great amount of emotional and psychological torment where she suppressed her homosexual desires in the face of patriarchy. By expressing and figuring out her emotional and psychological turmoil through art and her painting, Lily is able to visualise her immense independence autonomous of the patriarchal conditions. Hence, Lily finally asserts a masculine ambiance similar to the men in patriarchal order, where she can eventually be who she wants to be without any external pressure, particularly from male hegemony, that tells her how she is expected to act like a woman. Thus, Lily does not simply advocate gender equality, but radically promote acceptance of homosexuality as the truer reality of woman empowerment and