The House of Mirth Essay

Others focus on wealth, and the ability to be control the economic wealth of everyone around you. Some may feel that they are obsessed with love, attempting to find the perfect person to spend the rest of their life with. In Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth, the character of Lily focuses on love, which is the main reason for her downfall throughout the story. Through this character, Edith Wharton attempts to convey to the reader that society was developed and raised to discriminate

Great novel, “The House of Mirth” written by Edith Wharton includes romantic, intricate, and tragic plots at the same time. At the time of the novel, there are higher status people who mostly do not work, but own money from their family, middle class people such as Selden, and working class who lives at the bottom of the society. One of the main character Lily lives as a victim of the society because her desire of being love by others, in which caused by her loveless family, the fact that she follows

and assumption come and transform the fib into reality. One of the most significant myths in the novel is the idea that Lily is an object. It follows her where ever she goes in her society and warps people’s actions directed towards her. In The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton the myth of Lily being an object makes people treat her like a decoration or a prize to be won instead of an actual human being, which causes Lily to have the skills of an object and the soul of a being.

The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence The author Edith Wharton has a tendency to write her books around the same themes and structures. The two books that are being compared in this essay have related themes and characters that share similar traits and struggles throughout their storylines. The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence both deal with a protagonist who is trying to climb the social ladder of the high New York City society. Taking place in the upper echelons of

The House of Mirth is a novel that condemns the elitist world of women and promotes the idea that money can't buy happiness. Wharton wanted to present American aristocracy when that aristocracy was doing so well. The novel highlights each aspect of a person's social behavior because each detail can have implications. Wharton wanted to mock the society, but also to show the tragedies in it. Wharton considered New York society to be arrogant, trivial, and ridiculous. The burden of tragedy to her often

Selden, in The House of Mirth, is a character that is part of the Elite class, but that doesn’t allow the constraints of the elites shadow his vision. In her essay, Lara Saltz argues “Selden is able to see “real,” poetic Lily because he possesses both an acute eye for what is materially in front of him (Saltz 1).” She continues on with this thesis, arguing that Selden posses a balance between realism and imagination, that allows him to see the real Lily, during her performance of Sir Joshua Reynold’s

monopoly game, each player races to riches and financial stability while forcing other players into bankruptcy. In the end, the winner is the one who has bankrupted all his opponents and becomes the wealthiest out of all his peers. In Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth, Lily’s life represents a player in monopoly wherein the end, the winner takes all. The first move can be the most important, most vital move. It sets the speed, the tone, and the direction of the game. Lily Bart has her mind set on the lavish

personal challenges in the two novels, Beloved by Toni Morrison, and The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton. In Beloved, I explored the consequences of slavery after the Civil War, on the social development of the daughter of a former slave. Despite an extraordinarily difficult childhood, Denver broke free of the psychological chains that bound her, transforming herself to embrace a productive adulthood. Conversely, in The House of Mirth, I examined the consequences of a different form of slavery during

characters in The House of Mirth are not affected by gambling and risk-taking as severely as Lily is because they have the financial means and power to gamble or recover from their mistakes. In the nineteenth-century and more specifically the Gilded Age of New York City, marriage and money were what measured power, so since Lily had neither of those, her position in that society was very fragile. In Victoria Shinbrot’s article “Risk and Subversion in Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth”, she ponders the

Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth serves as a strict model of etiquette for high society in the Gilded Age. It teaches one the intricate art of keeping up appearances and assimilating into the fickle leisure class. At the same time, the novel’s underlying purpose is to subtly critique this social order. Lily Bart’s perpetual, although often reluctant quest for financial stability and mass approval is a vehicle for demonstrating the numerous absurdities and