Women's History Month Classics Corner: The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton; Edith Wharton's Savage and Sharp Exposure of Gilded Age New York

Women’s History Month Classics Corner: The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton; Edith Wharton's Savage and Sharp Exposure of Gilded Age New York

By Julie Sara Porter 

Bookworm Reviews




Spoilers: Sometimes a writer has to live within the world they write about to really understand it. They give the Readers an Inside Outsider's Perspective because they know that world and how the people within it think and operate. No one understood that concept more than Edith Wharton (1862-1937). The world that she lived in and wrote about was late 19th-early 20th century Upperclass New York society, the Gilded Age.

Similar to F. Scott Fitzgerald, a later author who also wrote about elite New Yorkers, Wharton viewed the behaviors of the people around her with a detachment, cynicism, and irony that showed outsiders that all was not pleasant inside these palatial homes, designer dresses, expensive jewelry, and marriages of wealth and convenience. This was a place that Wharton knew all too well.


Wharton was born Edith Newbold Jones, the last of three children, to George Frederic Jones and Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander, a well-to-do New York City couple. (Reportedly her father's family was so well known for their affluence, that they actually inspired the phrase “keeping up with the Joneses.”) Her family traveled a great deal so Wharton studied many languages and read voraciously. (Though her mother forbade her from reading novels until she was an adult.)

Wharton's relationship with her parents was fractured. Her father was frequently away from the house and Edith almost never saw him. Her mother was critical especially when she started writing. An anecdote displaying her mother's cold nature is told: Edith presented her first novel to her mother when she was eleven. When she read a description in which the main character had to tidy up a drawing room before a guest's arrival, Mom simply said “Drawing rooms are always tidy” and returned the book to her. Dismayed, Edith wrote poetry until she was 15 and had her first work published, a translation of a German poem. Instead of bursting with pride, Edith's mother wanted her daughter's name removed considering a career as an author unsuitable for a girl of Edith's standards.


While Wharton was climbing towards a literary career, she had her debutante season. She married Edward “Teddy” Robbins Wharton, a Boston socialite in 1885. While he was from the same class, the marriage was extremely unhappy. Teddy was bipolar and was prone to rages, jealous tirades, and spending and behaving recklessly. When Teddy was at his worst in 1908, Wharton began an affair with Morton Fullerton, a journalist who was her intellectual equal. Teddy worsened until his disorder was declared incurable and Wharton divorced him in 1913.

Wharton traveled extensively and after her divorce settled in France. When WWI broke out, she became involved in relief efforts and was ultimately awarded the Legion D'Honneur.

Wharton was a prolific writer writing 85 short stories, 11 non-fiction books mostly on her travels, several poems, and 18 novels (Her first novel published when she was 40.) In 1921, she won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her book The Age of Innocence, becoming the first women to do so. Two years later, Willa Cather would replicate that feat with her book One of Ours.

Many of Wharton's novels feature rich characters in fancy homes and outsiders trying to find their way inside that rich life with the swells trying to keep them out. The Custom of the Country features a woman scheming her way into advantageous marriages and leaving a few bodies in her wake. Another novel, The Buccaneers concerns a group of American wealthy women who marry English aristocrats so the guys can get their fortune and the girls can get titles. (Think of it as Downton Abbey: The Early Years). Her Pulitzer winning novel The Age of Innocence explores an American upperclassman's scandalous romance with a countess who has been exiled from New York society because of her divorce. Then there's my favorite of Wharton's novels, her first, The House of Mirth. All of them feature characters who scheme, plot, bicker, and would gladly sell their mothers, children, and souls for a chance at the high life.

The House of Mirth is about a character like that: Lily Bart, a young woman who dreams of a life in high society but her attempts ultimately bring about her decline and self-destruction. It's interesting that I am reading The House of Mirth at the same time that I am reading Middlemarch and contrasting how different the protagonists are over money and their status as women. Dorothea Brooke maybe from a wealthy family but she is rebelling from it towards a life of meaning and service. Lily Bart longs to retreat into the life that she was reared for. Lily longs to be what Dorothea fought against: a decorative set piece for a rich man to marry. The House of Mirth is almost Middlemarch if Rosamond Vincy were the main character, albeit a more interesting multi-faceted Rosamond Vincy but still she and Lily Bart would have a lot in common.

Lily is the type of woman who was brought up for only two purposes: be beautiful and marry wealth. She has been aware of this fact ever since she was a child and saw her father lose his wealth partly because of her mother's frivolous spending. She hardly ever saw her father because he worked to get their fortune back and her mother was cold and unemotional (shades of Wharton's own upbringing). After her parent's deaths, she ended up in the care of a wealthy aunt, Julia Peniston who financially supports Lily but the two don't care to be around each other.

Lily is constantly aware that her life is one where she is held under scrutiny and her every movement is judged. Even when she sees a male friend alone in his hotel room, she has to invent a lie to an acquaintance rather than let any suspicion get out. This behavior leaves her to wonder “Why must a girl pay so dearly for her latest escape from routine? Why could one never do a natural thing without screening it behind a screen of artifice?”

Lily is aware that her upbringing leaves her no opportunities except to be a rich man's wife and at the age of 29, she is running out of time. She is anxious over how others perceive her so much that it becomes a central focus of her life. With good reason too as her every step is monitored by people whose malicious gossip can destroy faster than any conventional weapon.

One near engagement with a boring rich man, Percy Gryce, ends after he becomes aware of Lily's penchant for gambling by playing bridge and her presumed flirtations with men. He instead marries a dull homebody socialite with no past and not much of a personality.

Lily's gambling puts her so far in debt that a crooked financier, Gus Trenor, offers to pay off her debt- for a horizontal price. While she refuses, plenty of people have seen them together in public enough for rumors to spread and reach the ears of Trevor's wife, Judy who is Lily's best friend. Lily not only loses a potential husband but a close friendship as well.

A common theme in The House of Mirth is the double standards between the have and have-nots. Someone like Lily who is struggling to be accepted could have a ruined reputation if it even appears that she had stepped one toe out of line. However, the wealthy elite can behave however they want in their inner circle with minimal repercussions. Carry Fisher, a divorcee, lives as freely as she chooses and while is the source of much derision, she is able to laugh it off and live life according to her terms. Surprisingly, Carry is also one of the few genuinely kind honest characters in the book by drawing in new people that are on the fringes of society like the nouveau riche Wellington Brys and Simon Rosedale, a Jewish businessman trying to climb the ladder of wealth. Carry is also one of the few people that still gives Lily a warm reception after she is ostracized because of scandal.

Another person who is Teflon to gossip is Bertha Dorset, a bitchy socialite whom Lily tries to befriend but ends up becoming her nemesis. Bertha is the Queen Bee of New York's social set, the In Crowd Cheerleader/Female Bully all grown up. She has multiple affairs on her clueless husband, George and is skillful at covering them up. When Lily is unable to distract George long enough during a disastrous cruise to the Mediterranean, Bertha deflects the situation by accusing Lily of having an affair with her husband so no one will know Bertha was having an affair with her own lover, Ned Silverton.

Bertha's acknowledgement of Lily's ostracism leads to various ripples that cause Lily's final exile from the society she longed to be a part of. Even her aunt disinherits her in her will leaving Lily destitute working as a social secretary and later for a milliner.

At no point is Lily portrayed as a shallow superficial one-dimensional character. True she has her hang ups about clothes, fancy homes, and being part of the high society set. But she is fully aware that is all she is meant to be. Her background gives her very few alternatives to seek happiness beyond marrying wealth. She isn't like Dorothea Brooke who had the intelligence and drive but was born in the wrong time to use them. All Lily has is to be the Trophy Wife of a rich man and when that is taken from her, she has nothing to fall back on.

Lily questions her status quite often and wishes that she could be free to marry for love. Nowhere is this more evident than in her relationship with Lawrence Seldon, a lawyer who though has many wealthy friends is not himself rich. He pursues Lily for a time clearly in love with her, but Lily regrettably breaks him off because she needs to marry money.

She can't marry for love without financial security because she doesn't know how to do it. After Lawrence is convinced the rumors about her with other men are true and he temporarily leaves her, she is filled with genuine regret that she ended what could have been a good relationship.

Lily also shows a great deal of integrity. When a former servant and Rosedale use letters that expose a former affair between Lawrence and surprise surprise Bertha (another reason why Lily is on Bertha's “People to See Lives to Ruin” List) as potential blackmail, Lily refuses to do so.

She is too honest for the society that she wants to join and eventually abandons her. This abandonment ultimately leads to the end where Lily is left alone with only her regrets and a bottle of chloral hydrate.

The House of Mirth allowed Edith Wharton to expose the world in which she was raised for the cold, superficial, unfeeling world that it was. She revealed the people on the fringes were swallowed whole by the callous and malicious people on the inside. If they couldn't join, they would be trampled underneath and Lily Bart was.