The Significance of Lily Bart's Death (House of Mirth)
Assignment one – Discuss the significance of Lily Bart’s death at the end of The House of Mirth. You should consider the implications both for the protagonist’s social milieu and for women in general at this point in American history.
The significance of Lily Bart’s death.
As a writer looking towards the twentieth century Wharton faced the challenge of telling the history of women past the age of thirty. The age of thirty was established as the threshold by nineteenth-century conventions. The conventions of ‘girlhood’ and marriage ability; a psychological observation about the formation of the female identity. Wharton shared Freud’s pessimism about the difficulties of change for women. In his essay ‘femininity’, Sigmund Freud (1933) claimed that women’s psyches and personalities became fixed by the time they reached thirty. 1 The House of Mirth begins in New York’s grandiose gateway that is Grand Central Station; it ends in a dark, shabby hall bedroom. Twenty-nine year old Lily is poised between worlds – a staid old society and unknown new one. She slowly descends by class, and dies by suicide. Wharton lightens this melodramatic ending by not quite allowing Lily to actually commit suicide, instead she is portrayed as simply not caring enough about life to count her sleeping drops correctly.2 Lily Bart is neither the educated, socially conscious or rebellious New Woman. She does not find meaning for her life in solitude and creativity. Her skills and morality are those of the Perfect Lady. She rises to the occasion quite superbly whenever there is a crisis – when her aunt disinherits her, Simon Rosedale rejects her and Bertha Dorset insults her. Her would-be New Man Lawrence Selden is who she turns to for friendship and faith. Selden criticises her for being ‘perfect’ to ‘everyone’; but demands extra moral perfection that can only ultimately be fulfilled by Lily dying.3 Lily’s story progresses against a paradigm of what was expected of the
The significance of Lily Bart’s death.
As a writer looking towards the twentieth century Wharton faced the challenge of telling the history of women past the age of thirty. The age of thirty was established as the threshold by nineteenth-century conventions. The conventions of ‘girlhood’ and marriage ability; a psychological observation about the formation of the female identity. Wharton shared Freud’s pessimism about the difficulties of change for women. In his essay ‘femininity’, Sigmund Freud (1933) claimed that women’s psyches and personalities became fixed by the time they reached thirty. 1 The House of Mirth begins in New York’s grandiose gateway that is Grand Central Station; it ends in a dark, shabby hall bedroom. Twenty-nine year old Lily is poised between worlds – a staid old society and unknown new one. She slowly descends by class, and dies by suicide. Wharton lightens this melodramatic ending by not quite allowing Lily to actually commit suicide, instead she is portrayed as simply not caring enough about life to count her sleeping drops correctly.2 Lily Bart is neither the educated, socially conscious or rebellious New Woman. She does not find meaning for her life in solitude and creativity. Her skills and morality are those of the Perfect Lady. She rises to the occasion quite superbly whenever there is a crisis – when her aunt disinherits her, Simon Rosedale rejects her and Bertha Dorset insults her. Her would-be New Man Lawrence Selden is who she turns to for friendship and faith. Selden criticises her for being ‘perfect’ to ‘everyone’; but demands extra moral perfection that can only ultimately be fulfilled by Lily dying.3 Lily’s story progresses against a paradigm of what was expected of the
Bibliography: Benert, Annette. The Architectural Imagination of Edith Wharton: Gender, Class and Power in the Progressive Era (USA: Rosemont Publishing & Printing Corporation, 2007). Fedorko, Kathy. in Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth: Routledge Guide to Literature, ed. by Janet Beer et al (London: Routledge, 2007). Hoeller, Hildegard. ‘Branded From The Start’ in, Etiquette: Reflections on Contemporary Comportment, ed. by Ron Scrapp and Brian Seitz (New York, USA: State University of New York Press, 2007). Moddelmog, William E. ‘Disowning Personality: Privacy and Subjectivity in The House of Mirth’, American Literature, 70:2 (1998), pp. 337-363. Showalter, Elaine. Sister’s Choice: Tradition and Change in American Women’s Writing. (London: Oxford University Press, 1994). Singley, Carol J. Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth: A Casebook. (New York, USA: Oxford University Press, 2003). Wharton, Edith. The House of Mirth. (Hertfordshire, UK: Wordsworth Editions Ltd, 2002). Wolff, Cynthia G. ‘Lily Bart and the Beautiful Death’ in, The House of Mirth: A Norton Critical Edition, ed. by Elizabeth Ammons. (New York, USA: Norton & Company Inc, 1990).