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The House of Mirth

Published in 1905, The House of Mirth was the first widely recognized work by American author Edith Wharton. It tells the story of young socialite Lily Bart struggling to find her place among the early 20th century New York elite. Wharton traces Lily's slow but steady two-year descent from social privilege to a lonely existence on the margins of society and tragic end.

Beginning in January 1905, The House of Mirth first was serialized in Scribner's Magazine. It attracted a readership among housewives and businessmen. Due to its popularity, it eventually was published as a novel in October 1905. Charles Scribner wrote Wharton in November 1905 that the novel was showing "the most rapid sale of any book ever published by Scribner." By the new year, sales had reached 140,000 copies. Wharton's royalties were valued at more than half a million dollars in today's currency. The commercial and critical success of The House of Mirth solidified Wharton's reputation as a major novelist.

The House of Mirth was preceded by two novellas, The Touchstone (1900), Sanctuary (1903), and one novel, The Valley of Decision (1902). Her subsequent important novels are Ethan Frome (1911), The Custom of the Country (1913), and The Age of Innocence (1920) for which she won the Pulitzer Prize in 1921.[2][5] These works influenced a host of American authors for two generations. They include F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby), Sinclair Lewis (Main Street), John O'Hara (Appointment in Samarra), and Louis Auchincloss (The House of Five Talents).[3][6][7]

Plot

A beautiful and intelligent, but impoverished, socialite, Lily Bart attends a house party at Bellomont, the country home of her best friend, Judy Trenor. Her mission is to find a husband with great wealth and status to maintain her place in New York society. It is here that Judy introduces her to potential suitor, Percy Gryce.  Lily's week at Bellomont ends in a series of failures - she loses a large sum at bridge as well as her ploy to marry Percy Gryce. Her failure with Percy occurs when tall, handsome and engaging Lawrence Selden unexpectedly shows up at Bellomont. Lily chooses to spend Sunday with him instead of meeting Percy for morning church services and an afternoon walk. Succumbing to her agreeable femininity, Selden begins to fall in love with Lily. Though orphaned and deprived of her father’s inheritance, Lily has grown accustomed to a certain quality of life under the care of her Aunt Julia Peniston. Seldon quickly realizes that she cannot happily marry a man of his modest means.

Lily’s strategy to marry Percy Gryce is thwarted by Bertha Dorset who has been carrying on an extramarital affair with him. Realizing Selden came to Bellomont to see Lily, Bertha retaliates by making sure Percy finds out about Lily's gambling, smoking, and borrowing money from men to pay off her gambling debts. Percy is scared off and soon thereafter marries Evie Van Osburgh. Lily attempts to neutralize the detrimental effects of the gossip surrounding her by renewing her association with her nemesis, Bertha Dorset, and cooperating with Carry Fisher's mission to bring the newcomers, the Wellington Brys, into high society.

Mrs. Richard Bennett Lloyd {1775-1776} - Portrait painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds

On Mrs. Fisher's advice, the Wellington Brys throw a large "general entertainment" featuring a series of tableaux vivants portrayed by a dozen fashionable women in their set, including Miss Bart. The pièce de résistance of this highly successful event turns out to be the portrayal of Mrs. Lloyd in Sir Joshua Reynolds' famous 18th-century painting. The portrait is of an attractive woman suggestively clad. As the curtain opens on this last scene, the gasp of approval from the audience is not so much for Reynolds’ brilliant interpretation of Mrs. Lloyd as it is for the loveliness of Lily Bart herself - marking the pinnacle of her social success.  

The next day, Lily receives two notes - one from Judy Trenor inviting her to dine that evening at her townhouse and the other from Selden, asking to meet with her the following day. Though she has a dinner engagement, she agrees to a visit with Judy at ten o'clock. However, her late-evening encounter turns out to be alone with Gus, Judy's husband. Gus vehemently demands the kind of attention he thought he had paid for. Pleading naivité about business matters, and appealing to their friendship, Lily promises to pay back the nearly $10,000 she owes him. Shaken and feeling very much alone, she calls on her friend Gerty Farish for shelter for the rest of the evening.

The following day, Lily pleads with her aunt to help with her debts and confesses that she has lost money gambling at bridge, even on Sundays. Aunt Julia refuses to help her, except to cover the $1,000 to $2,000 bill for clothes and accessories. Feeling trapped and disgraced, Lily turns to thoughts of Selden as her savior and has a change of heart towards him as she looks forward to his visit at four o'clock.  However, her visitor turns out to be Simon Rosedale who, so smitten by her appearance in the tableau vivant, proposes a marriage that would be loveless but mutually beneficial. Considering what Rosedale knows about her, she skillfully pleads for time to consider his offer. Selden never does show up and doesn't provide any reason why.

To escape the rumors arising from the gossip caused by her financial dealings with Gus Trenor, and also disappointed by what she interprets as Selden's emotional withdrawal, Lily accepts Bertha Dorset's spur-of-the-moment invitation to join her and George on a Mediterranean cruise aboard their yacht, The Sabrina. Bertha intends for Lily to keep George distracted while Bertha carries on an affair with young Ned Silverton. Lily's decision to join the Dorsets on this cruise proves to be her social undoing.

In order to divert the attention and suspicion of their social circle away from herself, Bertha insinuates that Lily is carrying on a sexual liaison with George. In front of their friends (at the close of a dinner the Brys hold for the Duchess in Monte Carlo), Bertha commands that Lily not return to the yacht, stigmatizing her. Selden helps Lily by arranging a night's lodging with her cousin, Jack Stepney, under the promise that she leave promptly in the morning. The ensuing scandal ruins Lily's reputation - her friends abandon her virtually immediately, and her Aunt Julia disinherits her. Only two friends remain for Lily: Gerty Farish (a cousin of Lawrence Selden) and Carry Fisher.  

Despite the efforts and advice of Gerty and Carry to help her overcome notoriety, Lily descends through the social strata of New York City's high society. She obtains a job as personal secretary of Mrs. Hatch, a disreputable woman who very nearly succeeds in marrying a wealthy young man in Lily's former social circle. She resigns her position after Lawrence Selden returns to warn her of the danger, but not in time to avoid being blamed for the crisis. It is during this occupation that she is introduced to the use of chloral hydrate, sold in drugstores as a remedy for various ailments. Lily then finds a job in a milliner's shop. Unaccustomed to the rigors of working class manual labor, her rate of production is low and the quality of her workmanship poor, exacerbated by her increased use of the drug. She is fired at the end of the New York social season, when the demand for fashionable hats has diminished.

Meanwhile, Simon Rosedale, the Jewish suitor who previously had proposed marriage to Lily when she was higher on the social scale, reappears and tries to rescue her, but Lily is unwilling to meet his terms. Simon wants Lily to use the love letters that she bought from Selden's servant to expose the affair between Lawrence Selden and Bertha Dorset. For the sake of Selden's reputation, Lily does not act upon Rosedale's request and secretly burns the letters when she visits Selden one last time. Eventually, Lily Bart receives a $10,000 inheritance from her Aunt Peniston, which she uses to repay Gus Trenor.

Distraught by her misfortunes, Lily has been regularly using a sleeping draught of chloral hydrate to escape the pain of poverty and social ostracism. Her debts repaid, and desperate for sleep, Lily takes an overdose of the sleeping draught and dies - perhaps it is suicide, perhaps an accident. That very morning, Lawrence Selden arrives to finally propose marriage, but Lily Bart is dead. Among her belongings are receipts for her payments of the investment debt owed Gus Trenor, proving that her financial dealings with Trenor were honorable and not evidence of an improper relationship.

Addiction and Sleep

The Victorian Era was a time of great invention and discovery, but not all such accomplishments would prove beneficial to society. One example of this is the importation of opium from Asia and the Middle East to Europe and America. At the time, it was believed to have positive medicinal properties, and its addictive nature was yet unknown. Introduced as medicine, opium led to the discovery of morphine and, subsequently, heroin. In addition, drugs such as opium were typically used by members of the lower and working classes.  

In her steady downward spiral, Lily becomes dependent on chloral hydrate to calm her mind and sleep.  Much like morphine, chloral hydrate was a semi-synthetic drug used as a sedative and sleep aid (it sometimes still is administered to calm patients before surgery). When taken sparingly, it provides relief, but consistent use leads to tolerance and greater abuse. For young Lily Bart and others, sadly, this was an aspect of opium - and resulting opiates - that Victorians were unaware.

Controversy continues over whether Lily Bart’s demise was intentional or an unfortunate accident. Wharton writes in her novel: "The action of the drug was incalculable, and the addition of a few drops … would probably ... procure for her the rest she so desperately needed.”  

In 2007, a letter from Wharton to a trusted physician was unearthed. It reads

"I have a heroine to get rid of, and want some points on the best way of disposing of her… What soporific, or nerve-calming drug, would a nervous and worried young lady in the smart set be likely to take to, and what would be its effects if deliberately taken with the intent to kill herself? I mean, how would she feel and look toward the end?"

This seems to suggest Wharton intends Lily’s death as a calculated suicide, but it is not concrete evidence. In fact, the letter sparks further speculation as to Lily’s tragic end.

Biographer Hermione Lee says, "Does the letter prove that Lily all along intended to kill herself? I think it quite likely that, in December 1904, Wharton was thinking Lily was going to commit suicide, and that by the time she came to the ending, months later, she changed her mind …  I think that … she decided it would be more effective if she left the ending ambiguous. It's actually a much greater book if we don't know for sure."

Uncertainty is a common theme in the endings of Wharton novels. For that reason, many scholars believe she fully intended Lily Bart's demise to be ambiguous, even to the point of whether she “should” have died so young by any means.

Biographer Roxana Robinson leans in a different direction: "I think the reader knows on some deep level that the event was deliberate, that Lily Bart knew she'd exhausted her possibilities and knew that going on would mean a life of unbearable ignobility."  

Wharton contemporary Louis Auchincloss wrote, "I don't see what the fuss is about. It's perfectly clear what happens. Lily doesn't mean to kill herself but risks death in a desperate bid for rest. Edith Wharton wrote to Kinnicutt because she needed to find a drug that wouldn't disfigure Lily's beautiful body. She didn't want that dreadful Madame Bovary thing, with the arsenic. I mean, how can you have Lily Bart die a messy death?"

Lily’s dependence on chloral hydrate stems from her extreme anxiety over her debts and declining social status. The more sleep deprived she becomes, the greater she feels the need to seek help from this drug. Sleep deprivation results in lapses of judgment, irritability, and paranoia. Wharton writes of Lily, “What she dreaded most of all was having to pass the chemist’s … [but] her steps were irresistibly drawn toward the flaring plate-glass corner… When at length she emerged safely from the shop she was almost dizzy with the intensity of her relief. The mere touch of the packet thrilled her tired nerves with the delicious promise of a night of sleep” (225).

In 1895, Thomas Edison claimed, “People do not need several hours of continuous sleep … a few minutes, or an hour, of unconscious rest now and then is all that is required … The habit of sleep was formed before the era of artificial light when people had no other way of spending hours in the darkness."

Wharton's view was more traditional, that electric light was harsh and unnecessary.  She believed artificial light - as well as having a detrimental effect on natural sleep patterns - had disrupted daily life. Wharton writes of Lily: “She felt so profoundly tired that she thought she must fall asleep at once; but as soon as she had lain down every nerve started once more into separate wakefulness. It was as though a great blaze of electric light had been turned on in her head, and her poor little anguished self shrank and cowered in it, without knowing where to take refuge” (250).

The chemist warns Lily an increase in dosage could potentially be fatal, but she takes her chances, as craving sleep overshadows all else. As to whether Lily’s death is suicide or tragic accident, that knowledge lies only with Wharton.  

Critical Reception

On the Best Seller list for nearly six months, The House of Mirth was met with mixed reactions, and likely gained popularity from its controversial content. Based on Lily’s improper and manipulative behavior towards men in her circle, many labeled her a “fallen woman”, an image solidified when she may have committed suicide. A stigma, suicide in some countries is still actually illegal, a law developed from the religious idea that suicide is a grave sin. The dead cannot be prosecuted, but their bodies and any property/possessions were often not handled with respect. In addition, anyone who attempted suicide, along with anyone who assisted, could be prosecuted as well.    

Because the book was a commercial success, some critics classified it as a genre novel. However, Wharton's pastor (rector of Trinity Church in Manhattan) wrote to tell her that her novel was "a terrible but just arraignment of the social misconduct which begins in folly and ends in moral and spiritual death."(310)[2] This moral purpose was not lost on the literary reviewers and critics of the time who tended to categorize it as both social satire and a novel of manners. Carol Singley in her Introduction to Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth: A Case Book states, "[The House of Mirth] is a unique blend of romance, realism, and naturalism,[and thus] transcends the narrow classification of a novel of manners." (3)[4]

A reviewer in The New York Times commented on the "unloveliness of Miss Bart's character." This and other similar judgments were based on a Victorian notion of ideal womanhood: The Independent observed, "the whole picture is the more distressing than if the victim were a man, because the destroying of a woman means the passing of a finer spiritual nature” (11). However, some did recognize the value of the novel’s heroine. The Saturday Review saw Lily's portrait as a "masterly study of the modern American woman with her coldly corrupt nature and unhealthy charm." And The New Republic praised Wharton's depiction of Lily Bart as the "most authoritative version ever rendered of the shallowly-rooted and socially-obsessed American girl."

Not all objections were from a moral standpoint. A large number of disgruntled New York elite aired disappointment in Wharton’s portrayal of distinguished society. In a time when romances and fairy tale stories were hugely popular, Wharton’s realistic depiction of the less than stellar aspects of high society was unnerving. Thus, the novel’s publication prompted letters to the editor of the "New York Times Saturday Review of Books" - letters which argued the merits of the story, stating the novel was a faithful and true portrait of the New York City gentry. Detractors said it impugned the character of the city's social élite leisure class as heartless and materialist.[20].

There were many negative commentaries on Wharton's narrative style in a book critics felt lacked a logical plot. A writer for The Atlantic Monthly observed that "the first chapter does not predict the last" and that the book was made up of “poorly-connected episodes” (16). Another critic for the same paper stated his belief that "there is something almost vindictive in this hailstorm of epigrams.” Even Henry James (to whom Wharton was often compared) added his thoughts regarding what he viewed as Wharton’s distance and detachment by saying she tended "to survey the psychological terrain from too great a height."  

Providing a more positive perspective, the contemporary book review "New York Society Held up to Scorn in Three New Books" (15 October 1905), The New York Times critic said that The House of Mirth is "a novel of remarkable power" and that "its varied elements are harmoniously blended, and [that] the discriminating reader who has completed the whole story … must rise from it with the conviction that there are no parts of it which do not … belong to the whole. Its descriptive passages have verity and charm, it has the saving grace of humor, its multitude of personages … all have the semblance of life."[19]

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