House of Mirth: III

The following short paragraphs are completely unrelated ideas and feelings that I am going to expand on in my paper.

The House of Mirth can be summed up in one sentence: Girl with everything gradually loses it all, overdoses, and dies. Wharton’s novel is the quintessential tragedy. The stagnant speed of the heroine Lily Bart’s demise makes it all the more painful to read.

There are good reasons for reading tragic literature, though. For one, this novel is alarmingly realistic. Sometimes the fairy tale endings from Pride and Prejudice don’t always convey the misery that persists in the real world.

This novel also reminds its readers that usually we only want what we can’t have. That is every one’s tragic flaw. Once we have something, we realize the grass isn’t always greener.

The House of Mirth is obviously a social commentary on a world that was not unfamiliar to the author herself. Lily’s story is not much different from Edith Wharton’s. The only difference in the two women’s lives is really just that Edith settled and married where as Lily searched for more and for better.

Lily Bart is the kind of character that is constantly sabotaging herself. There is no concrete villain. Her inner demons are what impede her happiness.

This novel is one that makes the reader want to scream into its pages. Lily’s happiness is right within her grasp in the form of Lawrence Selden throughout the entire novel. She is painfully unaware but the reader is conscious of it from the beginning. Her downward spiraling life is like a slow motion train wreck that you can’t help but watch.