Trading on Social Currency: The House of Mirth Review

Blurb for The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

The House of Mirth tells the story of Lily Bart, a well-born but impoverished woman belonging to New York City’s high society around the end of the 19th century. The House of Mirth traces Lily’s slow two-year social descent from privilege to a lonely existence on the margins of society. In the words of one scholar, Wharton uses Lily as an attack on “an irresponsible, grasping and morally corrupt upper class.”

My Review

Another one we read for book club, The House of Mirth was my pick because I already had it on my list for the Classics Club. Two birds, one stone.

The House of Mirth is a multi-faceted, in-depth novelization of the difficulty of unmarried young women without a fortune who are nevertheless members of a certain upper-class social circle, and the lengths they must go to maintain their position, through reputation and skillful handling of relationships and social situations. The crisis arises, of course, when these efforts are not enough.

Lily Bart is the protagonist who finds herself increasingly uncertain of her future, verging on desperate. She has been playing the social game for ten years, making herself indispensible to her rich, high-society friends by being an invaluable presence as an adornment and enlivening spirit to all their parties and visits. Between her friends’ gifts and a very small allowance from her wealthy but parsimonious aunt, Lily has not yet found it necessary to “settle” for one of the dull, wealthy, unattractive eligible bachelors that might well secure her future status.

Because status is important to Lily, and she is not willing to trade her lifestyle for some sort of intangible consolation like “love,” so she has recognized that marrying rich is what she must do. She insists she is not romantic, and has a very utilitarian view of life, forged by the rude awakening of her family losing their fortune and her parents’ sudden deaths. She is instead unapologetically committed to luxury because it enables one to exist surrounded by beauty, and has an abhorrence of “shabbiness” in people and things.

Despite this, Lily continuously sabotages her own chances when she is on the cusp of bagging a prize husband, instead choosing to spend time flirting and having deep discussions about her life and prospects with Seldon, a young lawyer who frequents the same circles. There is clearly an affinity between Lily and Seldon, yet they see no danger in flirting since they both agree they would never consider marriage to each other, as Seldon is not rich enough for Lily to accept, and Seldon wouldn’t risk her happiness by asking her to be poor with him.

Instead, Lily seeks other ways to maintain her lifestyle and independence, grasping at the uncertainty of trading in the stock market to try and grow an independant wealth, with the help of her friend’s husband, Mr. Trenor. Unfortunately, all of Lily’s cultured subtlety and delicacy do not serve her well in business matters, as she starts the endeavour with Trenor on vague and undefined terms which lets her in for much more than she intended and sets the trajectory for the rest of the novel’s events.

Wharton has a brilliant knack for painting a society of people in her works, like a tableau with many contending points of interest but equal amounts of detail. Despite her main characters being undeniably main characters and receiving the most definition and development, each other character is endowed with enough individuality and personality to make them come to life as a player in their own right. The dislikes, prejudices, motivations, and changable nature of them all come through to create a dynamic setting that the story winds through, and the main character must navigate.

As an early work of Wharton’s, The House of Mirth is sometimes a bit frustrating with its dramatic beats, including seemingly contrived miscommunication tropes to prevent the two love-interests from being able to simply talk and resolve things early enough in the plot to circumvent the misfortunes that follow. One moment reminded me of an occurence in the much later (much happier) The Glimpses of the Moon, in which the man just gets on a boat and sails away for months instead of talking with the woman to straighten out their relationship after he’s made an unpleasant discovery about her (or thinks he’s made one, because, again, he doesn’t actually discuss it with her to find out the truth). Which is… okay.

Other incidents are brilliantly executed in their lead-up and shocking in their results. Lily’s final, eye-opening encounter with Trenor when she realises she misjudged their understanding is as suspenseful as it increasingly becomes more uncomfortable, then terrifying. The moment that solidifies Lily’s ultimate irretrievable downward fall from the upper-echelons, which comes about from someone in a more powerful position than Lily falsely accusing her to cover their own misconduct, is utterly ruthless and remorseless, as she is immediately cast out and left unprotected, with no place to stay in a foreign country.

In keeping with our discussion of another book club read, Madame Bovary, this story is also one of a tragic downfall after a life of empty pursuit. It has even more direct correlation to Ecclesiastes than Madame Bovary did, taking its title from Ecclesiastes 7:4, “The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.”

It is interesting the way in which Wharton chooses to critique the lifestyle and attitudes of the rich of the day, because she does it through a character who is so deeply embedded in those sensibilities and habits despite not having the means to continue in them. Nor is it fully a critique of Lily, though she is certainly shown to have her share of flaws and character defects.

Instead, the reversal of fortune and her inability to support herself in any sustainable way in the industrial world highlights the fact that has been repeated throughout the book–women of a certain social class are not taught anything other than social skills, which are impressive in themselves and make them very powerful within a certain sphere, but only if their position in that sphere is maintained by independent wealth or a man who can provide that wealth.

In that social climate, women and men find themselves in a potentially unhealthy codependent relationship where the man provides the material goods and the woman provides the social status. Throughout everything, there is an attitude of decandence and excess that the people of this class feel entitled to–indeed, they feel it is necessary, because it has become such an integral part of their society. Lily is a victim of this in more ways than one, starting with her upbringing.

Her father was a shell of a man who was treated as nothing more than a meal ticket by his family, working his entire existence away in order to provide the luxuries his wife wanted to maintain their “status,” only to lose it all, having never developed a fulfilling familial relationship on any level with his wife or child. Lily’s mother then trained her to trade exclusively on her looks in order to manipulate others into caring for her and supporting her throughout her life, perpetuating the cycle of dependence and never teaching her to manage her money, let alone make it herself.

The breakdown in this system is very apparent as both types of currency, monetary and social, can be taken away or depleted in a heartbeat, even when every attempt is made to manage them, to the complete ruin of those who depend on them. Lily tries throughout the novel to trade on her social currency to gain monetary stability, only to find herself trading away more and more without any return, until it finally seems she has traded away her soul.

Another incredible novel of insight and depth from Edith Wharton, I enjoyed reading her beautiful prose as well as discussing the larger themes with the book club. The dialogue is sparkling, the descriptions are evocative, and this story and its keen critique will stay with me for a long time.

---

This has been my ninth Classics Club book review! Check out the rest of my list here.