House of Mirth

The House of Mirth is a 1905 novel by American author Edith Wharton. It 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. Wharton creates a portrait of a stunning beauty who, though raised and educated to marry well both socially and economically, reaches the age of twenty-nine, an age when her youthful blush is drawing to a close and her marital prospects are becoming ever more limited. The House of Mirth traces Lily's slow two-year social descent from privilege to a tragically 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."

    Before publication as a book on October 14, 1905, the novel was serialized in Scribner's Magazine beginning in January 1905. It attracted a readership among housewives and businessmen alike. 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 end of December, 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 this novel solidified Wharton's reputation as a major novelist.

    Because of the novel's commercial success, some critics classified it as a genre novel. However, Wharton's pastor, then 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." 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. When describing it in her introduction to Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth: A Case Book, Carol Singley states that the novel “is a unique blend of romance, realism, and naturalism, [and thus] transcends the narrow classification of a novel of manners.” The House of Mirth was Wharton's second published novel, preceded by two novellas, The Touchstone (1900) and Sanctuary (1903), and The Valley of Decision (1902).

As frustrating as novels of manners are to me because of their seemingly ridiculous pretense (although I am aware I have been raised during a time of free thinking and action and truly have no idea how I would have behaved in a time when societal perception dictated behavior), I find myself strangely attracted to them and keep finding them as permanent structures on the shelves of my library after I pick up a random copy, read it, and later decide to purchase my own copies.

    This novel was interesting to me because of its intense concentration toward behavior analysis because most, if not all, of the events in the novel take place because the characters chose them to take place. Besides retaining social status, the characters are mainly motivated by money, of course, because without it, loss of social status is sure to ensue. This message further validates my belief that money, or whatever society would deem as its currency, is the number one motivator for action, followed by love, jealousy, envy, and revenge (not in any specific order). I'm sure I left out a major motivator, but I have not thought about this subject in some time since lately (mainly during this last year or so because of the quarantine and subsequent social standstill) I've been consumed with modern television and film, particularly the Marvel Universe's series of movies.

    The other interesting  point about this novel is it moves quickly from a novel of manners to a sort of retrospective about high society life by emphasizing the dangers of having too much money and how even people with money have problems. Although most of the events in the novel seem to have been planned, the events leading to Lily's situation seem to be cases of simple bad luck, just as in life, demonstrating the importance of learning resilience and not to count too much on one skill, person, or material to create security and stability in life.