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Kristine Lu
Professor Nicholas Dames
Realism
15 December 2011
The Collapsed House and the Death of Mirth
Edith Whartons The House of Mirth is constructed upon a careful dichotomy presented
within the four words of the novels title. In the phrase, the words house and mirth are polarized,
implicating the two central dilemmas involved in the convoluted unraveling of the plot. House
must be contemplated through the many different connotations and symbolizations of
architectural structures in Whartons imagination. As literary critic Jill M. Kress analyzes in her
article Designing Our Interiors: Self-Consciousness and Social Awareness in Edith Whartons
The House of Mirth, houses represent a great number of thematic concepts: social class, societal
importance, and, most contentiously, interiorized self, among others (Kress 132). The explicit
definition of mirth as joy, happiness, and bliss is starkly contrasted by the connotations of what
houses represent in Whartons novel (Mirth). The dark place of houses, acting as social
markers and societal agents that are seen to effect the narratives tragic conclusion, directly
thwart any happiness that the narratives central character, Lily Bart, could ever have obtained.
But this implicit juxtaposition raises deeper questions in causality: Which house was it that
extinguished Lily? Was it the social house including the physical house (or lack thereof), social
markers, etc. or was it the emptiness of the interior house that destroyed any possibility of
Lilys reaching a gratifying end? Many critics, including at many times Kress herself, contend
that the empty or only pseudo-present evolving identity of Lily Bart is missing, at least as one
that exists distinct from the influences of society. This assumption, however, is premature, for
while it may be convenient to assume that Lilys lack of independent identity inevitably caused


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her defeat, this does not consider the strength of socialization as a force in the novel, a force that
eventually confused Lily Barts ability to comprehend her own identity apart from her social
world. Lily Barts dnouement is not caused by a breakdown of identity, nor a breakdown of
rationality; instead, hers is an error of identity, consequent of a society that is itself a living,
breathing organization pervasive enough to redefine the standards of realistic existence in
Whartons novel.
It is a challenge in The House of Mirth to recognize which actions are those performed
by, or impacted from, the social entity of Whartons novel: the ruling class of 1890s New York
City. Edith Whartons narrative style is the source for this obscurity. She believes novels to fall
into two general categories, the novel of situation and the novel of character and manners.
According to Wharton, One may distinguish the novel of situation from that of character and
manners by saying that, in the first, the persons imagined by the author almost always spring out
of a vision of the situation, and are inevitably conditioned by it, whatever the genius of their
creator; whereas in the larger freer form, that of characters and manners (or either of the two),
the authors characters are first born, and then mysteriously proceed to work out their own
destinies (Wharton, Fiction 89). At once, the reader is tempted to place The House of Mirth into
the latter category; for, of course, from the very beginning the novel almost by definition
resembles a Novel of Manners, a fictional work that details the customs and values of a highly
developed and complex society (Novel of Manners). Consequently, the reader assumes that the
narrative is formed around the study of character and character relationships, following the
actions of Lily Bart and her interactions with the society in which she is situated.
The abrupt disparity of Book II reveals that this classification of narrative structure is not
so conveniently applicable. In Book II, the reader is acutely aware that Lily Bart is most certainly
not proceed[ing] to work out [her] own destin[y] certainly not successfully, at least. Book II


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is overwhelmingly fatalistic, and the reader quickly realizes that the labyrinthine society in which
Lily is ensconced is not one in which she yields agency anymore, evidenced not only in Lilys
fear (If the girl was afraid, was she afraid for herself or for her friends? And to what degree was
her dread of a catastrophe intensified by the sense of being fatally involved in it? [Wharton,
House 267]) but more incontrovertibly in her death: Her death is described as a strange []
confront[ation] with her fate[,] the terrible silence and emptiness [] symboliz[ing] her future
(Wharton, House 404). It seems Wharton could not have been more deterministic in her writing,
nor Lily more victim to an inescapable fate. A solution would be to cast the second half of
Whartons novel as being of an entirely divergent narrative style perhaps less observational and
more experimental, a novel that endeavors an exact representation of nature [and] an
experiment in such a way that, according to all probability [of observed phenomena], it will
furnish a result directly congruent with nature (Zola 4). The experimental novel is loosely
equivalent to the second of Whartons novelistic categories, that of the situational novel, which,
instead of being imposed from the outside[,] seizes the characters in its steely grip, and jiu-jitsus
them into the required attitude (Wharton, Fiction 94). The situational novel, like the
experimental novel, requires its author to be incredibly disciplined, bear[ing] in mind [] that
his business is not to ask what the situation would likely to make of his characters, but what his
characters, being what they are, would make of the situation [] the moment he hears them
saying anything which the stress of their predicament would not naturally bring to their lips, his
effect has been produced at the expense of reality (Wharton, Fiction 98-99). But Whartons
admission that the main advantage of the novelist to whom his subject first presents itself in
terms of character, either individual or social, is that he can quietly watch his people or his group
going about their business, and let the form of his tale grow out of what they are [] instead of
fitting a situation onto them before he really knows them, either personally or collectively


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(Wharton, Fiction 102) suggests that her situational novel is not purely situational, for The
House of Mirth is largely founded upon the business of its people the relationships among
those in the ruling class, how they evolve, and how individuals wane and wax in their social
standing based on the situation that is created by these interactions. At its center, then, The
House of Mirth is undoubtedly a novel about its characters and about manners. By the second
half of the novel, however, the social manners have created a situation on which the latter half
can be based; Wharton then relinquishes authorial decision and yields the second volume to the
operation of the social world. It is thus important to consider The House of Mirth as a narrative
that is, in various ways, produced by the society that it studies, in the first volume detailing the
idiosyncrasies of social behavior of 1890s New York, and in the second a reaction to the social
model established by the first.
The living society that claims for itself an omniscient command is in fact a sociological
phenomenon, recognized as such in Whartons time and increasingly studied since then.
American sociologist Charles Horton Cooley, a contemporary of Wharton, studied the living
whole of society, in which social groups and processes have a life of their own: [S]ociety is,
in fact, vital, original, causative [and] according to Cooley, [] becomes an organic, living
being that produces other living beings [so that] the individual is the only agent, the only cause
of events (Kress 138). In The House of Mirth, the ruling class of 1890s New York has an
extraordinarily specialized culture. Even though Wharton at no point explicitly defines who or
what she judges as being a part of this fastidious upper echelon of the Manhattan community, the
ruling authority is firmly established in a clear circle of wealthy individuals, either of old or new
wealth, who are well-fed and industrious, dress [] expensively, and [do] little else
(Wharton, House 45). These individuals of well-to-do socialites form a highly elite group
committed to serving its own selfish prerogatives yet still operating under a veil of favor so that


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those who gain acceptance feel as though the group is glad to make a place for [him or] her
(Wharton, House 61). There are implicit rules of survival in their social group; upon admittance,
there are not only standards by which to adhere but also dues to pay and considerations to abide.
Lily frequently demonstrates this, particularly in the first half of the novel: It was understood
that Miss Bart should fill the gap [of the secretary] in such emergencies, and she usually
recognized the obligation without a murmur (Wharton, House 48). It is easy to observe that this
kind of society creates a classification scheme with defining divisions amongst those who are
in, those who are out, and those who try to be in but remain on the outside or the
periphery.
Thus, with a social organization in The House of Mirth capable of establishing its own
rules, the naturally successive question is how much this social animal is able to make decisions,
and, more importantly, how it has achieved the ability to influence or effect the decisions of its
members. Herbert Simon, a modern sociologist, studied the behavior of the organizational man
the individual ensconced in the culture of a social group. He argues that though humans are
intendedly rational, their rationality is limited, or bounded, by their [own] limited capacities
and those of the organization [that] prevent anything near complete rationality (Perrow 121). As
opposed to the economic theory of the rational man, who attempts to maximize his utility at
every turn, the individual within the organization is limited specifically by his or her knowledge:
they do not have complete knowledge of the consequences of their acts [or] the alternative
courses of action and thus cannot make one best decision (Perrow 121). Instead, the
individual has decisions made subject to the influences of the organization group in which he
participates [] The result is that members are made to adapt their decisions to the
organizations organizational decisions. The organization gains, not the individual (Perrow
121). The success of an individual within an active organization is thus directly dependent upon


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the amount of knowledge that he or she is able to obtain, which directly allows him or her to
make the most rationally sensible decision.
Simons model immediately applies to the social world constructed in Whartons novel.
Information in the ruling class of The House of Mirth is controlled and distributed in the form of
gossip. Lilys downfall is, indeed, driven by her own lack of participation and lack of control
over the direction of gossip, equated therefore with a lack of knowledge and lack of information.
Bertha Dorset, by direct contrast, is able to control gossip to save herself and her social standing.
A weakness in socialization is what compromises Lily. The scene of Berthas betrayal reveals
not only the subterfuges of a society controlled by gossip but furthermore the vulnerability of
anyone who is deceived about the workings of this society:
A chill of fear passed over Miss Bart; a sense of remembered treachery that was
like the gleam of a knife in the dusk. But compassion, in a moment, got the better
of her instinctive recoil. What was this outpouring of senseless bitterness but the
tracked creatures attempt to cloud the medium through which it was fleeing? It
was on Lilys lips to exclaim: You poor soul, dont double and turncome
straight back to me, and well find a way out! But the words died under the
impenetrable insolence of Berthas smile. Lily sat silent, taking the brunt of it
quietly, letting it spend itself on her to the last drop of its accumulated falseness;
the, without a word, she rose and went down to her cabin. (Wharton, House 261)
The fundamental difference between Lily Bart and Bertha Dorset can be explained
sociologically. In order to survive in Whartons vicious social world, the individual must become
so socialized that his or her identity becomes at one with the identity of the social group. Herbert
Mead, another sociologist contemporary with Wharton, discusses that the [socialized] human
self arises through its ability to take the attitude of the group to which he belongs [] the
structure of society lies in [] social habits, and only in so far as we can take these habits into
ourselves can we become selves (Kress 136). Bertha Dorset is the epitome of the socialized
identity: She is intelligent, manipulating, and insolent. She has outgrown her instinctive recoil
in doing what would be considered right by all standards of rationality to be a good friend to


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Lily, to be truthful to her husband and instead has adopted the attitude of the social world in
which she triumphs because she comprehends and can even operate its intricate workings. She
goes so far as to create gossip, creating information and thus changing the information available
to the entire organization, becoming an agent of change in the rational decision-making
processes of all those within the organizational society. Bertha, in creating the gossip that
destroys Lily Bart, effectively transforms the organizational structure of the society; whoever is
successful and truly worthy of being within the ruling class of The House of Mirth will attempt to
obtain as much information as possible, and thus whoever is truly a member of the novels social
world will know to ostracize Lily for her disgraceful acts against the Dorsets, unproven though
they may be.
To entirely socialize in order to ensure success within this society, one must adopt a new
attitude and fundamentally change his or her own processes of judgment; all previous forms of
rationality must be discarded and reformed to mirror the aims of the larger organization. Lilys
problem is not a breakdown of rationality or of self but rather the failure to entirely concede to
the organizational psyche. Lily essentially fails because she does not and cannot truly become a
part of the social world she seems to so much admire. She repeatedly miscomprehends the rules
that sustain the society she wants to join:
[Lily:] Dont you think, she rejoined after a moment, that the people who find
fault with society are too apt to regard it as an end and not a means[?] Isnt it
fairer to look at them both as opportunities, which may be used either stupidly or
intelligently according to the capacity of the user?
[Selden:] That is certainly the sane view; but the queer thing about society is that
the people who regard it as an end are those who are in it, and not the critics on
the fence. Its just the other way with most shows: the audience may be under the
illusion, but the actors know that real life is on the other side of the footlights. The
people who take society as an escape from work are putting it to its proper use;
but when it becomes the thing worked for, it distorts all the relations of life.
(Wharton, House 86-87)



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A breakdown in rational realism actually occurs in the perfectly socialized community.
Instead of adhering to the standards of real life, rationality is entirely distorted as a means to
attain the social goal, which in the novels social world is merely to cement to elite hierarchical
structure that is already in place. Selden and Lily both acknowledge that the society they live in
distort[s] the relations of life and is not, by all realistic standards, sane. The logical
assumption is therefore that those who are sane for example, Lily, whose compassion [gets]
the best of her instinctive recoil even when Bertha Dorset does her wrong suffer for abiding
by realistic standards of rationality. To succeed in The House of Mirth society, one must have the
fortune and/or the strength of mind to completely relinquish his or her rational standards, which
is something that none of the peripheral characters in the novel seem entirely willing to do:
Rosedales occupation too closely links him to the economic truth of the real world for him to
subscribe to a new mode of decision-making; Selden refuses to be entrenched in it, so much so
that he would rather physically distance himself than become involved; and Lily just cannot find
it within her nature to redefine her standards of rationality. This is clearly evidenced in her
pragmatic struggles with her own finances. Unlike Bertha or even Mrs. Peniston, Lily regards
her finances as entirely her own responsibility, and thus she
refused to play bridge [because] she knew she could not afford it [. But] in the
last year she had found that her hostesses expected her to take a place at the card-
table. It was one of the taxes she had to pay for their prolonged hospitality and for
the dresses and trinkets which occasionally replenished her insufficient wardrobe.
And since she had played regularly, the passion had grown on her [] She tried
to excuse herself on the plea that in the Trenor set if one played at all, one must
either play high or be set down as priggish or stingy; but she knew that the
gambling passion was upon her, and that in her present surroundings there was
small hope of resisting it. (Wharton, House 32-33)

Lily struggles against the sway of her realistic rationality, which teaches her she could
not afford it and must be acutely sensible of the state of her finances. At the same time, she
recognizes that it was one of the taxes she had to pay, not only for the literal hospitality of her


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hosts but more importantly for her own stay in the social echelon of which she often seems no
more than a temporary boarder. In this passage, she appears on the verge of surrendering to her
indulgences, both of gambling and what it represents: the possibility of becoming part of the
social nobility. In the end, however, it is Lilys own personal integrity that saves her, her
realiz[ation] that a womans dignity may cost more to keep up than her carriage; and that the
maintenance of a moral attribute should be dependent on dollars and cents made the world
appear a more sordid place than she had conceived it (Wharton, House 213).
Returning to the narrative structure of Whartons novel, one recognizes that Lily Bart is
not the typical heroine to have at the center of a novel of character and manners. Despite that all
the narrative prerequisites are present to generate a perfect story of destiny, the problem is that,
even confronted with an entire novel about her actions, Lily Bart still disabled. There are many
ways in which Lily Bart is at the center of The House of Mirth and yet subordinated in what
should be her narrative. From her introduction, Lily appears misplaced, disoriented and
confused. In the face of a rushing, incessantly moving crowd, Lily Bart stood apart [] letting
it drift by her, distinguishable only by her desultory air [] an air of irresolution which might
[] be the mask of a very definite purpose. It struck him at once that she was waiting for some
one, but he hardly knew why the idea arrested him (Wharton, House 3). Immediately, she is
characterized as a social outsider, overwhelmed by the rush, and, more scathingly, desultory.
She wears, perhaps, a mask of a very definite purpose, and yet, what first strikes Selden is her
desultory air: irresolution and the mark of a lost heroine, a damsel in distress, a fish out of
water. Of course, this characterization grows only more acute throughout the rest of the novel.
Lily Bart is not the heroine of the novel; she is merely the subject of it. She provides a focal
point for the Novel of Character and Manners a point of comparison but she is not the central
agent, certainly not in the way that Bertha Dorset is. She is not the woman in control of her


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destiny; she is merely the woman who is facing one that is already very definite for her,
despite that it is not entirely hers to control.
This is perhaps the reason for which many critics, including Jill Kress, propose that Lily
Bart seems to have no center, If she does, it is the artful cluster of relationships she has
accumulated in the hopes of securing a social position for her self as a wife (Kress 135). This
is, however, untrue; as proven in a previous passage, Lily has a distinct sensitivity towards the
rational and even what may be called the real within the novel; she has the ability for judgment
that must originate from somewhere within herself. It is not that Lily Bart has no center, but
rather that she has no social identity; what is in flux is not her own individual character but
instead her position in the social scheme. She is unable to define her identity because her
schizophrenia is a social one, and her persistence in attempting this kind of definition for herself
only distances the narrative from the constitutional identity of Lily Bart. In fact, Lily Bart may
perhaps be understood as the individual who cannot be defined socially, for in truth, she is not a
part of the society she attempts so relentlessly to puncture.
Lily Bart is, in actuality, a marginal character vis--vis the social center of the novel.
This is a label accountable to her question of origin: Lily comes from a family history in which
money is not a privilege but a necessity. The only way in which she is able to acquaint the social
class of her (and her mothers) dreams is only through the intermediate character of Mrs.
Peniston; as such, Lily is not herself entitled to social greatness, and she is constantly aware of
this. Her natural classification is that of the other and, truly, the other looking in. Because by
nature she is a marginal character, Lily Bart is endowed with the capacity to observe her society
from the perspective of one peripheral to the action.
Lily smiled at her classification of her friends. How different they had seemed to
her a few hours ago! Then they had symbolized what she was gaining, now they
stood for what she was giving up [] Under the glitter of their opportunities she


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saw the poverty of their achievement. It was not that she wanted them to be more
disinterested, but that she would have liked them to be more picturesque. And she
had a shamed recollection of the way in which, a few hours since, she had felt the
centripetal force of their standards. (Wharton, House 68-69)

Lily Bart possesses the gift to view her prerogative through a number of different
perspectives, allowing her never to lose sight of what, realistically, she is doing, whether that be
coercing an unsuspecting man into a loveless marriage, prostituting herself to a friends
husband for extra allowance, or betraying the concealed licentiousness underlying the allure of
their society. Her marginality, try though she might to evolve beyond it, remains a defining part
of her as evidenced in her closest friendships, her natural attraction to those on the outside:
Gerty Farish, who is defined as having always been a parasite in the moral order, living on the
crumbs of other tables and content to look through the window at the banquet spread for her
friends (Wharton, House 188), and, more importantly, Lawrence Selden.
Miss Bart was a keen reader of her own heart, and she saw that her sudden
preoccupation with Selden was due to the fat that his presence shed a new light on
her surroundings [] It was rather that he had preserved a certain social
detachment, a happy air of viewing the show objectively, of having points of
contact outside the great gilt cage in which they were all huddled for the mob to
gape at. How alluring the world outside the cage appeared to Lily as she heard its
door clang on her! In reality, as she knew, the door never clanged: it stood always
open; but most of the captives were like flies in a bottle, and having once flown
in, could never regain their freedom. It was Seldens distinction that he had never
forgotten the way out. (Wharton, House 67-68)

Lily admires, almost ironically, those outside the cage that she has been so indignant
upon entering herself. She recognizes that this is a likely consequence of her sex (Wharton,
House 8), and yet also knows that she, while she yearns for freedom, her situation is complex for
the luxury she so yearns to have (Wharton, House 14). Her marginal identity becomes a dilemma
only in her refusal to embrace the person she knows that she is. Unlike the other social outsiders
Gerty, Selden, and others such as Rosedale or Nettie, all of whom embrace their social
standing and work for improvement from there Lily, perhaps directly influenced by her mother,


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refuses to accept anything other than the ideal. Lilys rationale is disturbed by the one thing she
is convinced can save and exempt her from a dingy fate: her beauty.
Thus, Lilys conflict of identity is caused by an idealism that never entirely falters.
Despite her acute awareness that she must be sensitive towards realistic concerns finances,
reputation, etc. she cannot extinguish her own passion for beauty, the picturesque, perfection,
love, and liberation. It is a dilemma best understood in conjunction with Lilys extraordinarily
complex relationship with nature. Most conspicuously, Lilys name is not coincidentally
referencing the white flower often associated with the Virgin Mary to symbolize purity (Lily).
As much as her beauty is an external distinction (Wharton, House 6), Lily is described by Selden
as having the same streak of sylvan freedom in her nature that lent such savour to her
artificiality (Wharton, House 15). If on the surface, Lily is like some rare flower grown for
exhibition, a flower from which every bud had been nipped except the crowning blossom of her
beauty (Wharton, House 399), her beauty is often so emphasized on the aesthetic external that
she had never been allowed to cultivate the sylvan freedom in her nature. The complication is,
as always, a financial one: Lily realizes that the upkeep of her physical appearance is expensive,
much like that for the lilies of the valley that her father could not afford to purchase fresh for the
luncheon-table (Wharton, House 38-39). Nonetheless, the passion of her natural desire is deeply
rooted within her, quietly visible in her most introspective moments: She was beginning to have
fits of angry rebellion against fate, when she longed to drop out of the race and make an
independent life for herself (Wharton, House 47). As before, whenever she is reminded of her
idealistic predisposition, she reverts to the definition that she has been given by her mother and
by society, that she is beautiful and hated dinginess (Wharton, House 47). The purity of her
idealism is concealed to Lily by a more dangerous idealism: the idealism of the aesthetic and the
ability for high social class to inoculate against dinginess.


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Aestheticism in the novel is problematic at its core because it represents Lilys
submission to a social idealism. Lilys struggle of identity is fundamentally one of individual
acceptance, for it is not that she herself does not possess a strong sense of individuality, but
rather that for all the hard glaze of her exterior, was inwardly as malleable as wax. Her faculty
for adapting herself, for entering into other peoples feelings, if it served her now and then in
small contingencies, hampered her in the decisive moments of life. She was like a water-plant in
the flux of the tides, and today the whole current of her mood was carrying her toward Lawrence
Selden (Wharton, House 66). Lily herself is not comfortable with nor confident of herself apart
from society, as is evidenced by her most vulnerable moments, consistently characterized by
always being out-of-doors (outside the social house) and isolated, apart from the discerning
eye of the public. Intriguingly, despite an awkward unfamiliarity with nature, Lily is greatly fond
of taking walks; she takes several throughout the course of The House of Mirth, some alone and
some with others (with Selden and Rosedale). In fact, all of these become significant plot
moments, notable for being the instances in which Lily is most revealing of her own vulnerable
identity:
These thoughts so engaged her that she fell into a gait hardly likely to carry her
to church before the sermon, and at length, having passed from the gardens to the
wood-path beyond, so far forgot her intention as to sink into a rustic seat at a bend
of the walk. The spot was charming, and Lily was not insensible to the charm or
to the fact that her presence enhanced it; but she was not accustomed to taste the
joys of solitude except in company, and the combination of a handsome girl and a
romantic scene struck her as too good to be wasted. No one, however, appeared to
profit by the opportunity; and after a half hour of fruitless waiting she rose and
wandered on. She felt a stealing sense of fatigue as she walked; the sparkle had
died out of her, and the taste of life was stale on her lips. She hardly knew what
she had been seeking, or why the failure to find it had so blotted the light from her
sky; she was only aware of a vague sense of failure, of an inner isolation deeper
than the loneliness about her. (Wharton, House 75)

Her walks allow or, rather, impel Lily to confront her solitude, her inner isolation
separate from the social being that she finds herself costuming for her social obligations. They


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frequently conclude in a sense of fatigue or weariness (Wharton, House 391), as though the
sheer energy required to confront herself apart from society and exposed, without the artificial
walls of the social house, to the expanses of nature, is enough to exhaust her. Ironically, the
fewer individuals present to see her beauty and judge her for who she is on the exterior, the more
acutely Lily senses her own failure and loneliness. It is Lilys own unwillingness to accept the
beauty of what lies within her desire for freedom, her natural inclination towards the periphery,
her idealistic search for love that ultimately destroys her. For above all the social commentary
and the force of narrative observation is the girl who wants nothing but love; this sentimental
need drives the entire novel and provides the hopeful undercurrent to the callous fatalism of
social force. What Lily cannot do for herself, Selden can do for her. He recognizes the beauty of
the individual residing beneath the impeccable exterior that first caught his eye:
As the dinner advanced[,] Seldens general watchfulness began to lose itself in a
particular study of Miss Bart. It was one of the days when she was so handsome
that to be handsome was enough, and all the resther grace, her quickness, her
social felicitiesseemed the overflow of a bounteous nature. But what especially
struck him was the way in which she detached herself, by a hundred undefinable
shades, from the persons who most abounded in her own style. It was in just such
company, the fine flower and complete expression of the state she aspired to, that
the differences came out with special poignancy, her grace cheapening the other
womens smartness as her finely discriminated silences made their chatter dull
[] Yes, she was matchless; it was the one word for her; and he could give his
admiration the freer play because so little personal feeling remained in it. His real
detachment from her had taken place, not at the lurid moment of disenchantment,
but now, in the sober afterlight of discrimination, where he saw her definitely
divided from him by the crudeness of a choice which seemed to deny the very
differences he felt in her. It was before him again in its completenessthe choice
in which she was content to rest: in the stupid costliness of the food and the
showy dullness of the talk, in the freedom of speech which never arrived at wit
and the freedom of act which never made for romance. The strident setting of the
restaurant, in which their table seemed set apart in a special glare of publicity, and
the presence at it of little Dabham of the Riviera Notes emphasized the ideals of
a world where conspicuousness passed for distinction and the society column had
become the roll of fame. (Wharton, House 271)



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The undefinable shades of her distinction, driving Seldens love, nonetheless wither
under her attempts to cheapen herself in order to fit into the unrelenting artificiality of her
social ambitions. This is what truly kills Lily Bart: her inability to recognize the individual within
her, her deeper empoverishment of an inner destitution compared to which outward conditions
dwindles into insignificance (Wharton, House 401).
The true failure of The House of Mirth is thus a collapse of idealism. Rationality was
inevitably fated to collapse in the division of realism consequent of the narrative structure: What
began as a study of character and manners turned into a naturalistic observation of what happens
when the social order controls all. The latter redefines realism in a most perverse way. As proven
by sociologists and psychosociologists like Mead, Cooley, and Simon, the organization has a
powerful psychology, one that determines the decision-making ability of its members. Those like
Lily who fail to entirely socialize still maintain in their integrity to realistic rationale. Lilys
dnouement in The House of Mirth is thereby neither social nor rational, for the real collapse of
rationality is within the social world of the 1890s ruling class. The failure of the heroine is in her
inability to embrace anything but artifice, her refusal to define herself against anything other than
the social structure. Her identity is defined against the construct of the social house, and instead
resides in the purity of mirth: idealism in its most beautiful, natural state. Her discomfort with
herself and apprehension to discover what her natural inclination really mean distance both
herself, the reader, and, eventually, even her savior Lawrence Selden from understanding who is
the individual and what is the consciousness that yearns to escape the constrictions of the social
house. The House of Mirth is tragedy in the collapse not of realism but of idealism, though alas
only the latter persists in the love that flourishes even after the heroines death.



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Works Cited
Kress, Jill M. "Designing Our Interiors: Self-Consciousness and Social Awareness in Edith
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Lu 17
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