Book Review: The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton (1905)

This cover of The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton uses John Singer Sargent's notorious painting Portrait of Madame X, which outraged people when it was shown in 1884.

Edith Wharton, 1862-1937.

The House of Mirth, published in 1905, was Edith Wharton’s second novel and the book that established her as one of America’s most talented writers. Often referred to as a “novel of manners,” The House of Mirth follows the travails of Lily Bart. As the novel opens, Lily is 29 years old and still unmarried, rare for New York high society of that era. Lily has some money, but she is dependent on her dull aunt for her housing and occasional gifts. Wharton describes Lily’s aunt thus: “It was impossible to believe that she had herself ever been a focus of activities.” (p.37) Unfortunately, Lily has very expensive tastes, and her inability to live within her means leads her to a risky financial arrangement with George Dorset, her best friend’s husband. 

Lily is looking for a rich husband, and at the beginning of the novel she seems to find easy prey in Percy Gryce, who is fabulously wealthy but dull as toast. Lily self-sabotages her flirtations with Gryce as she stands him up, instead spending time with Lawrence Selden, a handsome lawyer who unfortunately doesn’t earn enough money to really be husband material. 

There’s a marvelous passage at the beginning of the novel where Lily describes her plight, asking Selden if he would marry a wealthy woman. After Selden says no, Lily replies: 

“’Ah, there’s the difference—a girl must, a man may if he chooses.’ She surveyed him critically. ‘Your coat’s a little shabby—but who cares? It doesn’t keep people from asking you to dine. If I were shabby no one would have me: a woman is asked out as much for her clothes as for herself. The clothes are the background, the frame, if you like; they don’t make success, but they are a part of it. Who wants a dingy woman? We are expected to be pretty and well-dressed till we drop—and if we can’t keep it up alone, we have to go into partnership.’” (p.10) 

This is the world that Lily lives in, and it’s a social milieu that Edith Wharton knew very well from her own life. Lily’s options are limited, and as the book goes on her options keep shrinking. Throughout the novel, whenever Lily makes a decision, it turns out to invariably be the wrong one. 

Lily is a complicated character, at once sympathetic and frustrating. She can be a penetrating critic of her friends, as she thinks “Under the glitter of their opportunities she saw the poverty of their achievement.” (p.57) Lily also has great insight into her own foibles: “Since she had been brought up to be ornamental, she could hardly blame herself for failing to serve any practical purpose.” (p.315) 

Lily bemoans the fact that her wealthy friends are winning money at cards, while she has lost three hundred dollars, which she needs to pay her dressmaker and her jeweler: “A world in which such things could be seemed a miserable place to Lily Bart; but then she had never been able to understand the laws of a universe which was so ready to leave her out of its calculations.” (p.27) 

The House of Mirth is full of Wharton’s sharp observations about people and life. Some of my favorites are: “Mr. and Mrs. Wetherall’s circle was so large that God was included in their visiting-list.” (p.53) “The only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it.” (p.71) “Miss Gertrude Farish, in fact, typified the mediocre and ineffectual.” (p.92) “It is less mortifying to believe one’s self unpopular than insignificant, and vanity prefers to assume that indifference is a latent form of unfriendliness.” (p.128) 

Wharton is highly critical of the characters she has created, writing of them: “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.” (p.227)

Lily’s maid never has a name. This must have been a deliberate decision on Wharton’s part, as the servants in the book are largely invisible until they suddenly crop up for a sentence or two and we are reminded of their existence. This was probably analogous to the role they played in the lives of the wealthy. 

In her 1934 autobiography, A Backward Glance, Wharton explained that she wanted to write a novel about New York high society: “Fate had planted me in New York, and my instinct as a story-teller counselled me to use the material nearest to hand, and most familiarly my own.” (p.206) Wharton went on to rebut those critics who questioned the subject of her fiction, writing “There could be no greater critical ineptitude than to judge a novel according to what it ought to have been about.” (p.206) This is an excellent rule for critics. You have to meet the work of art on the ground where it stands, and try not to judge it according to your own Platonic ideal of what art should be about. 

In A Backward Glance, Wharton informs readers that The House of Mirth was somewhat rushed in its writing, as Edward Burlingame, the editor of Scribner’s Magazine, needed Wharton to begin serializing the book before she was finished writing it. Wharton knew what the ending of the book would be, but wasn’t entirely sure of the journey the characters would take on the way there. It would be interesting to know if Wharton made many changes or revisions to the book in between its serialization and the book publication. 

The House of Mirth is an excellent novel, and although it focuses on the lives of the wealthy in New York City in the early 20^th century, like all the best fiction, what it tells us about human behavior is not limited to the time and place of its setting.