Book Review
HOUSE OF MIRTH
This classic novel revolves around Lily Bart. She is the only person in the novel with dimension. The others are tools for her demonstration and destruction. Lily is presented as a lesson in conditioning. Her character is fixed and permanent. She does not learn from life, only is diminished by it, though she has some distant understanding that, at the end, there was little she could have done to alter the inevitable. The novel would be grim and foreboding if the style were not so distinguished and the analysis of the heroine and the society in which she lives so compelling and repulsive.
Before returning to Lily Bart, something must be said of the fin de siecle New York moneyed class on the edge of which she lives. The people presented in the novel are mostly shallow, talentless, in fact meaningless. Selden, Gerty Farish and Rosedale are the exceptions. The others have appetites but no taste, copying one another as sharks do in a feeding frenzy, but maintaining their position by violent defense of their privileges. Each is classed by money and the length of time it is possessed. The mind, in their view, is an organ of little value unless it is an engine that permits more money to be acquired and promotes further ascent on the social ladder. Nothing has value unless it is confirmed by someone else. Everything is acquired but temporary. They are as vulgar as the British upper classes but without the structure and fittings of royalty and title. Perhaps, in Ms Wharton's view, the villain of the story is democracy in America that lifts people who are in truth so low so high. And then envies and applauds the miracle performed.
Lily is part of the decoration, a tool for entertainment and use which when it loses its purpose is cast aside, dismissed and forgotten. Were she a horse her destiny would be glue. If she had not certain definitions of conduct, she would inexorably have become a prostitute. But even for that role, she does not have aptitude. She must marry wealth. It is her mantra. Money is the buoy that will save her from drowning but there is a fatal indecision in her conduct and a taste for decency which defeats her impulse to survive. After exploring a few brief years of existence from twenty-nine to the low thirties, there is no role in the end for which she is fit other than corpse. Which she plays very well though unremarked by the society she esteems and despises.
The society that Ms Wharton presents is peopled by wealthy vauriens who have no purpose but status. Their prized activity is consuming and elbows. They are bicyclists bowing down in servility before those above them and pounding down as hard as they can on those beneath. They make no mark on time or place, only engulfing everything of value to their peers. They hold in contempt all under them and are devoured by fear of all above. They are predators who never are replete and visitors like Lily have no role but as prey. Of course were she to acquire a wealthy husband, she would instantly alter status and be classified after a short apprenticeship as ONE OF US. Though Wharton shows a few British upper class characters for contrast, they are done with so little emphasis that we readers don't understand the vital difference between the American rich and the British aristocrats. Both groups worship money but the Americans breath it and without it, they lose purpose. The British aristos are convinced of their actual worth which is independent of possessions, founded on history and a system of place which is permanent unless some truly catastrophic conduct intervenes. Wharton's Americans are vulgarians and not the least of the tragedy in this book is the energy and drive Lily employs to attain a place among these unremarkable plutocrats.
To sum up, Ms Wharton wants to demonstrate in a brief and heavily selected form the society of New York at the turn of the century. She shows perhaps ten or fifteen specimens and a limited number of scenes in which they interact, feeding on whatever is esteemed by a peer, and despising in unison whatever at the moment is considered unsuitable. Anything that threatens money is the most unsuitable of all, of course. Ms. Wharton succeeds in her task, presenting a loathsome but convincing pack of wealthy jackals, chewing up every comestible before them. They are thoughtless and reflect a collective rascality which goes for purposeful conduct and earns them esteem from anyone who fears or hopes to gain from them. The interchange of fear and greed motivates everything they do. Just as in the stock market, the players go from greed descending the Slopes of Hope and fear ascending the Walls of Worry. The social game has rules which are known and obeyed. They can be broken only by those few with the most, but the rules are created to maintain just those few so they have little incentive to diminish their advantages. So I have suggested Wharton's purpose and agreed that she has achieved it classically.
Lily is shown always as the suppliant, someone of little stature. Her dreams are few and modest. She is presented as severely conditioned, unable to develope. She is fulfilled by the clothes she wears, the society she frequents, and the latest attitude she presents. She takes little space and it grows less as the book develops, ending finally in the contemptible boarding house room with its narrow single bed and sparse light. As an inept milliner-seamstress, she excites little pity from others and only a measured sympathy from herself. A classical tragedy causes a heightened awareness of the cruelty of life and focuses on an ill-chosen action, but this tragedy is a domestic misfortune that is sad and of brief duration.
The remaining question then is a literary one of where this work stands. The main character, Lily Bart, is memorable but in silhouette. She is a tragic figure, but since her major dream is contemptible, it discolors everything else including the sweetness and true gentleness of her person. All the other characters are flat and forgettable, necessary only for Lily's ruin, so the book stands and falls entirely on Lily whose shoulders are not constructed for such heavy-lifting. So The House of Mirth takes its place in the high upper ranges of the second rank. The writing is faultless and the style estimable, but the contents are soon overcast by haze and, if not forgotten, not remembered with great acuity.
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