The house of mirth pages6/29/2023 The novel was serialised in Scribner's Magazine in 1905 and aspects of it now seem old fashioned but its depiction of social mores and their influence gives it universal resonance. Wharton shows us exactly how women like Lily could be smothered by the upper reaches of society, where individual tragedies are easily subsumed by the current of other people lives. But Lily can neither accept the yoke of conventional behaviour nor shrug it off and she flounders in the space between. Even the way they break society's rules seem to follow the rules. Other characters in the novel operate within the parameters of their class, sex and wealth. Tragedy, in the classical sense, relates the downfall of a powerful individual that is brought on by his or. Her heroine sinks in stages – failing to snare Percy Gryce or Sim Rosedale as a husband, gambling away large sums of money, being accused of having an affair with a friend's husband, losing her inheritance – until she is reduced to working in a milliner's, her reputation tarnished. Whartons novel is alternately described as a satire of New York Citys wealthy and a tragedy about a physically attractive woman whose beauty causes men to desire to possess her and women to be jealous of her. Wharton is mercilessly frank as she chronicles Lily's fall from grace, contrasting psychological insights with descriptions of external effects.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |