Book #15 of 2020: The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

Following on the heels of Alice James: A Biography, I decided to read Wharton's The House of Mirth for the first time.

Lily Bart is a confounding mess of a human being. I vacillated wildly from admiring her pluck and courage to really despising her materialism and privilege. I think she's the most frustrating heroine in any novel I've read, excepting perhaps Jane Austen's Emma.

It's amusing how Wharton's prose changes when Lily and Selden are together. Birds flit, dew glistens, the weather is always charming and distant vistas reveal mountains dappled with sun. And when Lily is around the wealthy suitors off whom she sponges Wharton's details are sweat drops on lips and cheeks, messed up hair ineffectually slicked back, annoying creaky sounds from carriages. I mean come on, Lily--don't you get it? "Why do birds, suddenly appear..."

But of course that is the point of the novel. Lily is a creature of her environment. She has adapted to what is expected of her and her class. And it was truly awful for young women of astonishing wealth and privilege to be trapped in those situations. There's the guy you should marry, and the guys you are expected to marry.

There is a lot of foreshadowing along the way about the ending. I noted each occurrence and convinced myself that that ending wouldn't happen. And when it did I was done in for the evening. How much really changed for young women between Austen and Wharton? Not much. How much has changed since Wharton to the era of Weinstein, Trump, and, yes, Joe Biden? Not nearly enough.