Socialite Suspense

Book 1, chapter 13

My chapter notes:

Gus Trenor tricks Lily Bart into coming over.  He wants “payment” for the money he gave her.  Lily Bart hates herself for allowing the situation to happen.  She’s afraid.  Her normal man-tricks aren’t working on Trenor.  Eventually Trenor remembers his proper upbringing, and Lily Bart leaves the home.  A mysterious stranger (who we find out in the next chapter is Selden) sees her leaving the Trenor home at an improper hour when the lady of the house is not there.

**** This reminds me of Crime and Punishment!  When Svidrigailov meets up with Dounia and reveals that her brother Raskolnikov is a murderer.

I think this is HoM’s most suspenseful chapter.
How did this chapter make you feel about GusTrenor?

 

Gerty Farish

I’m answering the WEM wrap-up questions

Do you sympathize with the characters?  Which ones, and why? (WEM pg 80)

Do you know with whom I sympathize?  Gerty Farish.

She’s kind.  She’s generous.  She’s charitable.  She’s accepted her lot in life.  She’s done more than accept it.  She enjoys it.  Going to the ritzy wedding earlier in the book didn’t make her jealous or depressed like it did Lily Bart.  Gerty savors the evening but then is content to go back to her tiny apartment and go on with her less than glamorous life.

But then Book 1, chapter 14 happens.
Did you foresee Gerty’s crush on Selden?

Oh, Gerty.

Gerty likes Lily Bart.  Selden really likes Lily Bart.  When the two discuss their misguided friend, Gerty misunderstands Selden’s rapt attention.

But then things become clear.

The little confidential room, where a moment ago their thoughts had touched elbows like their chairs, grew to unfriendly vastness, separating her from Selden by all the length of her new vision of the future–and that future stretched out interminably, with her lonely figure toiling down it, a mere speck on the solitude.

Oh, Gerty.

For a moment I worried about Lily Bart.  I knew things were going to get progressively worse for her.  Gerty had been her true friend.

But when Lily shows up later, afraid to be alone, Gerty sets aside her own feelings and comforts her.

Gerty deserves some sympathy.

 

Sad Fun

Here is your daily dose of oxymoronicism.  That’s probably a word, right?

In Chapter 5 of Book One Seldon has appeared at Bellomont, and Lily has begun to view all her friends in a new light, and it’s not all that flattering.  But apparently the shadows are still playing tricks on Gus.

“I say, do look at her,”  he exclaimed, turning to Miss Bart with lugubrious merriment – “I beg your pardon, but do just look at my wife making a foot of that poor devil over there!”

 

And either way you slice his emotion, I just don’t think it’s a nice way to react to your wive’s behavior.

 

Stupid Question: The Husband Edition

Last night my beloved posed a question for which I had no good response, therefore I’m passing it on to you, dear readers:

Why did we read House of Mirth when Edith Wharton penned a Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Age of Innocence?

It’s a legitimate question.  What little research I’ve done purports that she wrote AOI as an “apology” for HOM.  So, did we read her early work because it was a greater expose of the flawed moral and social structures of early 20th century urban American life?  Did Wharton go to far, or was her apology simply a bend to the very societal pressures she had condemned?

Or did SWB just go “eeny-meeny-miney-mo?”

 

Spring Cleaning

My house needs sprucing up.  I missed spring cleaning, and I need some motivation to declutter, organize, and deep-clean.

I know!  I’ll invite two literary characters over for tea.  They will have lots of advice that will inspire me in my tasks.

Who’s coming to my “Tidy-up Tea”?  Why Mrs. Peniston from The House of Mirth and Miss Ophelia  from Uncle Tom’s Cabin, of course!   Between Mrs. Peniston’s enthusiasm for going through every closet and cabinet in chapter 9  of her book and Miss Ophelia’s ideas for Dinah’s kitchen organization in her book, I’ll be set.

Can you think of anyone else I should invite?  Because I think Peniston and Ophelia could easily have a cleaning/organizing television show on TLC.

 

Obstacle

What does the central character (or characters want?
What is standing in his (or her) way?  (WEM, pg. 73)

Recognize those WEM questions?
Edith Wharton helps us with one of the answers in chapter 8.

If Lily Bart wants a wealthy husband and the acceptance of her peers,
then what’s standing in her way?

Perhaps the question is who is standing in her way?

“I envy Gerty that power she has of dressing up with romance all our ugly and prosaic arrangements!  I have never recovered my self-respect since you showed me how poor and unimportant my ambitions were.”

The words were hardly spoken when she realized their infelicity.  It seemed to be her fate to appear at her worst to Selden.

“I thought, on the contrary,” he returned lightly, “that I had been the means of proving they were more important to you than anything else.”

“It was as if the eager current of her being had been checked by a sudden obstacle which drove it back upon itself.  She looked at him helplessly, like a hurt or frightened child: this real self of hers, which he had the faculty of drawing out of the depths, was so little accustomed to go alone!

There you have it.

Selden = obstacle

Okay, maybe it’s a little more complicated than that.  Selden intentionally “holds a mirror” up to Lily.  With him, she admits who she truly is.  He removes her mask, and she’s forced to look at herself.

Maybe it is that simple.

Selden = obstacle

 

Goodbye, Lily Bart

Did you think I was telling you something about the ending of the book?

Nope!  No spoilers here.  It’s just my way of saying that Christina, Jeannette, and I have all finished reading The House of Mirth.  How are you doing with Wharton’s classic?

Did you finish?  Well, then…

1. Congratulate yourself on checking off another novel from our list!
2. Take The House of Mirth sparknotes quiz.
3. Start the WEM questions.  Remember our resolution?  No stalling!
4. Secure a copy of our next title: The Great Gatsby.  Can you believe our timing?
5. Compare this movie version with the book.
6. Read something for fun!

Still reading?  That’s okay too.  We still have lots to say about the novel.
Please share your place in the comments.