The House of Mirth: Social Renovation Creates Social Disorder

Theron McLeod

            From scholar to scholar, readings of Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth vary tremendously, which is a testament to Wharton’s ability to defy traditional literary modes and cunningly create a complex and forceful novel. The complexity of The House of Mirth derives partly from Wharton’s ambiguity. The end of the novel, which many a critic has attempted to reconcile, leaves plenty of room for interpretation; thus the “final” message that Wharton suggests is obscured: does the death of the heroine Lily Bart indicate victory over or a defeat by a corrupt capitalist system?  The answer varies depending on one’s interpretation, but what is not shrouded in ambiguity and can be agreed on is the fact that Wharton’s The House of Mirth is very much a critique of New York’s leisure-class during the nineteenth century. This social structure, with which Wharton was so intimately familiar, was a conglomeration and collision of codes of conduct and modes of thought that derive from the “social renovation” occurring at the time and the older aristocratic traditionalism which was still being clung to (Trilling 23).  It was a world created by incongruous social systems of proto-feminism, capitalism, social decorum, old aristocracy, and patriarchal hierarchy. As such, this social structure was duplicitous, hypocritical and corrupt. What Wharton points out in The House of Mirth is how this fraudulent system could not support moral or spiritual substance and therefore the social structure was distorted and corrosive  (Dixon 212).

The society that Wharton depicts in The House of Mirth is one that serves two masters: the capitalist marketplace and the older aristocratic traditionalism. These systems are similar in that they both have a foundation based on patriarchal principles and money. However, the fusion of these two systems during the late 1800s was far from flawless. Older Victorian values of lineage, social decorum and separate gendered social spheres overlaid with values stemming from the marketplace—purchasing power, commodities exchange, excess materialism and far more worldly and liberal attitudes—created disorder, paradoxes and hypocrisy that particularly affected the status of women. This is not to say that the older Victorian order lacked materialism or worldliness for, “the old society may have had brittle and varnished shell, but it covered a materialism as rampant as that of the richest parvenu” (Auchincloss 35). Lily’s aunt, Mrs. Peniston is an emblem of the old order; she is one of the “old New Yorkers who have always lived well, dressed expensively, and done little else; and to these inherited obligations [she] faithfully conformed” (37). However, with the rise of capitalism Mrs. Peniston’s old Victorian materialism was transforming into more visible and exaggerated consumption and show. Further still, the rigid decorum and social codes that once ruled America’s elite class began to erode while “inherited wealth had begun to capitulate to new financial success;  infiltrations from and uneasy European aristocracy and from the freer lands of the theater and art had already presaged our present-day international set” (Trilling 25). Wharton’s Mr. Rosedale is an exemplum of the nouveaux riches and the capitalist marketplace attempting to infiltrate New York’s high society, while the Gormens’ weekend social gatherings with their eclectic and “flamboyant” crowd reflect the loosening and neglect of traditional codes of etiquette and social intercourse (234).

The society with which Wharton is most concerned, in The House of Mirth, is not the Gormans nor the Rosedales, but the Dorsets and the Trenors who “no longer adhere to the rules [of the older Victorian Aristocracy] by which they were reared” (Trilling 25). The new leisure-class to which that these characters belong is one that stands torn between the old and new. They pride themselves on their inherited aristocratic breeding. They attempt to preserve old modes of social niceties; they wield their social status and power as admirably as any Victorian aristocrat, and they are lavish and luxurious in their spending. And as Diana Trilling has stated, “although in isolated personal instances there may be a certain flexibility in response to the disturbance of old patterns, there is no class flexibility with which to accommodate a new order”(25). Thus, even the semi-renegade Dorsets and Trenors cling to their inherited social structure, but in the meantime they also play the Stock Market, gamble, hurry to endless social gatherings and put on tableaux; their homes became public stages where their buying power and excess consumption could be publicized (Von Rosk 325). In The House Mirth this new high society, infused with the old and new, is depicted as narcissistic, voracious and soulless. Traditional codes of conduct and social decorum, thus, had become a veneer that concealed a self-serving, amoral social structure that had risen from an invasive capitalist environment.  

Throughout The House of Mirth, the reader is exposed to the complex intercourse that existed in high society. Nothing is ever plainly articulated; all verbal or gesticulate action is constantly manipulated to only hint at what is truly meant, as if to sugarcoat or distract from the impropriety and corruption of the social structure itself. Even Lily Bart, who so carefully avoids the realities of her beloved society, admits to this when she is confronted by the ever so blunt Mr. Rosedale: “[a]fter the tissue of social falsehoods in which she had so long moved it was refreshing to step into the open daylight of an avowed expediency”(Wharton 256). As an outsider and a business man, Rosedale, understands the marketplace aspect of this high society, but does not heed the rules of their social discourse. Rosedale’s talk of New York’s high society “in terms of businesses-like give and take,” (259) the “language of the marketplace,” reflects the hypocrisy of the social structure he is so intent on joining (Dimock 783). In this, Rosedale is perhaps the only truly honest character in the novel, but “the community always is presented as an unthinking, powerful adversary perpetuating specific standards of behavior” (Dixon, 212).

These “standards of behavior” that are so dear to Wharton’s New York elite are perpetuated because without them they would be faced with their amoral materialism. For women such as Lily Bart, the rules that dominate social intercourse and etiquette are doubly important, for they veil their subjugated and commodified reality; paradoxically the social play is also the mechanism by which women are able to assert what little “power” they are given. For instance, Gus Trenor, falls victim to Lily’s flattery and flirtation. Lily calculates how her “famous lashes drooped above a prayer-book, would put the finishing touch to Mr. Gryce’s subjugation” (Wharton 53). Thus, aside from independently wealthy women, the only recourse available to a woman like Lily, lacking financial recourse of her own, is the use of her feminine wiles, which the complex system of social intercourse accepts unquestionably.

 However, this “influence” women were allowed to exercise was still based on the traditional patriarchic structure, for women were valued as possessions, enriching men’s status within the public sphere. Thus, within new found elite social structure of the nineteenth century male domination was perpetuated even though women appeared to have achieved greater freedoms. Breaking from the old order, leisure-class women became free to gamble, “smoke, divorce, and have affairs with impunity” if one had “good backing,” as seen in the case of Mrs. Dorset (Von Rosk 325). The new aristocratic woman, like her home, also became more publicly visible than her older counterpart. Victorian traditionalism which had women cloistered within the domestic sphere while men dominated the public was a thing of the past.  As Wharton explains, Mrs. Peniston, the emblem of this past, is a “looker-on” who is likened to mirrors attached to high windows “so that from the depth of an impenetrable domesticity [she] might see what was happening in the street” (Wharton 37). This “impenetrable domesticity”, with the rise of capitalist consumption, gave way to Lily Bart and her social set venturing into the streets of New York to restaurants, social engagements, stores, parties, or literally becoming objects to be seen and admired as in Mrs. Bry’s tableaux. On the surface these new gained freedoms may have appeared liberating for women, but in reality the position of the new aristocratic women was paradoxical, “for she is the most visible, the most powerful and yet the most commodified” (Von Rosk 325). As described by Wai-Chee Dimock, “the power of the marketplace, then, resides not in its presence, which is only marginal in The House of Mirth, but in its ability to reproduce itself, in its ability to assimilate everything else into its domain" (783). The capitalist marketplace, thus, spilled over into the domestic sphere and leisure-class women literally became marketable commodities, which reemphasizes the dehumanizing and amoral quality of this elitist social structure.

To further give insight into this paradox and to underscore deformities and destructiveness of structure of this new elitist society, Wharton endowed her heroine, Lily Bart, with qualities that both represent the leisure-class and those that oppose it. The new social elite, while they are “appreciative of good breeding and wit,” which Lily possess, it is “economic power and social visibility” that truly are the masters of the social structure, which Lily unfortunately is lacking (Dixon 213). Without financial backing Lily only has her “good breeding,” beauty, and social graces, which reinforce her position as a commodity. “Lily understood that beauty is only the raw material of conquest, and that to convert it into success other arts are required”’ thus Lily comprehends the rules of decorum and social interplay and how to use them to promote the power of her exquisite beauty (34).  Having both the beauty and the “arts” to “convert it into success,” Lily springs to life as the aristocratic and patriarchal “ideal” of the female. Within the first five pages of the novel, Wharton describes Lily’s beauty in monetary terms:  “[Selden] had a confusing sense that [Lily] must have cost a great deal to make,” for she looked “as though a fine glaze of beauty and fastidiousness has been applied to vulgar clay” (5). Selden’s observation is accurate, for the “beauty and fastidiousness” veils the vulgarity of the society Lily represents.

Lily is a commodity, an object to be bought and paid for and she understands her position as such; she is “self-acknowledged ‘human merchandise,’” and is “busy marketing herself throughout most of the book, worried only about the price she would fetch” (Dimock 783). However, Wharton further complicates Lily’s character by bestowing upon her, what critics have dubbed “a soul” or innate morality. This soul or moral center manifests itself in her impulsiveness and her unwillingness to commit to a future within her social set. Lily sets herself up for failure; risking her reputation, she plunges headlong into Lawrence Selden’s apartment in the Benedick, declaring “it’s too tempting—I’ll take the risk”(6). Lily, who is an authority on the codes of social behavior, cannot resist the speck of verve that is within her, even though she knows she must “pay so dearly for her least escape from routine” (15).  In dealing with Percy Gryce, one of the many potential husbands she had attempted to snare, she unconsciously sets her self up for failure: “[h]er intentions in short had never been more definite; but poor Lily, for all the hard glaze of her exterior, was inwardly as malleable as wax” (53).  At some level, Lily also sees the futility and absurdity of the capitalist society she holds so dear. At one point she declares “how dreary and trivial these people were!” for “under the glitter of their opportunities she saw the poverty of their achievements” (55).  Lily is tempted by something deeper than wealth and social position, be it love, freedom, morality or merely excitement. This temptation is exacerbated by the presence of Mr. Lawrence Selden.

Selden stands between the world of the New York elite and the professional and appears to be able to work within them both; “[i]t was rather that he had preserved a certain social detachment, a happy air of viewing the show objectively, of having points of contact outside the great gilt cage in which they were all huddled for the mob to gape at” (54). The distance he has from this elite culture allows him to see Lily’s potential. While Selden never fully comprehends nor is able to succeed in finding Lily’s “true nature,” he does awaken in her “mental vagrancy” that incites in her a desire for something more than what high society offers, but “[s]he was so evidently the victim of the civilization which had produced her, that the links of her bracelet seemed like manacles changing her to her fate” (67, 7). Lily was so conditioned that she could not merely walk away from “the civilization that produced her” (7). Thus, while Lily rejects the leisure-class, she also embarrasses it. These contradictory notions inevitably lead to her down fall.

Lily rebelliousness against the rules of the elite society—her refusal to submit to a loveless marriage—places her in a precarious situation. With no financial backing she is at the mercy of her “friends” and given the impunity that the wealthy possess, Lily becomes even further a commodity in the marketplace of the elite: “she clearly is caught up in the ethos of exchange” (Dimock 783). Gus Trenor, well versed in the language of Wall Street, understands fully the intricate dynamic of the new capitalist system of his class. As indicated by Dimock, the new leisure-class had developed its own system of exchange rates and commodities trade (793). Trenor’s secure position as a wealthy man affords him the luxury of defining the exchange rate in negotiations with Lily; he demands sexual favors for cash. While Lily is not ignorant of standards of the “social marketplace” she admires—she forces herself to spend leisure time with Trenor as repayment for the investments he made for her—she is naïve in terms of how degrading they can be. What Trenor demands is, in his eyes, not unreasonable for he is merely following the rules of his social class. Lily too was following the rules, she uses her feminine wiles—the only resource available—to obtain what she needed, but as a woman, financially and socially strapped, she has no power except to submit to or reject Trenor and doing either would potentially lead to being blackballed from her social circle. Obviously Lily is not so corrupt as to exchange sex for money, but she cannot allow herself to break the rules: repaying the money Trenor had loaned ultimately dooms her, but she does it anyway: “she has understood what it means to live under the ‘intolerable obligation’ of an all consuming system of exchange and she tires to exorcise its influence by facing up to what she owes” (Dimock 787). The system then, is deformed and duplicitous for even though she follows the rules, she is not saved, redeemed or aided.  

The moral high ground that Lily achieves through the negotiation with Trenor extends itself into the negotiations with Mrs. Dorset as Lily has the ability to reverse her fortune without breaking form, which Mr. Rosedale so bluntly laid out: “you’ve waited so long to get square with that woman, when you’ve had the power in your hands” (275). Rosedale’s plan to redeem Lily —using Mrs. Dorset’s letter as an asset for Lily to regain her social position—is “the ultimate commodification of experience, the reduction and quantification of moral outrage into ‘concrete weights and measures’ for exchange” (Dimock 789). This amoral plan is the crown jewel of the social intercourse of the New York elite, but Lily rejects it. It is not an automatic rejection on her part for “its subtle affinity to her own inner most cravings” tempts her, rather she sees the “essential baseness” of the whole social construct in Rosedale’s attitude (259-260).  Lily’s unwillingness to use her advantage at the expense of Selden, but rather to sacrifice herself, does exemplify her moral superiority and at the same time causes her demise. This last rejection of the leisure class social norm epitomizes the corruption and destructiveness of this system, for Lily in using the letters to regain her status would be selling her soul.

Wharton’s The House of Mirth, thus becomes a moralistic tale, not so much by emphasizing morality but by emphasizing the lack thereof. The ambiguity of Lily’s death remains unresolved, but her downfall is clearly linked to a social system that does not allow for any ethical or spiritual center. It is questionable whether Lily ever understood herself in terms of morality or spirituality, as some optimistic critics like to conclude, or if her rejection of the system was seen as merely a result of her impulsive nature. In the end Lily feels “a deep impoverishment” arising from her poverty and loneliness (318-319). She does not see her new “spiritual” wealth, because Lily is herself a paradox: she is the “product of the civilization that made her” and something more: “spiritual aspirations” or as Dixon assumes “an ethical perspective” (Dixon 213-214). But she has been so conditioned and molded by the social environment this “something more” is obscured because these aspirations cannot survive within a capitalist environment.  The “word” that is never spoken and that passes between Selden and Lily, which James W. Gorgano likens to “faith”, is the closest Lily is able to come to an understanding of herself (140). Be it faith or love, Lily is not given time for further discovery nor is the reader. Lily’s death is the culmination of a long an painful fall from grace. Lily’s fall has everything to do with the changes that took place during the turn of the century which had created a new elite class and social structure that was void of any deep meaning or intention. The melding of capitalism and old Victorian codes of conduct liberated while at the same time repressed. It was a social system that disguised its monstrous nature with social decorum, but as Wharton has indicated, when all is said and done its nature is ultimately exposed.

Works Cited

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