"Selden paused in surprise. In the afternoon rush of the Grand Central Station, his eyes had been refreshed by the sight of Miss Lily Bart." With these words Edith Wharton begins Lily and Selden's tale of woe. Since 1905, the year of publication of The House of Mirth, this tale has been the true depiction of the plight of the 19th century American women: branded a lesser gender, financially dependent, and socially victimized.
How things have changed in one hundred years!
Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique started it all with her clarion call to identify "the problem that had no name." The problem still has no name, but the solution does: a feminism that labors for more equality and more representation. This is nothing new; one can recall Chaucer's moral satire "Wife of Bath." In that tale, the Queen commutes a knight's death penalty if he can find out (in one year) what "women want the most?" As it turns out the Queen is satisfied with the answer: "a woman wants sovereignty over her husband.
Of course that turns out to be extreme, for sovereignty means absolute power over a husband. The problem for Lily Bart is that -despite her intelligence, pedigree, and fine looks-she can't find an acceptable suitor. And when on the throes of desperation she decides to accept the repugnant (to her) but wealthy Rosedale, he rebuffs her. Irony thy name is woman!
Today we no longer find Lily Barts, but strong professional competent women such as Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. But in 1905 women's education was geared to keep them in continuous subservience. Her limited education allowed her limited possibilities for independence. Practical skills she had none. And when she attempts to make a living in an embroidery shop, she finds that she can't; her efforts becoming the object of gossip and humiliation:
Lily had taken up her work early in January; it was now two months later, and she was still being rebuked for her inability to sew spangles on a hat-frame. As she returned to her work she heard a titter pass down the tables. She knew she was an object of criticism and amusement to the other workwomen.Lawrence Selden --the weak hero- who misleads Lily into thinking that he could be her salvation, is a reprehensible character who never lifted a finger to help her. In the end, with no one to turn to, she overdoses with sleeping pills. She dies in a dingy furnished room: "There was no token of her personality about the room, unless it showed itself in the scrupulous neatness of the scan articles of furniture: a washing-stand, two chairs, a small writing-desk, and the little table near the bed."
In Ecclesiastes 7,4 we read: "The heart of the wise is the in house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth." Who are the wise and who are the fools in this novel? While Lily Bart may be thought to be a fool, her seriousness and attitude towards a moral life proves her to be wiser than the rest of the cast of characters.
