I have taken much longer than usual to finish this novel. I blame it on two reasons. First, the subject matter of vacuous and decadent high society life in 20th century America is not of particular interest to me, and second, the writing is verbose and convoluted to the point of vapid. I had read The Age of Innocence by the same author, and had enjoyed that novel much more.The story is slow-paced but effectively constructed, reaching the climax in the last fifth of the novel. It tells how one glamorous socialite Lily Bart endeavors to climb the New York social ladder at the turn of the last century, but meanwhile falls for an intelligent lawyer who can see right through her and tells her that is not the life she really wants. Then she finds herself trapped at every turn between her innate morality and the sweet illusion of being accepted into the upper-class milieu. After a couple of botched attempts to win over marriage prospects, she begins to question her own motive, but is too proud to accept help from the man she loves. Eventually, a few incidents lead her to realize the corruption and callousness of high society. Sadly, regret comes too late as she is betrayed time and again, and she begins to descend into penury.I have to give the author credit for presenting the privileged class of her times in an honest and scathing manner. But I dont feel an affinity to the protagonist, or to any of the other characters. I feel that Lily Bart was always free to make her own choices.Im giving this novel 3.4 stars, rounded down.

The House of Mirth just might be to The Age of Innocence what Tom Sawyer is to Huck Finn: that is, only but a stepping-stone towards a more profound greatness (although why I used that Twain analogy is a mystery even to meI find that brand of American Lit a wee bit overrated). Age of Innocence is stupendousutterly amazing. On the other hand, The House of Mirth describes the downward spiral of one, Miss Lily Bart, misunderstood by her social set, her particular New York niche. Her story is a tragedy as deep as Jude (the Obscure)sher plight is both melancholic & devastatingNew York has always been a perfect place in which to achieve some sort of victimhood. Another attribute: the story is severely over-written. I say attribute because that is precisely Mrs. Whartons style: you read beautiful sentences, many, to realize that all she really wanted to portray was a character sitting down on his ass, or she tries to show particular psyches without the more-modern, less-roundabout, most efficient manner of, say, Virginia Woolf (alas, if Mrs. Wharton had continued to write well into the 30's we may have seen a different, more radical literary style). The novel is trapped between novelty (modernity) & antiquity (a European America). Sure, this is an amazing study of turn-of-the-century American society, invaluable, one which seems as foreign as it seems familiar; I was not as impressed with this one as her Pulitzer darling (man, I LOVE "Age of Innocence"!!), where the mood is less frigid & less tragic, but the theme pretty much stays the same: mainly, that society is very unforgiving, that half the trouble in life is caused by pretending there isnt any.

Reading Edith Wharton's second novel The House of Mirth was like being kidnapped by Barbary pirates and held for ransom for ten fortnights; not a comfort, but an adventure. Published in 1905, this tale of Miss Lily Bart -- a young woman held prisoner by New York high society for her grace and beauty until her dependence on wealthy patrons makes her vulnerable to their whims -- carried me off against my will and held me with jeweled prose, breathless detail to character and droll wit. Wharton's milieu was alien to me and her writing often so intricate that I wanted to run home to John Steinbeck, but now that the experience is over, find myself changed by it.Book I begins in a nation with places to go and people to see, or Grand Central Station to be exact. Bachelor attorney Lawrence Selden returns to New York from the country and spots twenty-nine year old socialite Lily Bart at the station, waiting alone. Thrilled to find herself unattended no more, Lily makes the impulsive decision to join Selden for tea in his apartment on Madison Avenue. Lily is orphaned and lives with her wealthy aunt Mrs. Peniston. Though she is expected to inherit a great deal of money from her aunt, Lily is not paid an allowance, which places her at the service of whichever patron of high society offers to sponsor her.While marriage would present her with financial security, Lily bonds with Selden over a shared antipathy toward a life of routine. She finds ways to sabotage her social encounters with eligible bachelors. Unlike Selden, Lily has no vocation which to support her independent whims. Exiting Selden's building, Lily has a chance encounter with Simon Rosedale, a social climber who makes it his business to know everything about everyone. Lily is repulsed by the man and thinks up a quick lie to explain her presence in the neighborhood alone, but immediately regrets her decision to rebuff Rosedale's offer to accompany her to her train. Why must a girl pay so dearly for her least escape from routine? Why could one never do a natural thing without having to screen it behind a structure of artifice? She had yielded to a passing impulse in going to Lawrence Selden's rooms, and it was so seldom that she could allow herself the luxury of an impulse! This one, at any rate, was going to cost her rather more than she could afford. She was vexed to see that, in spite of so many years of vigilance, she had blundered twice within five minutes. That stupid story about her dressmaker was bad enough--it would have been so simple to tell Rosedale that she had been taking tea with Selden! The mere statement of the fact would have rendered it innocuous.Lily arrives at Bellomont, where Mrs. Judy Trenor has invited Lily to spend a weekend among high society over bridge games that drag into the night. Mrs. Trenor offers to help the girl secure an engagement to Percy Bryce, a bachelor whom Lily is bored by the moment she catches him in her web. She finds herself elated by the arrival of Selden and incurs the wrath of Bertha Dorset, a married woman who has designs on the bachelor. Over a long Sunday walk and respite in a meadow, Selden expresses his willingness to marry Lily, while offering his distaste for her crass materialism. Bertha Dorset sinks Lily's chances with her backup Percy Bryce by spreading rumors of a gambling problem.Dispatched to pick up Mrs. Trenor's husband from the train station, Lily finds herself obsessed upon by Gus Trenor, who offers to invest money for Lily in the stock market at no risk. Trenor earns Lily ten thousand dollars, which she discovers was actually a gift from the married man. Lily spends Trenor's money and ignores his overtures for greater intimacy. Lily's carefree ways make enemies with her own sex as well. Her cousin Grace Stepney retaliates against Lily for being excluded from their aunt's dinner party list by whispering to Mrs. Peniston that the heir to her fortune has been gambling, living extravagantly and carrying on as the kept woman of Gus Trenor. Lily finds new benefactors in Mr. and Mrs. Wellington Bry, nouveau riche socialites who sponsor an exhibit of fashionable young women modeling historic dress. Lily's costume wags tongues, including Selden's. He reveals his feelings for Lily but is rebuffed for his unwillingness to offer anything but love. Lily is lured to the Trenors' apartment, where Gus Trenor corners Lily and demands that she reciprocate his financial generosity with affection. Seeking to settle her debts and recapture her independence, Lily struggles with opaque feelings for Selden against cash on the table: a marriage proposal from Simon Rosedale.Even through the dark tumult of her thoughts, the clink of Mr. Rosedale's millions had a faintly seductive note. Oh, for enough of them to cancel her one miserable debt! But the man behind them grew increasingly repugnant in the light of Selden's expected coming. The contrast was too grotesque; she could scarcely suppress the smile it provoked. She decided that directness would be best.Lily's plans to snare a husband hit a snag with she learns through the society pages that Selden has sailed overseas on business. Book II picks up in Monte Carlo three months later, where Lily has joined the Dorsets for a cruise of the Mediterranean. Invited by Judy Dorset to distract her husband George while Mrs. Dorset dallies with a would-be poet named Ned Silverton, Lily again crosses Judy Dorset by refusing to cover for Judy's hanky panky with Ned. George Dorset has reached the end of his tether with his wife and summons an American attorney in Nice to explore options for a divorce. This reunites Lily with Selden just as Judy Dorset sets out to destroy Lily once and for all.Though unexpressed in her novel, Wikipedia told me that Wharton's title is taken from the Old Testament and the Book of Ecclesiastes. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth. Wharton's ability to craft jeweled sentences and draw scenes like a cartographer designing a treasure map is peerless. In particular, her chapters are adorned with gorgeous first sentences.Book I--Chapter I: 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.Book I--Chapter III: Bridge at Bellomont usually lasted till the small hours; and when Lily went to bed that night she had played too long for her own good.Book I--Chapter XV: When Lily woke she had the bed to herself, and the winter light was in the room.At other times, the turn of the century prose was so beautiful that it lured me into maze and the longer it went on, lost me.A chill of fear passed over Miss Bart: a sense of remembered treachery that was like the gleam of a knife in the dusk, But compassion, in a moment, got the better of her instinctive recoil. What was this outpouring of senseless bitterness but the tracked creature's attempt to cloud the medium through which it was fleeing? It was on Lily's lips to exclaim: "You poor soul, don't double and turn--come straight back to me, and we'll find a way out!" But the words died under the impenetrable insolence of Bertha's smile. Lily sat silent, taking the brunt of it quietly, letting it spend itself on her to the last drop of its accumulated falseness; then, without a word, she rose and went down to her cabin.Wait, what? Throughout The House of Mirth I found my eyes glancing over paragraphs like this and having to circle back to them again, like Craftsman homes on a dark, unfamiliar lane without the benefit of well lit street numbers. I was often as lost. Wharton also tells the reader what her characters are thinking and why they're thinking what they're thinking. Social mechanization doesn't reveal itself very well in action or dialogue, only inner monologue. That's why it's a mechanization! Without careful attention though, the progression of the story is often obscured in a fog of politics and social manners. In spite of its obtuseness, The House of Mirth builds in power by illustrating the corner a single woman like Miss Lily Bart paints herself into, ill-equipped to earn her keep as anything more than an ornament to high society. The straits that the main character finds herself in during a market readjustment to her worth is as harrowing as that encountered by the Joads in The Grapes of Wrath. In addition to Wharton's opulent wordcraft, which at its best is like death by chocolate, her climax is quietly powerful and has haunted me since I reached the finish line of this magnum opus.

Lily Bart, the protagonist of Edith Wharton's stunning first novel, is introduced to the reader as a young woman traveling within high society. While her blood and wealth may place her on the fringe of that society, her "pale" beauty (as it is continuously characterized throughout the novel) elevates her within its ranks. Lily is marriage material. And within Manhattan's high society at the turn of the century, women are meant to marry; and in order to marry women are meant to maintain a reputation of "pale" innocence (indeed, they must).Lily hesitates to question these two fundamental rules that bind her, save on rare occasion in conversation with Lawrence Selden, the man it seems she would marry if the choice were hers, and who stands far enough outside Lily's circle to critique that circle from an apparent distance. Selden, however, presents Lily with several problems. First, Selden himself is hardly able to separate himself from the rules of Manhattan society, even if he so desired to or so imagined the independence of his perspective. Second, Selden serves as preacher, counselor, and sounding post to Lily with respect to the pitfalls of high society, but while Selden's efforts to take high society off its pedestal strike a chord with Lily, and indeed echo many of her own thoughts, Selden never presents Lily with a viable alternative to the only circle (and the only set of rules) she knows.The final problem that first emerges from the relationship between Lily Bart and Lawrence Selden is the crux of the novel and the launching point for several shrewd insights Wharton compellingly places within the American cultural dialog, as extant within the novel. Lily couldn't marry Selden if the choice were hers. (And, perhaps ironically, she likely would not, in any case, as Selden lacks the most essential thing men in high society bring to a marriage -- money.)Like any fully painted character in a great work of fiction, Lily Bart is a woman of substantial intellectual and emotional force. Indeed, given the degree the reader is aware of the goings on inside Lily Bart's head, it can be surprising to step back and remember the novel's narrated in the third person.Lily, viewed in isolation, is more than situated to grab control of her life if that control were hers to grab. But because she does not live in isolation, control is not hers. Her will is usurped at almost every turn by the societal forces around her; which among other things make her will all but moot. While an argument could be made that Lily has a knack for making choices that reflect upon her poorly, she is defined nonetheless, and far more, by the perceptions of those around her than by any sense of self she seeks to, or by happenstance does, affirmatively present to the world. And in light of the rules that constrain her, her reputation -- never in her hands -- spirals downward as the novel progresses, most often, again, via external rather than internal forces. Absent her reputation intact, that Lily is meant to marry becomes meaningless. Her purpose and place within Manhattan's high society slip from her hands as, trying at least to retain her dignity, she chooses not to act on her own behalf when the opportunities are before her and otherwise, and perhaps always, lacks the choice to act on her own behalf as a byproduct of her social milieu.The House of Mirth is remarkably tragic. At times, it feels as though too much is going wrong for Lily Bart a little too often. But the totality of the narrative, and Wharton's prose, combat what may be the novel's single shortcoming. Wharton's novel surfaces from many contexts. Two are telling, or at least were to me upon reading The House of Mirth. First, Lily Bart retains her outer beauty throughout the greater part of the novel, despite her internal struggle to maintain a grip in the face of near free fall. Her inner world, as she feels it, and as others perceive it, becomes dark as her "pale" beauty persists. Sadly, her inner life is all but wholly divorced from her outer reality. Thus, in Lily Bart's unfortunate transformation within the novel the saliency of maintaining superficial appearances is brought to the thematic forefront. A theme present in both The House of Mirth and Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray -- cast differently, but not without similarities. Second, The House of Mirth shines a bright light of reality upon Transcendentalism. At minimum, Wharton illustrates that self-determination and self-reliance are one thing when you're living in a cabin in the woods, growing beans, and contemplating existence during solitary sojourns around Walden Pond, but quite another in the company of others -- particularly a circle of others fixated upon a set of mores or, more strictly, rules. Reaching further, perhaps, Wharton exposes a stark line between the wherewithal of men and women in American society to "go Thoreau". In other words, The House of Mirth may temper Transcendentalism by portraying the profound influence of the company one keeps on reaching into oneself and, beneath that, the harsh reality of being a woman within that company.The House of Mirth is one of the greatest American novels of the 20th century.

The House of Mirth chronicles two years in the life of Lily Bart. She is twenty-nine years old. She is of the upper-crust New York society at the end of the 19th century, frequently referred to as the Gilded Age. Mark Twain penned the phrase, characterizing the period as one that glittered on the surface but was corrupt underneath. Lily has neither mother nor father and her expensive tastes mean she is running out of money. Her stunning beauty is her trump card, her ticket to marriage. Wharton took the title from Ecclesiastes of the Old Testament: The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth. Here lies a hint of what lies ahead. Going into this novel I had to rethink what seems obvious to me. If you are running out of money, get yourself a job. The hitch is that for the women of Lilys class and era this was not an alternative. Marriage was the answer, but what if marriage to one you do not love is repugnant? Wharton had to make me see that given her birthright and how she had been raised, Lily was utterly incapable of joining the work force. Wharton, by the books end had me inside Lily head. I saw her world as she saw it. I came to understand how she felt and thought and why she had to do what she did. Making a reader of another age and way of thinking truly understand a different era is an accomplishment. The book describes the life of the idle rich, a life style repugnant to most of us. Money and name and retaining ones social standing are lifes goals. How this is achieved is of little importance. The characters: Lily I came to understand thoroughly, and I liked her. She does not blame others for her misfortunes. Neither does she stoop to the immoral. That she makes mistakes, only proves that she is human. This is a love story. He who she loves is not portrayed equally well. Only one other character is drawn proficiently--Simon Rosedale. He is an aspiring Jewish businessman. His aim is to climb the social ladder. Only Lily and Simon are drawn with depth. The others merely make up the many of the class Wharton is criticizing. A few additional characters are thrown in. The writing: Many praise Whartons prose style. I had difficulty with it. There is a formality in her lines. She chooses academic words rather than everyday speech. Although the words chosen are explicit, this does not necessarily mean the import of a sentence is clear. I was not always sure I had understood what was to be intended. I prefer a text that is crystal clear. I prefer a text without ambiguity, unless there is a specific point to the ambiguity. I prefer a prose that is simple rather than fancy. I found the text unnecessarily wordy, not always, but too often. As the story reaches its end, I found more clarity in the lines. Perhaps the author wanted to clear up ambiguities. Perhaps she wanted to make sure readers understood exactly that which she wanted to say.The audiobook I listened to was narrated by Anna Fields, a.k.a. Kate Fleming, who tragically died in 2006. She was a fantastic narrator. Her tone is bass, clear, strong and very easy to follow. She reads at the perfect speed. She uses different intonations for different characters, each one perfectly capturing that particular individual. She intones men and women equally well. I have given the narration five stars. The audiobook begins with an introduction written by R.W.B Lewis. It is better saved to the end. *************Summer 4 starsThe House of Mirth 3 stars Xingu 3 stars (short story)The Age of Innocence 1 starEthan Frome 1 star The Reef TBRThe Marne: A Tale of the War TBR (non-fiction)