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The House of Mirth
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 The House of Mirth, Penguin Books edition 1993 |
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| Author | Edith Wharton |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Novel |
| Publisher | Charles Scribner's Sons |
| Publication date | 14 October 1905 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| ISBN | NA |
| The House of Mirth | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Directed by | Terence Davies |
| Produced by | Olivia Stewart |
| Written by | Edith Wharton (novel) Terence Davies (screenplay) |
| Starring | Gillian Anderson Laura Linney Dan Aykroyd Anthony LaPaglia Eric Stoltz |
| Cinematography | Remi Adefarasin |
| Editing by | Michael Parker |
| Distributed by | Sony Picture Classics |
| Release date(s) | 2000 |
| Running time | 140 min. |
| IMDb profile | |
The House of Mirth (1905), by Edith Wharton, is a novel about New York socialite Lily Bart attempting to secure a husband and a place in rich society. It is one of the first novels of manners in American literature, and one of the first to openly explore how American Victorian society offered little social mobility for women.
Contents |
The title derives from Ecclesiastes 7:4: The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.
Of all of Edith Wharton's best-known novels about Old New York, The House of Mirth is the most conventionally tragic, for it shows the heroine's squalid death.
Like most Wharton novels, The House of Mirth examines the conflict between rigid social expectation and personal desire. Lily Bart is intelligent and adept at playing society's games, which expect her to arrange an advantageous marriage for herself. Yet, she sabotages all her potential marriages; she wants more for herself, but is too-enamored of luxurious living to marry for love alone. She loses the good opinion of the wealthy, but tedious and prudish, Mr. Percy Gryce, evidently infatuated with her, when she decides to skip church, instead of attending with him. Her lawyer friend, Lawrence Selden, finds her attractive and delightful, but does not seriously attempt to engage her affections, as he knows himself not rich enough.
Lily spends much time as an accessory to the lives of rich women, as her beauty and social skills make her socially useful. The venomous Bertha Dorset invites her to travel on a yacht, along with her and her husband, but Bertha falsely implies Lily has committed adultery with her husband, in order to distract his attention from her own infidelity. This public scandal socially ruins Lily, causing her straight-laced Aunt Julia to disinherit her. Lily has evidence of Bertha's infidelity: love letters from her to Lawrence Selden. However, she suffers the consequences of the scandal rather than blackmail Bertha.
A wealthy Jew, Simon Rosedale, has a significant role in Lily Bart's fate. Wharton portrays him as a social climber whose commercial success has admitted him partially into elite society. Simon courts Lily until her social disaster renders her maritally useless to him; he then rejects her. Though Rosedale offers Lily real help after she has "fallen from grace," he needs her to re-enter society before he can marry her, thus securing his own social position with a beautiful wife who is well-versed in society's rules.
Gradually dropped by almost all of her society friends, Lily is forced to seek work. She first takes a job as a social secretary to a disreputable woman, but her dignity forces her to resign. She takes a job working in a millinery, but produces poor work and is fired at the end of the season. Eventually, her Aunt Julia dies, leaving her a small sum of money, instead of the expected large inheritance, only slightly more than the sum she owes the husband of one of her former friends. After paying her debt, Lily kills herself (perhaps accidentally) with an overdose of the sleeping draught to which she had become addicted.
The book received an enthusiastic review in the New York Times upon its original publication, which called it "a novel of remarkable power," and which read in part "Its varied elements are harmoniously blended, and the discriminating reader who has completed the whole story in a protracted sitting or two must rise from it with the conviction that there are no parts of it which do not properly and essentially belong to the whole. Its descriptive passages have verity and charm, it has the saving grace of humor, its multitude of personages, as we have said, all have the semblance of life."[1]
There followed months of letters to the Times, arguing over the book. Some readers were enthusiastic fans, while others felt that the book unfairly impugned the city's social elite.[2]
A 1906 stage adaptation was written by Clyde Fitch. A 1918 film version was directed by Albert Capellani and starred Katherine Harris Barrymore as Lily Bart. A 1981 version was a TV movie, directed by Adrian Hall, with Geraldine Chaplin as Lily Bart. A 2000 film version was directed by Terence Davies and starred Gillian Anderson as Bart.
- ^ "New York Society Held Up to Scorn in Three New Books," New York Times, October 15, 1905
- ^ Letter to the editor of the New York Times Saturday Review of Books, March 3, 1906
