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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.52
EAN: 9780486420493
ISBN: 0486420493
Label: Dover Publications
Manufacturer: Dover Publications
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 288
Publication Date: 2002-08-06
Publisher: Dover Publications
Studio: Dover Publications

"The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth," warns Ecclesiastes 7:4, and so does the novel by Edith Wharton that takes its title from this call to heed. New York at the turn of the century was a time of opulence and frivolity for those who could afford it. But for those who couldn't and yet wanted desperately to keep up with the whirlwind, like Wharton's charming Lily Bart, it was something else altogether: a gilded cage rather than the Gilded Age.

One of Wharton's earliest descriptions of her heroine, in the library of her bachelor friend and sometime suitor Lawrence Selden, indicates that she appears "as though she were a captured dryad subdued to the conventions of the drawing room." Indeed, herein lies Lily's problem. She has, we're told, "been brought up to be ornamental," and yet her spirit is larger than what this ancillary role requires. By today's standards she would be nothing more than a mild rebel, but in the era into which Wharton drops her unmercifully, this tiny spark of character, combined with numerous assaults by vicious society women and bad luck, ultimately renders Lily persona non grata. Her own ambivalence about her position serves to open the door to disaster: several times she is on the verge of "good" marriage and squanders it at the last moment, unwilling to play by the rules of a society that produces, as she calls them, "poor, miserable, marriageable girls.

Lily's rather violent tumble down the social ladder provides a thumbnail sketch of the general injustices of the upper classes (which, incidentally, Wharton never quite manages to condemn entirely, clearly believing that such life is cruel but without alternative). From her start as a beautiful woman at the height of her powers to her sad finale as a recently fired milliner's assistant addicted to sleeping drugs, Lily Bart is heroic, not least for her final admission of her own role in her downfall. "Once--twice--you gave me the chance to escape from my life and I refused it: refused it because I was a coward," she tells Selden as the book draws to a close. All manner of hideous socialite beasts--some of whose treatment by Wharton, such as the token social-climbing Jew, Simon Rosedale, date the book unfortunately--wander through the novel while Lily plummets. As her tale winds down to nothing more than the remnants of social grace and cold hard cash, it's hard not to agree with Lily's own assessment of herself: "I have tried hard--but life is difficult, and I am a very useless person. I can hardly be said to have an independent existence. I was just a screw or a cog in the great machine I called life, and when I dropped out of it I found I was of no use anywhere else." Nevertheless, it's even harder not to believe that she deserved better, which is why The House of Mirth remains so timely and so vital in spite of its crushing end and its unflattering portrait of what life offers up. --Melanie Rehak

Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Good book for the genre
Review: This is an unusually good book with the familiar theme of the life of a single woman in times past. Lily Bart is an extremely beautiful but relatively poor woman who is starting to get older and is still unmarried. In this era, a woman's only hope for survival was to marry a wealthy man and only the most decorative types could hope for this. Lily,who counts on her beauty to get her what she wants, longs not only for a man with wealth, but also wants one who pleases her personality wise and in appearance as well. Her desire to have it all in an era when women were at mens' mercy proves to be her undoing. Financial debt, betrayal by both male and female "friends", and the hypocrital mores of the upper class society back then prove to be Lily's undoing. Selden, the one man she truly loves but won't marry because he is poor also eventually turns his back on her when false rumors about her and a married man surface. Lily finds herself alone, poor, and forced to work for a living.

Lily is a study in contrast-beautiful in appearance but with a shallow personality; intelligent but greedy; inclined to rich upper class snobbery, but herself rather poor; lacking good judgement, but blaming everybody else for her problems; convinced of being taken advantage of while seeking to take advantage of others; and lastly, likeable yet unlikeable, a strange mixture.

The book is well written although somewhat verbose, but not overly so. I enjoyed it much more than others of its type, namely Jane Austin novels. Recommended.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Not very good, too wordy
Review: It was required for one of my English classes and the book drags on and on and on about people in a rich society. I normally like reading classics and novels but this was not for me. On a positive note, the writing makes it easy to visualize the story.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Men, Women & Money in the 1900's
Review: This best selling classic was written in 1905 and is a great portrait of how women perceived their financial role in turn of the century American society.

America was coming into the consumer age in the early 1900's - it was the dawn of opulence, excess spending and the obvious and glaring differences between men, women and money. The House of Mirth is an eye-opening account of how women could only be observers of the American Dream. They had to be content with watching men achieve financial independence all the while knowing that it was out of reach for themselves. This book is a glaring reminder that the only way most women could achieve financial security, was to marry it.

Personally, I've always believed that many of the beliefs and attitudes we women have about money, wealth and prosperity must be somehow locked in our DNA. Money attitudes are passed on to us from generation to generation. This book, to me, reinforces this. Our great, great grandmothers were brought up in this turn-of-the-century era. Their beliefs, observations and values have been passed to us consciously and unconsciously. Reading this book, I kept saying to myself, "No wonder so many of us struggle with achieving and enjoying financial independence."

The House of Mirth is the story of Lily Bart and her struggle for financial independence. From birth her role had been set and no matter how much she wanted to change it, her inner programming and her place in society wouldn't allow it. Lily believes in financial success, wants financial success and yet, she cannot achieve it the same way as the men within her social circle are able to. Men, she realized, have a financial freedom women were not allowed to achieve. The question becomes, did Lily ever make peace with this financial inequity?

This book is a powerful look at the traditional role of women in the early 1900's. Beauty, wit and charm were the acceptable methods by which women could achieve financial success.

The House of Mirth is a great comparison of how men and women were allowed to learn, grow and evolve financially. Men had the power and women paid homage to that power.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and couldn't believe it was written over 100 years ago. It was such an "aha" and insight into why many of the gender based beliefs and values women have today, are "throw backs" to the early 20th century.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Struggle. Failure. Struggle...
Review: Two people telling a story: one has lived it while the other has not. Which would you believe? Most would say the first for there would be no bias, no lies, and no overstatements. This definitely applies to Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth, a novel set in the early 1900's. When Wharton accounts the dismal life of Lily Bart and her continuous struggle to fit into upper crust New York, the reader senses that the author is writing an autobiography: the feelings, the thought process, and the actions of the protagonist are indeed too realistic for any reader to deny.

A look into the history of America during the writing and publication of the book is vital for understanding why Lily fails but still struggles. At the turn of the twentieth century, America was passing through its post-war era of the Gilded Age, a period of thirty years where extravagant displays of American wealth filled many cities. New York is no exception of course. Born and raised in New York aristocracy during this time, Wharton depicts the bitter and malice realities of living and partaking in it through the influence of Bertha, the antagonist, on Lily's life.

New York City had just become a world of extremes, with millionaires living on one block and homeless living across in tenements. Nobles would abolish their standards just to become more famous and richer. People did not follow their dignity or moral sense, but rather thought with stone hearts and money-driven minds. In this savage culture where feasting on others meant a better stature for oneself, there is evidently no room for mercy, love, or acceptance. Of course, in this sort of atmosphere, Lily finds it almost impossible to fit in or even enjoy her life.

A little research on the book title reveals valuable information. The title of the book is directly taken from the Ecclesiastes verse, "The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth," illustrating that Wharton believed her society to be not only foolish but also vain. Besides the social issues, Wharton realized that money is an easy means of opening doors to those who have it, but a problem maker to those who lack it. Unfortunately, the protagonist does not have it, but the antagonist, Bertha, does.

Bertha is the antithesis of Lily, as one enjoys money while the other dreams of it; one becomes free while the other becomes enslaved. The extremity between both lives illustrates that aristocratic life during the early twentieth century was a mere cover that hid a more treacherous and villainous lifestyle.

Since this book does not only offer a great outlook of American history but also a female's struggle to marry and fit socially, I advice all those that face this problem to read it and learn from Lily's mistakes.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A novel for a buck!
Review: A decent novel for a decent price. The story's the same regardless of what paper it's written on.

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