Wharton, Edith: The House of Mirth

Just finished rereading Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth (August 28, 2015) about New York’s upper crust, published in 1905, still relevant today. I won’t give away the plot (which is sumptuous), but it’s the story of Lily Bart whose problem … in her own words: “It is not always easy to be quite independent and self-respecting when one is poor and lives among rich people.”

So many home-truths, so much insight, so many brilliant characterizations, all contained in a moral universe lyrically unfolded, all of the reasons I like to read. Here’s a sampling:

1. She had the art of giving self-confidence to the embarrassed, but she was not equally sure of being able to embarrass the self-confident.
2. It is surprising how little narrow walls and a low ceiling matter, when the roof of the soul has suddenly been raised.
3. She had been fashioned to adorn and delight; to what other end does nature round the rose-leaf and paint the hummingbird’s breast?
4. The Wetheralls always went to church. They belonged to the vast group of human automata who go through life without neglecting to perform a single one of the gestures executed by the surrounding puppets.
5. It is less mortifying to believe one’s self unpopular than insignificant, and vanity prefers to assume that indifference is a latent form of unfriendliness.
6. She knew that if the ladies at Bellomont permitted themselves to criticize her friends openly, it was a proof that they were not afraid of subjecting her to the same treatment behind her back.
7. Lily might be incapable of marrying for money, but she was equally incapable of living without it.
8. She was realizing for the first time that a woman’s dignity may cost more to keep up than her carriage; and that the maintenance of a moral attribute should be dependent on dollars and cents, made the world appear a more sordid place than she had conceived it.
9. Lily works like a slave preparing the ground and sowing her seed; but the day she ought to be reaping the harvest she oversleeps herself or goes off on a picnic.
10. The truth about any girl is that once she’s talked about she’s done for; and the more she explains her case the worse it looks.