Thursday, November 1, 2012

House of Mirth: First Impressions

So far I'm enjoying the novel.  Sometimes it can be confusing when Wharton is describing a scene or character, then goes off on a little bit of a tangent with their story - while this does add a lot of detail and fleshes out the character, I find myself losing track of who's who and what's what.  We touched on this a little bit in class in reference to the multitude of characters, many of them with similar names.
I'm definitely intrigued by the character of Lily Bart.  She comes off as very crafty, which I suppose a woman would feel the need to be in her position.  She's nearing the end of hear marriageable years, and if she doesn't find a husband and settle down she'll have to keep on relying on her wits to make it, and that would be more tiring than finding a man to bring home the bacon.  I think that it's a little bit comical and ironic that these characters are so concerned with keeping up appearances and adhering strictly to societal standards, when under the surface people are scheming about who's marriage material, who's not, who's making money, who's involved in a scandal and so on.  It's all just a facade (or a mask!!)
Another thing that I noticed is that while the women had very strict rules for their behavior, with it being scandalous to be alone with a man, etc., they didn't seem to have any problem showing off the huge wads of cash they won at bridge.  Isn't that a little bit unseemly?  Anyway, I'm interested to see how the rest of the story unfolds.

3 comments:

  1. I totally agree with you. In the novel we see very distinct gender roles and how anything women did could be taken as shocking. Even then women are given a little rebellious behavior that makes this novel very intriguing. It almost seems as if part of Wharton was one of these characters. I feel that Lily might be that side of Wharton that was her own woman.

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  2. Interesting comments, Talon. That contrast between surface values and what's really going on will become more pronounced in the next segment.

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  3. I found one of your quotes to be most interesting:
    "She comes off as very crafty, which I suppose a woman would feel the need to be in her position. She's nearing the end of hear marriageable years, and if she doesn't find a husband and settle down she'll have to keep on relying on her wits to make it"

    When reading this quote, I couldn't help but think of Jane Austen herself a bit. I've already compared this storyline to some of her own, but your comment made me realize there are actually quite a few similarities between Lily Bart and Austen herself. When reading your quote up above out of context, you could easily actually be talking about Austen. She was a crafty spinster, who, after reaching the end of her marriageable years, began relying on her immense wit to survive in the world.
    I would say that there was a huge difference in that Austen refused to marry for money, but in a way, so did Lily. After all the proposals, even though it was her initial goal, by the end of the novel, Lily never married for money. Similarly, Austen accepted the proposal of one wealthy acquaintance, but eventually broke the engagement.
    Surprising, there are even more similarities between these two women than I initially thought.

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