| Modern woman writer Edith Wharton was one of the representatives of realism in the early 20th century in the United States. The numerous female images she created in her works especially appeal to Western feminists, and she was regarded as one of the precursors of the Western feminist writers. Wharton knew well the status of women in the modern society. As a woman writer, she revealed the inner world of people through her minute description. She achieved such excellence in fiction writing that she became the first woman writer awarded the Gold Medal of the National Institute of Arts and Letters in1930.The House of Mirth is her first well-known piece of writing, published in 1905. The protagonist Lily Bart has no money but a goal to find a rich husband. Accused of accepting money from a man and having affairs with her friends' husbands, Lily is abandoned by the upper-class society and died pathetically in the end. She is a typical victim of the patriarchal society.The thesis maintains that the central theme of the novel is self-discovery, which casts a light on studying Lily's tragedy. It is an important but neglected theme. The purpose of the thesis is to examine Lily's role and fate as a member of the second sex—a woman through the analysis of the unfulfilled self of Lily and her struggle on the journey of her self-discovery in the patriarchal society under the guidance of the socialist psychologist E. Tory Higgins' three types of self-domains and Simone de Beauvoir's feminist point of view about women. E. Tory Higgins divided the self into three parts: the actual self (what one is), the ought self (what one should be) and the ideal self (what one would like to be). The actual self is the result of the conflicts between the ideal self and the ought self. In light of this theory, Lily's tragedy can be studied in terms of the clash between the ought self and the ideal self. Her ought self requires her to find a prosperous husband so that she can achieve her ambition for wealth and position. But her ideal self wants to secure a marriage that provides both material comforts and spiritual cultivation. I discuss the influence of her family and Selden's "republic of the spirit" to explain the conflicts between her ought self and ideal self. Selden's "republic of the spirit"— free "from money, from poverty, from ease and anxiety, from all the material accidents"— is unrealistic. Attracted to this spiritual "republic", Lily has abandoned many chances. But in fact, Lily never achieves this kind of spiritual freedom because of her status in the patriarchal society.The novel shows Lily's position as the second sex in the patriarchal society. She doesn't realize her true value, nor does she take hold of her fate. A beautiful woman without money is nothing but a little "decorative object", who amuses men. Beauty is the only power for her to achieve her ought self. She is powerless in the patriarchal society.Under the constraints of the patriarchal society, Lily carries out three rebellions. These rebellions are also the result of the contradictions of her ought self and ideal self: she gives up the chance to marry Percy Gryce as a gesture of rebellion against the emptiness and boredom in the patriarchal society; she resists the violation from Gus Trenor, and thus rebels against the lewdness and impudence in the patriarchal society; and she refuses the proposals of marriage from Rosedale and Mr. Dorset in rebellion against the exchange of marriage in the patriarchal society. At last, Lily refuses to blackmail Mrs. Dorset to recover her own status and is abandoned by the upper class society. She chooses the moral road. Wharton uses Lily to deconstruct the patriarchal society which revolves around money. In sharp contrast with Lily, the aristocracy in "the house of mirth" is so contemptible, vulgar and disgusting.The journey of Lily's rebellion against and decline from the upper class is also a journey of her self-discovery which moves herself from the commodity to the human, fr...
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