Causes Of Lily Bart’s Tragedy In The House Of Mirth

The House of Mirth, written in1905, is one of the most representative works ofEdith Wharton. Written at the turn of the century, the novel depicts the sumptuousupper-class New York society. It follows Lily Bart, a29-year-old beautiful young lady,on the hunt of a rich husband and chronicles Lily’s social and economic decline afterher reputations being tainted by rumors. She tries to earn her living by trimming hatafter her aunt disinherits her and her friends turn away from her. As an upper-class girl,who is stripped of any means to support herself, she is not able to transgress socialboundaries and lives the life a working girl. She dies of an overdose of chloral in theend.The complexity of the novel lies in the portrayal of the protagonist, Lily Bart,who is conscious of the moral, social and economic restrictions imposed on her by thesociety and knows how to deploy skills to achieve her purposes, but who is at thesame time vulnerable to those internal and external forces around her. She is not apassive victim of the society; at least she is well aware of her victimization andobjectification. She knows the rules of her world, but ignores it now and then. Heroscillation of behaviors in the fixed path that she designs for herself makes her suchan intriguing character to explore. Moreover in the novel, not only women arevictimized as ornaments for men, but men in the leisure class are portrayed as pitifulcharacters with their own plight. Lily’s tragedy resides not only in the weaknesses of her own personality, but alsoin the society that produces her. The spectator within the society acts as destructiveforces against her achieving her self-worth. Without the means to control the externalenvironment as well as other people’s interpretation of her, Lily faces the penalty ofviolating social norms and loses her reputation, a vital factor in marrying a richhusband. When the hope of a rich marriage vanishes, a girl, who is very poor butextremely expensive, the alternatives left for her is to live a life of dinginess or die.She chooses the latter one, for she has imbibed her mother’s view that dinginess isdespicable. In the end, she dies of overdose of chloral.From the perspectives of feminism and psychoanalysis, this thesis explores theimportant role of social spectators in Lily’s life and examines her own innerweaknesses which results in her unsteadiness of purposes and aloofness. The combingforce of the two renders Lily vulnerable to the oppressive social environment in amale-dominated society, which contributes to her tragic death in the end. Closereading will be the backbone of the analysis.