On Lily’s Ethical Environment And Ethical Choice In Wharton’s The House Of Mirth

Edith Wharton is a leading American female novelist at the turn of the twentiethcentury,who produces a large amount of works. She is the first woman winner of thePutlizer Prize.The House of Mirth(1905)establishes her position in the literary domain.As one of her most popular novels, this novel has received much attention from manycritics, and the tragedy of main character named Lily Bart is analyzed from variousperspectives such as feminism and naturalism.This thesis tends to analyze Lily’sethical environment and her ethical choice from the perspective of ethical literarycriticism.This thesis mainly consists of six parts.Chapter One makes a brief biographical sketch on Edith Wharton and the plot ofThe House of Mirth.Chapter Two is a literature review about The House of Mirth. The House of Mirthhas received a lot of criticism from critics and scholars at home and abroad.There areapproaches such as feminism,naturalistic criticism,psychology and Marxism inresearch of this novel.Chapter Three is an introduction about the theoretical framework. This chaptergives an introduction to the main ideas of ethical literary criticism advocated firstly inChina by Professor Nie Zhenzhao, and ethical environment and ethical choice whichare two key terms from ethical literary criticism and will be used in my analysis ofLily.Chapter Four is to analyze Lily’s ethical environment.At that time,the society wascongested with unrestricted material desire and money was superior to anything else.Besides, the then society was patriarchal, featuring male superiority and femaleinferiority. Lily was a female character living in a society with money as the onlyorientation and regulated by patriarchy. She had no money, and was simply treated asa small decorative object by men. Therefore, Lily’s ideal of finding both fortune andnobility in her marriage was hardly possible.Chapter Five deals with Lily’s ethical choice.This chapter introduces Lily’s relationship with three male figures. Lily inherited high tastes from her father. In herheart, an ideal husband must have wealth and noble spirit and good taste as well.However, all of her relationships with the male figures helped Lily nothing but at lastput Lily into the deep abyss of isolation and misery. This is because none of theseideal men could be found in the money-oriented society, hence the failure to provideher with both the material fortune and the spiritual freedom. But Lily was braveenough to part with the hypocritical world at last. In order to adhere to her faith andher spiritual pursuit, she chose to die by taking so large a dose of sleeping medication.Chapter Six is a conclusion of the thesis. In all, with ethical literary criticism, itcan draw a conclusion: Lily’s death was her ethical choice as it separated her from thehypocritical world and could be regarded as her protest against the money-madness ofthe then society and as her aspiration for her heavenly vision for an ideal ethicalenvironment,thus it revealed her great courage and her resolve in seeking for freedomand independence.Death was the culmination of seeking for the republic of spirit sheloved. Her death accomplished rebirth.Her death revealed the trail of her growth.Shedied as a heroine.