| As one of the most important and influential American writers at the turn of the 20th century, Edith Wharton was born in 1862 and grew up in a noble family. Her unique family background and growing experience provide her a lot of writing raw materials. Most of her works set the upper-class in Old New York as the background, thus forming her own novels of "Old New York", among which The House of Mirth is best-seller. The House of Mirth describes an upper-class woman’s decline at the turn of the 20th century. The novel focuses on the bustling New York and the plot is put forward through the shift of different space in street, ship, apartment, villas, bus, salon, and club. The clue of Lily Bart’s tragedy is developed with her spatial track in public space and private space, where her abandonment and homeless fate are exposed.Space is not simply an external scene, but a huge metaphor of modern urban life, highlighting a new aesthetic approach of city novel. In this city novel, urban space and characters constitute a complicated relationship:urban space exerts great oppressions on characters. Thus the individuals living in it gradually lose their subjectivity and integrity, being an abandoned and homeless organism. The novel’s urban subject and the protagonist’s space experiences make this novel have the typical of space property.This thesis takes Lefebvre’s space criticism as theoretical background. By analyzing representational implications of public and private space in old New York at turn of the 20th century and Wharton’s writing technique of space shift, the thesis attempts to explore their relationship with Lily’s tragedy and its reasons so as to expose urban space confines people’s minds and actions, thus revealing Wharton’s worry about urban expansion and her concern for city dwellers.This thesis is made up of five parts:Chapter one draws a sketch of Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth, and literature review of the novel, and gives a brief review of spatial theories.Chapter two mainly discusses Lily’s abandonment in public space at the turn of 20th century. With the acceleration of urbanization, New York exposed serious class polarization:The Fifth avenue is constructed as upper-class’paradise and the Lower Town as working-class’ tenement. Lily Bart, as a declining aristocrat, lives in her aunt’s house located in the Fifth Avenue at the beginning of the story. She is supposed to internalize and obey space orders constructed by the powerful social group. Rather, she challenges them by a series of resistant spatial practices, thus being driven out of the Fifth Avenue. This kind of geographic space shift highlights Lily’s abandonment.Chapter three discusses how Wharton reveals Lily’s homeless tragedy through private space shift. Family is supposed to be the stable core of city space structure. However, it loses its traditional function in New York at the turn of 20th century, going to the alienation. Throughout the whole story, Lily never has a permanent home. Her constant drifting in different residential places exposes her homeless tragedy.Chapter four explores the internal and external reasons for Lily’s inescapable confinement in the space from two aspects:lack of power in social space and dual selves in psychological space. Lefebvre holds that space includes the struggles of ideology and psychological space. Lily at the bottom of power pyramid lacks enough power to subvert the mainstream ideology, only to be a victim of power confined in the space. Simultaneously, her dual selves in psychological space are analyzed as the internal factor to cause her tragedy.The conclusion summarizes the thesis, and point out this novel reveals Wharton’s worry about urban expansion and her concern for city dwellers. |
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