A Study On Causes Of Lily Bart’s Tragic Fate In The House Of Mirth From The Perspective Of Foucault’s Power Theory

Edith Wharton(1862-1937),is one of the most famous women writers of the 20 th century in American literature and she is claimed as “the most successful novelist of manners”.In 1921,she won her Pulitzer Prize for literature.Being born in the upper class of the Old New York,she is familiar with everything of this class,so she uses subtle language to show the readers many pictures of this class and she describes the true situations of the female.In 1905,she published The House of Mirth,which marks her start of career as a writer.Being set in the upper class of the Old New York,this novel describes many faces of hypocrisy,snobbishness,inexorability,ruthlessness and philistinism.In such a society,everyone’s heart is distorted extremely.As the heroine of this novel,Lily Bart tries to marry a rich man with her beauty so that she could enter her dreaming upper class and she could live a life without worrying about food and clothes.But she is sentimental and she can’t accept a marriage only with money but without love.So she always swings on the balance of spirit and material.At last,she is framed and misunderstood which causes her falling to the bottom of the society step by step and finally dies miserably.Michel Foucault is a famous French philosopher of 20 th century.In his series of works,power occupies a central position.Foucault emphasizes that power is a kind of relation and it is dispersed every corner of the society.Through Foucault’s analyzing of the modern power system,we can know more about power.Foucault combines “discourse” with power.He thinks it is impossible to separate power from “discourse” and power is realized by“discourse” which is called “discourse power”.Foucault also points that discipline is a kind of modern technology of realizing power.Through discipline,people can become more obedient.With Foucault’s power theory as the framework,this thesis analyzes Lily Bart’s tragic fate from discourse and discipline.It explores how Lily loses her discourse power in her family and society,and how her body and mind are disciplined by the requirements of the leisure class and the patriarchal society to be a slave.Through analyzing the tragic fate of the heroine from the above aspects,readers can learn more about Foucault’s power theory and can understand the relation among power,discourse and discipline.From the present achievements abroad and at home on The House of Mirth,we can see the researches based on Foucault’s power theory are few.This thesis explores the operation of power through discourse and discipline and consequently finds the relation between Lily Bart’s tragic fate and power,which definitely broadens the research view of this novel.