The House of Mirth

An immensely popular bestseller when published in 1905, The House of Mirth was Edith Wharton's first great novel. Set among the elegant brownstones of New York City and opulent country houses like gracious Bellomont on the Hudson, the novel creates a satiric portrayal of what Wharton herself called "a society of irresponsible pleasure-seekers" with a precision comparable to that of Proust. And her brilliant and complex characterization of the doomed Lily Bart, whose stunning beauty and dependence on marriage for economic survival reduce her to a decorative object, becomes an incisive commentary on the nature and status of women in that society. From her tragic attraction to bachelor lawyer Lawrence Seldon to her desperate relationship with social-climbing Rosedale, Lily is all too much a product of the world indicated by the title, a phrase taken from Ecclesiastes: "The heart of fools is in the house of mirth." For it is Lily's very specialness that threatens the elegance and fulfillment she seeks in life. Edith Wharton(nee Jones, 1862-1937), was an American author best known for her stories and novels about the upper-class society into which she was born. Educated privately at home and in Europe, she married Edward Wharton, a Boston banker, in 1885, and a few years later resumed the literary career she had begun tentatively as a young girl. Her major literary model was Henry James, whom she knew, and her work reveals James' concern for form and ethical issues. Her novel The Valley of Decision was published in 1902, followed in 1905 by the critical and popular success of The House of Mirth, which established her as a leading writer. Her best-known work, however, was the long tale Ethan Frome (1911), exploiting the grimmer possibilities of the New England farm life she had observed from her home in Lenox, Massachusetts.