Excessive Self-Sacrifice

Wharton's House of Mirth isn't the first work of literature to poke holes in society (Hawthorne, Wilde, and Sheridan are a few other authors who have done so). Nevertheless, it remains a potent addition to the various takes on society's flaws as well as those of the individual.

At first, readers may want to feel bad for Lily Bart. After all, she just wants those in the "popular" clique to accept her; everyone wants that. Unfortunately, she does not seem to realize that she spends all of her time trying to be a person she is not. One almost gets the feeling that she only continues her attempts at popularity because she has become a creature of habit. She made herself a Pavlovian dog in the sense that she has repeatedly told herself that she needs to belong to the upper caste. The idea of being accepted by high society has obliterated what remains of her independent self because she has told herself (at the behest of society). Had she followed her heart, she would have had to sacrifice her semi-glorified spot as a high roller and subsequently suffer the disdain of her upper class "friends," but at least she would have attained true happiness.

On the flip-side, one can hardly blame her for the attitude she adopted. Society did its own Pavlovian conditioning on Lily: it convinced her (and all women) that the only path in life was one of social acceptance by the higher orders. As with anything else, it a person hears something repeated over a period of time, the person often accepts it as a truth. During the rare moments when Lily questioned her place in the world, she would inevitably cease going against the flow and get washed away in the tides of society's social demands. What makes her situation particularly depressing is that given her spot on the social ladder, society left just enough room for her to hope. Had she not had that hope she would probably not have tried to squeeze herself into the upper class.

Essentially, Lily was doomed from the start. Could she have had the intestinal fortitude to extricate herself from a society of arrogant twits? Possibly, but she probably would have had to get a bigger inheritance from her before that would happen. Paradoxically, that would have given her lots of money and kept her in high society as a withered husk of a human being instead of encouraging her to leave and be truly happy.


P.S. I was flipping through the channels the other day and happened upon the movie version of Sex and the City. It was not, as the Brits would say, my cup of tea, but I couldn't stop watching it because it reminded me of House of Mirth. The whole time I kept thinking those women are equivalent to the types with whom Lily Bart associated. I didn't finish the movie (it's not really my type of movie) and watched The Departed instead. Ironically, The Departed is about an undercover cop and a detective who is a mole for the mob trying to maintain their respective appearances in societies to which they don't really belong. Irony rules.