The House of Mirth

In Edith Wharton's novel, "The House of Mirth," Warton reveals Lily Bart as the incredibly beautiful, main character. She describes Seldon's take on the breathtaking Lily, "He had a confused sense that she must have cost a great deal to make, that a great many dull and ugly people must, in some mysterious way, have been sacrificed to produce her" (Wharton, 7). I really feel like this beauty was Lily's curse and played a large role in her demise.

Lily was very indecisive, in particular, when it came to relationships with men and whether or not to follow the social norm, which is to find a wealthy husband who can support you and your leisurely lifestyle. However, that is only if a life of wealth and leisure is your one and only goal(which society deemed to be in that time); I don't think that's the case with Lily. Being socially accepted is something almost everyone wants and Lily is no exception but, for her, that meant to give up her freedom as a woman-her independence-and the chance of ever having true love. This just seemed too hard for Lily to overcome: "She would not indeed have cared to marry a man who was merely rich; she was secretly ashamed of her mother's crude passion for money" (Wharton, 30). I think this is the reason she makes such reckless decisions throughout the entire novel-again, mostly when it deals with encounters with the opposite sex. Men give her exactly what she leads them to believe she wants, only to turn down and/or completely sabotage the offer and sometimes the entire "relationship." I think Wharton says it best, ". . .but she had a fatalistic sense of being drawn from one wrong turning to another, without ever perceiving the right road until it was too late to take it." (Wharton, 101)

Lily knows she has envious beauty that most of her peers only conceive as a "gift," and if she were any less attractive she would not have these great advantages, which I do think she wanted. It seemed Lily wanted to have her cake and eat it too. However, towards the end I think she realized what she truly desired was a true, loving relationship and family. This is evident as Wharton describes how Lily thinks about Nettie and her family:

                     "The poor little working-girl who had found strength to gather up the fragments of her life, and build herself a shelter with them, seemed to Lily to have reached the central truth of existence. It was a meagre enough life, on the grim edge of poverty, with scant margin for possibilities of sickness or mischance, but it had the frail audacious permanence of a birds nest built on the edge of a cliff-a mere wisp of leaves and straw, yet so put together that the lives entrusted to it may hang safely over the abyss." (Wharton, 248)

I think she felt almost ungrateful(of her "god-given" beauty)if she did not perform in the same way as all the other "privileged" women of her time. Knowing that any woman would die to have her looks and the opportunities they supplied her with, made it all the more difficult to step out of the box. And the fact that she would be ostracized for it added additional pressure to conform as well-this is why her beauty is like a curse. If she was unattractive the decision to go against society's rules probably would've come much easier to Lily and maybe she would still be alive. Unfortunately, Lily would never overcome her one fatal flaw; even as the most stunning of her society, she was lost and utterly depressed with a life she felt no control over: "If only life could end now-end on this tragic yet sweet vision of lost possibilities, which gave her a sense of kinship with all the loving and foregoing in the world!" (Wharton, 249)