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Sleep was what she wanted—she remembered thatshe had not closed her eyes for two nights. The little bottle was at herbed-side, waiting to lay its spell upon her. She rose and undressedhastily, hungering now for the touch of her pillow.
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton – review
Perhaps, after all, the day was toend more favourably than it had begun. She paused a moment before the last name, and shot a query through herlashes; but he remained imperturbable. He had seated himself on an arm of the chair near which she was standing,and she continued to question him, asking which were the rarest volumes,whether the Jefferson Gryce collection was really considered the finestin the world, and what was the largest price ever fetched by a singlevolume.
Also by Edith Wharton
Percy Gryce—A conservative, rich, but shy and unimaginative young eligible bachelor on whom Lily, with the support of her friend Judy Trenor, sets her sights. Percy's less than titillating personality notwithstanding, Lily works out a strategy to catch him at week-long festivities at Bellomont. Her fortuitous and successful encounter with Percy on the train to Bellomont further encourages her in pursuit of her goal. Her strategy gets interrupted, however, when Selden at week's end also appears on the scene unexpectedly. Lily then decides, on the spur of the moment, to set aside her well-thought-out tactics to pursue Percy in favor of spending some time with Selden.
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A fire shone throughthe polished flanks of the iron stove, and near it stood a crib in whicha baby was sitting upright, with incipient anxiety struggling forexpression on a countenance still placid with sleep. She tried to reply, to assure the speaker that she had not forgotten; buther voice failed in the effort, and she felt herself sinking under agreat wave of physical weakness. Nettie Struther, with a startledexclamation, sat down and slipped a shabbily-clad arm behind her back.
” That was the burden of her lament; andher last adjuration to her daughter was to escape from dinginess if shecould. Thedinginess of her present life threw into enchanting relief the existenceto which she felt herself entitled. Bart’s counsels might have been dangerous; but Lily understood thatbeauty is only the raw material of conquest, and that to convert it intosuccess other arts are required. She knew that to betray any sense ofsuperiority was a subtler form of the stupidity her mother denounced, andit did not take her long to learn that a beauty needs more tact than thepossessor of an average set of features. Her own fastidiousness had its eye fixed on the world,and she did not care how the luncheon-table looked when there was no onepresent at it but the family. As she sat before the mirror brushing her hair, her face looked hollowand pale, and she was frightened by two little lines near her mouth,faint flaws in the smooth curve of the cheek.
Brief Biography of Edith Wharton
He looked through the lettersfirst, because it was the most difficult part of the work. They proved tobe few and unimportant, but among them he found, with a strange commotionof the heart, the note he had written her the day after the Brys’entertainment. The speaker was a poorly-dressed young woman with abundle under her arm. Her face had the air of unwholesome refinementwhich ill-health and over-work may produce, but its common prettiness wasredeemed by the strong and generous curve of the lips.
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It was the very last topic she had meant todiscuss—it really did not interest her in the least—but she was seizedby a sudden perverse curiosity to know how the two colourless shrinkingvictims of young Silverton’s sentimental experiments meant to cope withthe grim necessity which lurked so close to her own threshold. Once more the leisure world was intransition between country and town, and Fifth Avenue, still deserted atthe week-end, showed from Monday to Friday a broadening stream ofcarriages between house-fronts gradually restored to consciousness. The words, and the movement which accompanied them, combined to startleLily out of the state of tranced subservience into which she hadinsensibly slipped. Light comes in devious ways to the gropingconsciousness, and it came to her now through the disgusted perceptionthat her would-be accomplice assumed, as a matter of course, thelikelihood of her distrusting him and perhaps trying to cheat him of hisshare of the spoils. This glimpse of his inner mind seemed to present thewhole transaction in a new aspect, and she saw that the essentialbaseness of the act lay in its freedom from risk.
Edith Wharton
Gillian Anderson Honors Terence Davies, Credits ‘House of Mirth’ Director With ‘My First Proper Film Job’ - Variety
Gillian Anderson Honors Terence Davies, Credits ‘House of Mirth’ Director With ‘My First Proper Film Job’.
Posted: Mon, 09 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
She becomes indebted to an unscrupulous man, has her reputation sullied by a promiscuous acquaintance, and slides into genteel poverty. Unable or unwilling to ally herself with either Rosedale or Selden, she finally despairs and takes an overdose of sleeping pills. A black comedy of manners about vast wealth and a woman who can define herself only through the perceptions of others. The beautiful Lily Bart lives among the nouveaux riches of New York City – people whose millions were made in railroads, shipping, land speculation and banking. In this morally and aesthetically bankrupt world, Lily, age twenty-nine, seeks a husband who can satisfy her cravings for endless admiration and all the trappings of wealth. But her quest comes to a scandalous end when she is accused of being the mistress of a wealthy man.
Notes
He would write explaining his absence, ofcourse; there would be a note from him by the late post. But herconfession would have to be postponed; and the chill of the delay settledheavily on her fagged spirit. His own view of the situation forced itself upon her after a few moments’conversation. She had caught at the Brys’ entertainment as an easyimpersonal subject, likely to tide them over the interval till Seldenappeared, but Mr. Rosedale, tenaciously planted beside the tea-table, hishands in his pockets, his legs a little too freely extended, at once gavethe topic a personal turn. She sat up, bewildered by the strangeness of her surroundings; thenmemory returned, and she looked about her with a shiver. In the coldslant of light reflected from the back wall of a neighbouring building,she saw her evening dress and opera cloak lying in a tawdry heap on achair.
There, at her deathbed, holding her hand, he weeps, declaring his love for her. The next morning rose mild and bright, with a promise of summer in theair. The sunlight slanted joyously down Lily’s street, mellowed theblistered house-front, gilded the paintless railings of the doorstep,and struck prismatic glories from the panes of her darkened window. She had just closed her trunk on the white folds of the Reynolds dresswhen she heard a tap at her door, and the red fist of the Irishmaid-servant thrust in a belated letter. Carrying it to the light, Lilyread with surprise the address stamped on the upper corner of theenvelope.
The novel opens on a hot afternoon in September, as Lily has just missed a train to go to Bellomont, where her friends Judy and Gus Trenor are organizing a party. Her acquaintance Lawrence Selden, who runs into her at Grand Central Station, spends a few hours with her, distracting her waiting alone in the hot city. When Lawrence asks Lily if she wants to have tea in his apartment, the young lady accepts, although she knows that it is considered risky for a young woman to spend time in a man’s apartment alone. Over tea, Lily and Selden share a moment of surprising intimacy, and Lily asks Selden if he would accept to be her friend, since she sorely lacks sincere friends around her. Though clearly taken with Lily’s grace and beauty, Selden feels that she always behaves in a calculating, premeditative way, aimed at reaching a hidden goal.
Exiled from her familiar world of artificial conventions, Lily finds life impossible.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
The Van Osburgh marriage was celebrated in the village church near thepaternal estate on the Hudson. It was the kind of scene in which Lily hadoften pictured herself as taking the principal part, and on this occasionthe fact that she was once more merely a casual spectator, instead of themystically veiled figure occupying the centre of attention, strengthenedher resolve to assume the latter part before the year was over. The factthat her immediate anxieties were relieved did not blind her to apossibility of their recurrence; it merely gave her enough buoyancy torise once more above her doubts and feel a renewed faith in her beauty,her power, and her general fitness to attract a brilliant destiny. Itcould not be that one conscious of such aptitudes for mastery andenjoyment was doomed to a perpetuity of failure; and her mistakes lookedeasily reparable in the light of her restored self-confidence. The name, made more odious by its diminutive, obtrudeditself on Lily’s thoughts like a leer.
Her success is challenged by her advancing age — at twenty-nine, she has been on the "marriage market" for more than ten years — and her debts from gambling at bridge. While Lily admires the handsome and ambitious lawyer Lawrence Selden, he is too poor for her to seriously consider marrying; instead, her only prospects are the coarse and vulgar Simon Rosedale, a financier, and the wealthy but dull Percy Gryce. At the time the novel takes place, Old New York high society was peopled by the extraordinarily wealthy who were conditioned by the economic and social changes the Gilded Age (1870–1900) wrought.
Thegirl was evidently nervous, and Mr. Rosedale, if he saw no other means ofadvancing his acquaintance with her, was not above taking advantage ofher nervousness. Lily, to whom the name conveyed nothing, opened the door upon a woman ina battered bonnet, who stood firmly planted under the hall-light. Theglare of the unshaded gas shone familiarly on her pock-marked face andthe reddish baldness visible through thin strands of straw-coloured hair.Lily looked at the char-woman in surprise. As she emerged, a man moved toward her from the knot of smokers, and shefound herself face to face with Selden. The stir of the pulses which hisnearness always caused was increased by a slight sense of constraint.They had not met since their Sunday afternoon walk at Bellomont, and thatepisode was still so vivid to her that she could hardly believe him to beless conscious of it. But his greeting expressed no more than thesatisfaction which every pretty woman expects to see reflected inmasculine eyes; and the discovery, if distasteful to her vanity, wasreassuring to her nerves.
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