The House of Mirth

I read Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth yesterday. Edith was the first woman to win the Pulitzer in 1921 with her book The Age of Innocence. I considered substituting HM for AI to count for this blog but decided against it. I didn't want to read AI; I saw the movie and lost my chance to read the book with fresh eyes. I'll get to it eventually, just so I can say "I have read all the Pully winners."

In HM Lily Bart, age 29, is a husband hunter circulating among the elites of old New York. Beautiful, charming, and masterful at self presentation, she gets close a few times and even gets offers but she always, at the last moment, screws it up or declines.

Lily reminds me of Esther from The Bell Jar in that she is keenly observant and reflects upon her own actions shrewdly. On one level, Lily senses that the life she was born into and trained for is unsatisfying. This ultimately leads to -- you guessed it -- her death. In the end, you realize that she could never fully commit herself to the ideals which would have given her a wealthy lifestyle. As a whole, the decisions she makes pointedly suggest a tragic becoming: Lily was aware that she could not be fully satisfied by society life and yet, that was what her upbringing had honed her best to do. At each crisis, she avoids making decisions, prolonging problems until they worsen. The resulting events tell vividly of a woman who is suspended between awareness and habit.

HM was very easy to read. I inhaled it. I enjoy books where events turn quickly and conversations flow easily. In part, I picked up HM as a break from Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus. I started DF last week and I'm about one fifth into it. Let's just say DF is vastly different from HM and the technicalities on classical music is not a page turning subject.

I plod on.