House of Mirth Flashcards
(31 cards)
Critical quotation on Lily posing as Mrs Reynolds in the tableaux vivants
Michael Gora says: “Lily has here turned herself into a commodity, and poses as if she’s up for auction. The scene works to literalize the idea of the marriage market”
Critical quotation on the way society is presented in the novel
“Wharton uses Lily as an attack on “an irresponsible, grasping and morally corrupt upper class.” - Shari Benstock “A critical history of the House of Mirth” (1994)
2 quotes that describe Lily’s beauty
- “his eyes had been refreshed by the sight of Miss Lily Bart”
- Ned Van Alstyne: “I never knew till tonight what an outline Lily has”
2 quotes to describe the tragic inevitability of Lily’s life
Selden:
1. “she was so evidently the victim of the civilisation which had produced her, that the links of her bracelet seemed like manacles chaining her to her fate.”
- “In the long moment before the curtain fell, he had time to feel the whole tragedy of her life”
What Mrs Bart says to Lily when she is younger
“You’ll get it all back with your face”
Quote to show how the novel uses the concept of social Darwinism
Lily is likened to “the orchid basking in its artificially created atmosphere” which can “round the delicate curves of its petals undisturbed by the ice on the panes”
Carry Fisher’s psychoanalytical reading of Lily’s repeated mistakes
“That’s Lily all over, you know; she works like a slave preparing the ground and sowing her seed; but the day she ought to be reaping the harvest she oversleeps herself or goes off on a picnic”
Quote from book 2 to show how Lily is ageing
“the warm fluidity of youth is chilled into its final shape”
Lily’s feelings about being a woman upon seeing Selden’s apartment
“How delicious to have a place like this all to one’s self! What a miserable thing it is to be a woman.”
Quote to show how Lily is ignorant of the world of poverty beyond her social circle
“some of these bundles of feeling were clothed in shapes not so unlike her own, with eyes meant to look on gladness, and young lips shaped for love – this discovery gave Lily one of those sudden shocks of pity that sometimes decentralize a life.”
2 quotes about the furies
- “Oh Gerty, the furies… you know the noise of their wings- alone, at night, in the dark?”
- “The winged furies were now prowling gossips who dropped in on each other for tea”
Lily’s first emotional breakdown at the end of book 1 when she confesses to Gerty
“But I am a bad- a bad girl- all my thoughts are bad- I have always had bad people about me”
Lily’s view on marriage and the way it differs for men and women
“a girl must, a man may if he chooses”
2 quotes in which marriage is being spoken about using the language of business/money
- Selden: “There must be plenty of capital on the lookout for such an investment”
- Upon proposing to Lily, Rosedale says “I’m just giving you a plain business statement”
2 quotes to show Lily’s view on how women are treated by society
- “A woman is asked out as much for her clothes as for herself. Who wants a dingy woman?”
- “The truth about any girl is that once she’s talked about she is done for”
How Selden and Lily view the rest of society
“How dreary and trivial these people were!”
2 quotes to describe New York society in the gilded age
- “The great gilt cage in which they were all huddled for the mob to gape at”
- “They hold their tongues for years and you think you’re safe, but when the opportunity comes they remember everything”
2 quotes about Lily’s relationship with Gus Trenor
- Lily wants Gus to help her make money through investment, so she lets him “lean a little nearer” and hold her hand
- “Hang it, the man who pays for the dinner is generally allowed to have a seat at the table”
Lily’s relationship with money
“You know I am horribly poor and terribly expensive. I must have a great deal of money.”
Mrs Stepney showing how high society views money
“Well it’s only about four hundred thousand”
$11m today
Description of Simon Rosedale (2)
“a plump rosy man of the blond Jewish type, with smart London clothes that fitted him like upholstery, and small sidelong eyes which gave him the air of appraising people as if they were bric-a-brac”
“he was the same little Jew who had been served up and rejected a dozen times at the social board”
Description of Bertha Dorset
“She was smaller and thinner than Lily Bart”
Description of Selden
He has a “stoic carelessness of material things, combined with Epicurean’s pleasure in them” (epicurean- lavish, pleasure seeker)
What Selden says to Lily on the subject of them marrying
“If I had, it should be yours, you know” (if he was rich, he would marry her)
