Welcome to Week 6
We did it! We’ve made it to the halfway point in the novel and I can’t wait to hear your thoughts on Book 1, as well as your predictions for Book 2…
Remember: if you have something you’d like me to cover next week, tell me about it here or leave a comment on today’s post.
Today, we’re working through Chapters 14 and 15 of The House of Mirth.
View all previous chapter summaries and the reading schedule.
For next week, start Book 2. Read chapters 1-3.
What happens in chapters 14 and 15
Here is our usual plot summary of what happens in each chapter. The characters we meet this week are in bold.
In Chapter 14:
Gerty Farish has Selden over for dinner, thinking he might be there to woo her
Selden won’t stop talking about Lily, so Gerty gets super jealous
This is the same night Lily is trapped by Trenor — the foreshadowing is so heavy
Selden hurries to Carrie Fisher’s house to catch Lily by surprise
She’s not there…
He goes for a walk…
He’s one of the shadowy men she sees on the street as she flees Trenor!
Lily shows up at Gerty’s and Gerty can’t help but be a friend to her — despite the seething jealousy boiling under the surface
In Chapter 15:
Lily returns home and asks Peniston for extra money to cover her debts
(We all knew how this would go)
Lily waits for Selden, but Rosedale shows up instead
He proposes; Lily doesn’t refuse him
Lily receives a late letter from none other than Bertha: inviting her to sail with them on the Mediterranean
A serial move
Before it was published as a whole book on October 14, 1905, The House of Mirth was serialized in Scribner's Magazine — beginning at the start of the year, in January 1905. In fact, Charles Scribner wrote to Wharton in November 1905 that the novel was showing "the most rapid sale of any book ever published by Scribner."
We perhaps feel the serialization of the novel most evidently at the end of Book 1, which absolutely plummets emotionally. From the high of the tableaux vivants, we crash into Gerty’s bed with Lily — wondering if Selden will show tomorrow, how much damage gossip can really do, why Rosedale decides to propose on that day of all days.
We’re racing to a cliffhanger and we really get one.
After all that build up — and following Selden so carefully through the very same day we’ve just followed Lily through — we get Rosedale instead.
And then, as the tension builds even more, it’s not Selden who makes a miraculous appearance at the final moment. It’s Bertha.
Book 1 closes with the kind of luxurious invitation Lily has been aching for and not receiving ever since the gossip train started.
For a woman who was writing well before the advent of the HBO miniseries, you sure can picture the whole thing, can’t you?
(I love thinking about how serialized novels inspire the kind of episodic television we consume now…that’s another essay for another time.)
Did you see it coming?
Tell me about your reactions to the end of Book 1.
What did you see coming?
What was out of left field?
What about Gerty?
What about Selden?
Mirrors, reflections, and foils
These chapters feature two key mirror scenes worth noticing.
Gerty gazes into the mirror in her bedroom after Selden leaves, and she considers the “dinginess” of her life
Lily gazes into the brightly lit mirror in Peniston’s drawing room after Selden never shows, and she considers those lines around her mouth again
“Can you imagine looking into your glass some morning and seeing a disfigurement—some hideous change that has come to you while you slept? Well, I seem to myself like that—I can’t bear to see myself in my own thoughts—I hate ugliness, you know—”
— Lily to Gerty, in chapter 14
Comparisons are a ripe set-up for close readings, and what I like so much about the two mirror scenes in the close of Book 1 is how well placed and timed they are.
We’ve already been primed to see Gerty as a kind of foil for Lily — a character in the novel, and a person in this society — who (very) neatly contrasts Lily, and therefore brings both women into greater relief, as a result.
In other words: Gerty and Lily are set up as opposites.
Gerty is the good girl — she’s dull, a little dingy, poor, and has a heart of gold. She’s charitable with her time and her energy. Patient. Unassuming. Humble. Steady.
Lily is the bad girl — she’s gorgeous, comes from money, and has a heart that swings violently from wanting to do bad things to feeling guilty about her desire for material comforts. She’s charitable, because it makes her feel good. She’s impatient. Assuming. Too beautiful to ever need to feign humility. Unsteady.
And yet, as we see in these chapters, both women look in the mirror and feel deep shame. Neither can assert her identity in a way that makes her proud or optimistic. Neither can see a clear future. And, it seems now, that neither one will bag Lawrence Selden — a marital goal they can only share because of his middling social status and their own precarity on either side of him.
Gerty in the mirror
“In the little glass above her dressing-table she saw her face reflected against the shadows of the room, and tears blotted the reflection. What right had she to dream the dreams of loveliness? A dull face invited a dull fate. She cried quietly as she undressed, laying aside her clothes with her habitual precision, setting everything in order for the next day, when the old life must be taken up as though there had been no break in its routine.” (from chapter 14)
Here’s what I notice:
Gerty doesn’t go looking for the mirror. She “saw her face reflected” in the shadows
“A dull face invited a dull fate” seems like the perfect tagline for this book, no?
She immediately undresses — removing the outer layers of the social world — but even in her private space, she is clean and precise.
Gerty is too realistic to fantasize about Selden; the “old life” before her fantasies took over will be waiting in the morning
It also strikes me that, after spying her own reflection, she lays awake, hating Lily Bart. That deep inner hatred of her inner life seems to refract back out, directing itself at the bright, gleaming Lily, who Gerty feels has stolen so much from her.
Remember when Selden thought about Lily and imagined she had “cost a great deal to make” and that dozens of other women must be ugly for Lily to have so much beauty? Gerty seems to adopt a similar mindset here: Lily is rich in beauty, and it has resulted in Gerty’s impoverished appearance. Lily is rich is personality, and it means Gerty has less.
This is a solidly capitalistic notion of society: that classic set-up of the Haves and the Have Nots. Lily has and has and has: opportunities, proposals, good looks. Gerty has not — and in this chapter, in her stewing jealousy, Gerty makes that Lily’s fault.
Lily in the mirror (again)
After spending the night at Gerty’s, Lily returns home for a hellish day — brightened only by the prospect of Selden’s visit. But he never shows. Then Lily reads the paper to find he has left town:
“She rose, and walking across the floor stood gazing at herself for a long time in the brightly-lit mirror about the mantelpiece. The lines in her face came out terribly—she looked old, and when a girl looks old to herself, how does she looked to other people? She moved away, and began to wander aimlessly about the room, fitting her steps with mechanical precision between the monstrous roses of Mrs. Peniston’s Axminster.”
Here’s what I notice:
We’ve seen Lily in a mirror before — that moment after she lost all the money at bridge when those “two little lines about the mouth” terrified her for the first time
Here, she again fixates on her age: “she looked old”
She seems to dissociate, walking “aimlessly” and mechanically around the room.
(Here’s a nerdy fun tidbit — the kind of detail I live for, upon which we can do an ultra-close reading):
An Axminster is a machine-loomed rug from the town of the same name in England. It’s a mass produced rug — the same kind of rug that would’ve been completely out of budget for most Americans until the advent of machine looms. It is, in other words, a loud symbol of middle-class existence. Those “monstrous roses” further damn the aesthetics of the rug, which we know Lily will be ultra-sensitive to.
The rug is, in other words, a garish reminder of how poor Lily has been all along. She’s been playing in the upper set, but she is firmly middle class — and falling lower down the social ladder all the time.
I can picture the moment with vivid intensity: Gorgeous Lily, looking completely fatigued, actually considering a Rosedale proposal — walking in large, sad circles around the room as she traces the middle-class pattern with every step. It is as if she is finally walking the path that society has intended for her all along. It is as if, in this dissociative daze, Lily decides to numb the pain of her ever-more-terrible reality.
The plight of Gerty and Lily
In contrasting these two women — these two types — so readily, Wharton also lays fertile ground for us to recognize their heartbreaking similarities. She uses their profound contrast to depict the trenches of womanhood that only the richest can avoid.
Even their names flirt with the same phonetics, only to clearly tell us which is the dull one and which the great beauty. Gerty — a German variant of Gertrude — was a popular nineteenth-century name and it means “sharp spear.” The sound of it, in the gutteral “g” sound and the tapping “t” near the end, make for sharp sounds in the mouth, a strong and memorable sound for a meek and quiet girl. Compared with Lily — that lilting, floral, effervescent name, evoking so much of Lily’s loveliness in draperies and finery — the contrasts between the two women, and in how society treats them, seem clear.
And yet, they do bare striking similarities. In juxtaposing them so profoundly — even putting them in the same bed for a long, weary night — Wharton invites us to see them as twin sides of the socioeconomic potentials for women. In fact, Wharton seems to be playing with the well-worn plot shape of the “Rags to Riches” story.
(Think of Cinderella’s unlikely and magical ascent, which the story has often invoked, turned sour. Think of her evil stepmother, who takes a wild ride from Riches to Rags when her stepdaughter weds Prince Charming.)
Lily believes her story is “Middle-class Rags to Bridge Riches…to Rich Husband!” but she refuses to make that story come true.
Gerty knows her story is “Rags to Rags, Forever.” Gerty also knows the women she provides support to in the poor-house have experienced the inverse of Lily’s hopeful story: “Riches to Rags,” with no way back up to riches again.
Wharton will play with these themes to unparalleled venom in The Custom of the Country, which stars a young woman named Undine Spragg who marries and leaves men on a loop to grow her wealth and status. (Wharton’s contemporary, Theodore Dreiser, similarly stages a young woman’s rise to riches while her husband falls to rags, in the incredible 1900 novel Sister Carrie.) Victorian authors were obsessed with these plots: think of Dickens’ Great Expectations, which sees Pip rise; think of Elizabeth Bennet (yes, again, I know) who finally rises with Darcy. Think of the wild tumults of their journeys from rags to riches and everywhere in-between.
We’re on a similar ride here.
In The House of Mirth, Wharton seems keen to show how, once internalized, these common narrative lines seem to become fate — seem to chain women, dull faces to dull fates, beautiful faces to beautiful potential — and yet that fate is so often so bitter. Through this painful juxtaposition of Gerty’s and Lily’s gazes into their respective mirrors (Gerty’s in her own apartment, Lily’s ironically above a mantle in a home she will never own), Wharton asks us to question the very concept of “riches.”
What do “riches” cost?
Who can afford to be rich?
Who knows what true riches are?
Does Lily know what rags really are? Does Gerty?
My favorite sentence
This week was hard. There are so many moments that rip my heart open. Then there’s this moment that makes me crack up:
“Woman-like, she accused the woman.”
This is the moment Gerty decides to blame Lily for Selden’s departure and distance. Now, Wharton wasn’t a feminist. She had thoughts about burgeoning women’s rights movements around the country and it’s one of the strange things about her — she writes so compellingly of the traps women experience in society, and yet she never personally campaigned for any feminist causes. Here, we see a bit of that coming through on the page: typing Gerty as a kind of jealous shrew, which is “woman-like.” Maybe it’s indicative of Wharton’s larger sentiments about gender politics; or maybe it’s just hilarious. Knowing a bit about Wharton, it’s both.
Close reading tip
Try this:
Go back to your annotations throughout Book 1.
Review your notes, your previous comments you’ve left here on our chapter guides, and look at anything you’ve underlined, highlighted, or marked in the book so far.
What patterns do you see?
What do those patterns tell you about the book?
What do those patterns tell you about how you read?
Writing prompts
Based on the exercise above, write about your experience of reading the novel so far. Rather than focusing on the novel’s plot, think about your experience of the plot thus far. What strikes you as meaningful or memorable?
Transcribe your notes from the novel into a Google doc or into a paper notebook. For me, transcribing what I’ve written in the margins will sometimes reveal whole new insights I haven’t connected yet!
Additional reading
“What Wharton captures is the misery of the feminine continuous present, which sets women inside social systems that allow for no synthesis, no way to make something new out of the insipid materials the world provides them, no light around which to gather.” Source
Plus: Why Rags-to-Riches stories are super disturbing
Up next
Start Book 2, chapters 1-3. You can review the full reading schedule anytime. Happy reading! 📚
Now, let’s get the discussion going:
What was your favorite scene or sentence from this week?
What is your favorite scene so far in the novel? Why?
Remember: if you have something you’d like me to cover next week, tell me about it here.
Oh my! What a roller coaster of emotions and plot twists. I have been hopeful that there is a happy ending in sight for Lily but I am afraid that the end of book two is going to be shattering. Aunt Julia sees it that way: “I consider that you are disgraced, Lily; disgraced by your conduct more than your results.”
The thought of Trenor touching beautiful Lily with those “fat, red fingers” - and, he imagined, her allowing it - is more than Selden can handle. But, rather than keep his appointment with her to get her side of the story, he leaves the country.
Maybe that is to be expected since he is “as Lily, a victim of his environment”.
I am assuming Lily temporarily escapes by sailing with Bertha Dorset - I can hardly wait to see what happens next!
I suspected Selden had been one of the men who saw Lily leave the Trenor's dark house. I knew Rosedale was going to try to collect Lily. He is ambitious, but I'm also not sure why Wharton paints him so harshly. He's no more calculating than any of the society insiders, just more transparent about his desires. I knew Lily's aunt would not come through for her. What surprised me was Gerty. Maybe my modern expectation that cousins don't get romantically involved with each other made me, just like Selden, overlook how Gerty was feeling about him. Wharton's description of her disappointment when she realizes the truth is heart wrenching. "It was at this point, perhaps, that a joy just trying its wings in Gerty's heart dropped to earth and lay still." "There had been a third at the feast she had spread for him, and that third had taken her own place." And then in the misery of her despair and "flaming jealousy", she answers her door and is able to attend to Lily when she seeks her refuge. I'm tired of Lily. Gerty is right in thinking "When had Lily ever really felt, or pitied, or understood? All she wanted was the taste of new experiences." She's also right in her assessment that "Lily might be incapable of marrying for money, but she was equally incapable of living without it, and Selden's eager investigations of the small economies of house-keeping made him appear to Gerty as tragically duped as herself." Gerty has acted as a true heroine in my estimation. I hope we circle back to her story. But for now Lily is at rock bottom again and Selden has fled. I thought Lily might actually have to consider Rosedale's proposal before Bertha Dorset saves her with an offer to escape on a cruise. Lily still has those letters. Selden and Lily are again separated. Dun dun duuun!