Wharton Wednesday: Book 1, Ch 8, 9, 10

Week 4: "The first thousand dollar cheque which Lily received...strengthened her self-confidence in the exact degree to which it effaced her debts."

Welcome to Week 4!

We are getting close to the end of Book 1, which marks the halfway point in the novel. Today, we’re working through Chapters 8, 9, and 10 of The House of Mirth.

• Get full read-a-long details here.

• View all previous chapter summaries and the reading schedule.

• For next week, read chapters 11, 12, and 13.

The thousand-dollar question this week: Can money actually buy happiness? Lily sure thinks so.

Thinking about genre

Before we get into the usual summary and discussion today, I want to share something I started writing as I re-read chapter 8. I think it gets at the heart of why this week’s chapters always feel like an emotional turning point in the novel.

I was wondering:

Is Lily Bart just another girl in a marriage plot novel? Or is she the artist who can paint a new landscape and live a different kind of life?

Is she a mirror of the cu…