1130 Wharton, Edith
looks had a commercial value. While engaged in her
quest for Percy Gryce’s attentions, she recalls that
her mother “used to say to her with a kind of fierce
vindictiveness: ‘But you’ll get it all back—you’ll get
it all back, with your face.’ ” Throughout the novel,
Lily is presented as an ornament adorning itself to
attract the highest bidder. Marriage is presented as
an economic necessity, and Lily’s concomitant desire
for and resistance to it is the novel’s greatest force.
Driven by her desire for wealth and her inability
to gain a profitable match, Lily enters a morally
questionable arrangement with Trenor. Though she
is calculating in her orchestration of the economic
arrangement she makes with Trenor, she is simul-
taneously naive concerning the consequences of
their arrangement or the real economics behind
her supposed earnings. While it is possible that
her ignorance stems from the exclusion of women
from financial matters at the turn of the century,
it seems like willful ignorance. Though Lily is
ostensibly aware that her body and face are a com-
modity, she does not seem to grasp the transactional
consequences. Trenor grows frustrated with Lily’s
unpaid debt and tries to force her into repayment:
“That’s the trouble—it was too easy for you—you
got reckless—thought you could turn me inside
out, and chuck me in the gutter like an empty purse
. . . but I tell you what Miss Lily, you’ve got to pay
up.” Lily responds by asking if she owes him money,
but Trenor explains, “I’m not asking for payment
in kind.” Though it is never explicitly stated, Lily
finally realizes what her end of the business deal is
and spends the rest of the novel burdened by her
obligation to repay this debt.
Rosedale is keenly aware that society itself
operates according to the rules of commerce. He
recognizes Lily as an asset to be leveraged to attain
a higher status. He perceives Lily as an object,
constantly appraising her worth and adjusting his
offers according to the rise and fall of her currency.
Even after Lily’s fall, he continues to assess her as
a product: “He met this with a steady gaze of his
small stock-taking eyes, which made her feel herself
no more than some superfine merchandise.” What
is refreshing about Rosedale is that he is one of
the only characters willing to explicitly admit the
commercial nature of society. With his detached
business sense, he tries to persuade Lily to take yet
another morally objectionable action against Bertha
Dorset. Lily, while offended by the vulgar plan, is
also relieved by his straightforward approach: “Put
by Rosedale in terms of business-like give-and-take,
this understanding took on the harmless air of a
mutual accommodation, like a transfer of property
or a revision of boundary lines. It certainly simplified
life to view it as a perpetual adjustment, a play of
party politics, in which every concession had its rec-
ognized equivalent: Lily’s tired mind was fascinated
by this escape from fluctuating ethical estimates into
a region of concrete weights and measures.”
Cary Fisher is similar to Rosedale in her clear
vision of the economics of her society. She profits
from helping the nouveaux riches move into higher
social rungs. Mrs. Fisher is skilled at the game and
less detestable for her honest engagement in it: “I
like the Gormers best, there’s more profit for me in
the Brys. The fact is . . . if I can make it a success
for them they—well, they’ll make it a success for
me.” Unlike Lily, Mrs. Fisher is able to act as both a
commodity and a purchaser. Similarly, Bertha Dor-
set is more calculating than Lily and wields a power
commensurate with her vast wealth. Lily finds
herself a destitute pawn unable to compete with the
influence of Bertha because “that influence, in its
last analysis, was simply the power of money: Bertha
Dorset’s social credit was based on an impregnable
bank-account.”
What the novel exposes is that behind this seem-
ingly frivolous society, there are pervasive economic
mechanisms at work. Lily observes “the degradation
of a New York street in the last stages of a decline
from fashion to commerce,” which encapsulates the
narrative of her destitution. As fashion is no longer
the sole arbiter of value, Lily is forced into the real
world of commerce, for which she is ill equipped.
Lisa J. SchneiderIndIvIduaL and SocIety in The House
of Mirth
In Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth, moneyed
Manhattan society exists as a superficial “house
of mirth” in which Lily Bart struggles to reside
as an individual. Although Lily desires the mate-
rial comfort society provides to its members, her