Throughout the book House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, the main character, Lily Bart, rejects both Simon Rosedale, a rich social outcast, and Lawrence Selden, a less profitable but well liked lawyer. Lily realises, through her rejections, that she does not have the potential she thought to have had and that because of her inflated views of herself, she is now doomed to be a part of the working class. Her choice to reject both men has been understood as selfish but might also have a small sense of molarity contributing to the aspects of her upbringing. Lily’s choices to reject have left a lasting impact on the plot of this novel and have shaped Lily’s character including her status to society as well as her self worth.
When Simon Rosedale offers
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On one hand, For Lily it is social suicide is she begs Mrs. Dorset. Lily is already socially exiled but if she begs Mrs. Dorset, Lily will no longer have the respect and dignity she once had before Bertha Dorset cut her off socially. On the moral side of the situation Lily keeps on reminding herself of the excuse that it is not her fault for liking the finer things in life. She blames this on the way she was raised. There is little morality in Lily’s decisions. With Lily’s attitude of “I get everything I want”, she will just be reaching her whole life for a social attitude and belonging she once had even if she were to apologize to Mrs. Dorset, and if Lily was …show more content…
In some ways her decisions to reject the two men were both somewhat selfish but also moral. In a selfish way Lily was not able to get over the differences she had with either men, however her decisions seemed moral. Lily’s moral opposition was that she did not want to marry a man she was not fond of or has anything less than what makes her happy. Selden mentions it was fate that kept Lily and him apart. In a sense it could have been true because Lily would not have been truly happy with having just money or just love but she can be truly at peace now that she has
Lily’s actions are completely driven by her desire to fit into the upper class part of society and her need to have money to successfully do this. The actions she partakes in to achieve these goals are sometimes harshly judged by other characters, but The House of Mirth seems to almost draw sympathy for Lily from the fact that she is stuck in this role she cannot remove herself from. Even through showing other life paths like Gerty Farish’s, Lily’s options for an independent life where she can live the way she desires are limited. What she was taught as a child, the choices she makes because of her childhood, how being poor is viewed by society, and the unjust view of Lily’s actions are what ultimately both destroys Lily and results in her being shown sympathy.
Edith Wharton’s brief, yet tragic novella, Ethan Frome, presents a crippled and lonely man – Ethan Frome – who is trapped in a loveless marriage with a hypochondriacal wife, Zenobia “Zeena” Frome. Set during a harsh, “sluggish” winter in Starkfield, Massachusetts, Ethan and his sickly wife live in a dilapidated and “unusually forlorn and stunted” New-England farmhouse (Wharton 18). Due to Zeena’s numerous complications, they employ her cousin to help around the house, a vivacious young girl – Mattie Silver. With Mattie’s presence, Starkfield seems to emerge from its desolateness, and Ethan’s vacant world seems to be awoken from his discontented life and empty marriage. And so begins Ethan’s love adventure – a desperate desire to have Mattie as his own; however, his morals along with his duty to Zeena and his natural streak of honesty hinder him in his ability to realize his own dreams. Throughout this suspenseful and disastrous novella, Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton effectively employs situational irony enabling readers to experience a sudden shock and an unexpected twist of events that ultimately lead to a final tragedy in a living nightmare.
At the beginning of the story, Lily gave me the impression of an insecure and lonely girl. I think this because she repeats that she wants to be “normal”. ”Because I just want to be normal for a little while-not a refugee girl looking for her mother,
Edith Wharton, originally named “Edith Newbold Jones”(Cliff Notes), was born on “January 24, 1862 in New York City to George Frederic Jones and Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander Jones and died on August 11, 1937”(Cliff Notes). She was born into a wealthy family and was a “designer, short story writer and American novelist”(Cliff Notes). Wharton descended from the English and Dutch cultures. She had two siblings, one known as “Frederic Rhinelander Jones” (Cliff Notes) who was sixteen years older than her, and “Henry Edward Jones eleven years older”(Cliff Notes). While her brothers attended boarding school, Wharton became “raised as an only child in a brownstone mansion on West Twenty-third Street in New York City”(Cliff
In Chapter 13, Lily learns that her mother indeed ran away from the both of them to August’s home and she’s given proof of this because she’s given some things that were in her possession. Lily becomes angry because most of her life she has had to live with the guilt of killing her own mother. She becomes hopeless, and it shows when she says “I drew into myself and stayed there for a while… I spent most of my time down by the river, alone. I just wanted to keep to myself” ( Kidd 277 ). Lily contemplates whether she should forgive her mother for leaving, whether her mother even loved her in the first place. She calls herself “the girl abandoned by her mother… the girl who kneeled on grits” ( Kidd 278 ). These events cause her to finally let go of her mother and live her life without guilt taking
Everyone remembers the nasty villains that terrorize the happy people in fairy tales. Indeed, many of these fairy tales are defined by their clearly defined good and bad archetypes, using clichéd physical stereotypes. What is noteworthy is that these fairy tales are predominately either old themselves or based on stories of antiquity. Modern stories and epics do not offer these clear definitions; they force the reader to continually redefine the definitions of morality to the hero that is not fully good and the villain that is not so despicable. From Dante’s Inferno, through the winding mental visions in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, spiraling through the labyrinth in Kafka’s The Trial, and culminating in Joyce’s abstract realization of morality in “The Dead,” authors grapple with this development. In the literary progression to the modern world, the increasing abstraction of evil from its classic archetype to a foreign, supernatural entity without bounds or cure is strongly suggestive of the pugnacious assault on individualism in the face of literature’s dualistic, thematically oligopolistic heritage.
The Virtue of Men and Women in The Canterbury Tales People never change. In every town you will always be able to find the "rich guy," the "smart guy," the "thief," and the "chief." It has been that way since the first man was swindled out of his lunch. Throughout his life, Geoffrey Chaucer encountered every kind of person and brought them to life for us in "The Canterbury Tales," a collection of short stories written in the 1300's. There are tales of saints, tales of promiscuity, tales of fraud, and tales of love.
In Jeannette Walls’ novel Half Broke Horses, the main character Lily Casey Smith faces many moral convictions throughout the story; from traveling all on her own at a young age while encountering all the obstacles she did, as well as making her trek to a new location. She never backed down and molded to what people wanted her to. Lily Casey was a dedicated woman and was going to do what she thought was right no matter what the consequences were. Lily made it very clear when she believed what she was doing was for the best, “You deputies may think you run Yavapai Country, but I run my classroom, and I’ll discipline wayward kids as I see fit . Got it?” ( Wall 180). This is a perfect example of Lily 's strength, she stood up to people because
One illustration is the point at which her Mother died, T-Ray wound up plainly emotionless and extremely intense. This influences Lily in a way because now she now gets verbally and physically abused by her dad a considerable measure. This affects her feelings towards her dad as a result of being defeated and not able to stand up to him. Another way that Deborah leaving has influenced Lily is presently she does not get a ton of empathy and love in life. For instance, when her dad turns out to be exceptionally disillusioned in her or distraught at her, he chooses to rebuff her. As their Housemaid Rosaleen finds her kneeling in the grits, Kidd says, “How long did he keep you on those grits? I shrugged. Maybe an hour” (25). Lily has been kneeling on grits since she was six which was just a couple of years after her mother just had passed on, you are able to see that it has taken an emotional and physical toll on Lilly and her Father T-Ray because he takes his anger on her being gone out on Lily. Taking everything into account, as Deborah fled from home and passed away it took a major emotional and physical toll on Lily and her
Edith Wharton’s novella Ethan Frome chronicles one winter in the life of a family living in the rural town of Starkfield, Massachusetts. The main character, Ethan Frome, gives up his own dreams and aspirations in order to keep the household financially stable and provide for his wife Zeena and housekeeper Mattie. In the process, he reveals not his selflessness but his cowardice, and serves as an example of the dangers of routine and inactivity.
Anyways, Lily has also risked everything to get to Rosaleen as well. For instance, while she was in the hospital, Lily got to Rosaleen by lying her way through every security guard. The fact that Lily ran away with Rosaleen shows that she loves her and that she doesn’t want to live without her. Another
In her final letter to her mother, Eliza admits her wrong doings. She tells her mother she ignored all the things she was told. All their advice fell on her deaf ears. She explains that she had fallen victim to her own indiscretion. She had become the latest conquest of “a designing libertine,” (Foster 894). She knew about Sanford’s reputation, she knew his intentions, and she knew that he was married, yet she still started a relationship with him. And her blatant disregard for facts and common sense caused her unwed pregnancy and premature demise. Eliza Wharton had nobody to blame for her situation but herself. She ignored warnings, advice, common sense, and other options available to her. She chose her ill fated path and had to suffer the consequences.
Lily has to leave her natal family whom she grew up with to live with her husband who will later make the pain feel worth it.
In Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome, there is a prevalent conflict of class struggles. Ethan Frome, his wife Zeena, and their maid Mattie all live in extreme poverty. Wharton portrays them as miserable beings, seemingly always encompassed in misfortune. Wharton herself, however, lived a near opposite life compared to that of her characters. She was born into fortune; money was rarely a concern for her (Lee). Through a Marxist lens, one could argue that Edith Wharton, a woman of extreme wealth and privilege, would characterize lower, working class people such as the ones in Ethan Frome in an inaccurately dismal light. The consistent image of winter and coldness, typically associated with misery, in Ethan Frome foreshadows an unhappy ending for the
“ ‘Well, you sure had one back at the hospital, coming in there saying we’re gonna do this and we’re gonna do that, and i’m supposed to follow you like a pet dog. You act like you’re my keeper. Like i’m some dumb nigger you gonna save.” (page 53 in text, 82 online) Lily, while living in Sylvan, suffers abuse from her father T-Ray, and carries the guilt of possibly killing her mother by accident. She knows nothing of her mother and why she left, so she is very curious. At this point in the novel, before a change in setting, Lily is still an immature teenage girl who is unaware of who she is and how to love and forgive herself. On an impulsive emotional decision, Lily decides to break Rosaleen out of the jail, and the two of them decide to go to Tiburon, in slim chances of finding out the history of Lily’s mother. Lily does not really confide in Rosaleen of her plan, but instead just takes charge and acts as the rescuer which frustrates