Identity and Losed Love

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“The dinginess, the crudity of this average section of womanhood made him feel how highly specialized she was” (Wharton 6). In the House of Mirth, the main character Lily Bart spends her entire life trying to escape this idea of dinginess. On her quest to maintain society’s approval, she denies her true identify along with any hope of ever finding true love and is eventually “blotted out” by this society (Ammons 348).

In the beginning of the novel, Wharton reveals the thoughts of Seldon toward Lily Bart. “He was aware that the qualities distinguishing her from the herd of her sex were chiefly external: as though a fine glaze of beauty and fastidiousness had been applied to vulgar clay” (Wharton 7).Wharton builds this physical attraction between Seldon and Lily Bart by letting readers into the mind of Seldon and the delicate actions of Lily Bart. Seldon “enjoyed Lily Bart; and his course lay so far out of her orbit that it amused him to be drawn for a moment into the sudden intimacy which her proposal implied” ( Wharton 6). The delicate approach of Lily coupled with her suggestive words toward Seldon reveals Lily’s true feeling toward Seldon. “I’m dying for tea---but isn’t there a quieter place?” (Wharton 6). Lily manages to secure privacy with Seldon avoiding as much attention as possible. Even the insinuation of Seldon and Lily being in a relationship would be especially detrimental to her social standing. When surprised with the appearance of Mr. Rosedale, she innately lied only later realizing the true effect of “yielding to a passing impulse” (Wharton 15). Her mistake would “cost her rather more than she could afford” (Wharton 15). Lily Bart lived in a society where even slightest blunder could result in severe social...

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... true love for Seldon is felt but never verbally expressed. “In the silence, there passed between them the word which made all clear” (Wharton 256).She spends most of her life running away from the idea of loving Seldon although internally she cared about him deeply. In the closing, Seldon love drew him to Lily:

It was this moment of love, this fleeting victory over themselves, which had kept them from atrophy and extinction; which, in her, had reached out to him in every struggle against the influence of her surroundings, and in her, had reached out to him in every struggle against the influence of her surroundings, and in him, had kept alive the faith that now drew him penitent and reconciled to her side (Wharton 255-56)

Lily was plagued with fulfilling society requirement but in the process denied herself of true love and ultimately her own identity.

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