Book I, Chapter 1

Selden, a young bachelor, spots Lily Bart at the train station and wonders what she is doing there. He starts to walk past her and she greets him. After exchanging greetings, he agrees to take a walk with her and keep her company until her train arrives. They end up on the street where he lives and he invites Miss Bart up for tea.

In Selden's apartment they share their tea and discuss the various rules of etiquette for young women in the upper-class New York society. Lily points out that young women cannot live alone unless they have no plans to marry. She then starts questioning him about his book collection, and specifically focuses on Americana. He is curious about her sudden interest, but time soon runs out and she leaves him to head back to the train station.

While leaving his apartment building she runs into a Mr. Rosedale. Lily foolishly makes up an excuse that she was just coming from her dressmaker, but Rosedale points out that The Benedick, the name of the building she just came out of, does not have any dressmakers in residence. He knows this because he happens to own the building. Lily, ashamed by being caught in her lie, quickly grabs a cab and leaves him.

Analysis

The House of Mirth is a novel of manners. As such the language used is one of curiosity and observation: "Selden paused in surprise...what was Miss Bart doing in town at that season? If she had appeared to be catching a train, he might have inferred that he had come on her in the act of transition between one and another of the country-houses which disputed her presence after the close of the Newport season; but her desultory air perplexed him. She stood apart...wearing an air of irresolution which might, as he surmised, be the mask of a very definite purpose...he could never see her without a faint movement of interest" (5) Notice how observation is mixed with Selden's curiosity. This is a society where every little detail is noticed and interpreted, and for which there are numerous possible interpretations. Lily Bart is interpreted with the words "inferred" and "surmised", not words that lend themselves to establishing the truth, but rather to playing games.

As part of the incessant interpretation of other people, the society has a cruelty that lends itself to testing. Selden, not content to merely observe Lily, decides to challenge her social skills. "It amused him to think of putting her skill to the test" (5). This is a cruel society, one that is always testing, and one where the slightest event in the past will haunt the rest of the novel.

The use of descriptive details is important in the novel. "He had a confused sense that she must have cost a great deal to make, that a great many dull and ugly people must...have been sacrificed to produce her" (7) This is essentially true, as we find out when Lily describes her childhood. Her father is sacrificed on her behalf, and later her mother dies as well, leaving Lily with nothing but her beauty.

The role of Selden is highly important because it is a stock role in the novel of manners. He is the observer, the person who cannot marry. It is through his eyes that we are asked to interpret the society. Wharton makes his role clear at the beginning by putting him in The Benedick, essentially representing the Benedictine monks, or bachelors. His home forms a private enclave that will not be interrupted and into which very few people are allowed.

Lily, in her conversation with Selden, gives the reader a good sense of what the novel of manners, and this novel in particular, is about. She tells Selden that woman can enjoy the privileges of an apartment, but only "governesses - or widows. But not girls - not poor, miserable, marriageable girls!" (9). Lily implies that she has no choice of whether to marry; "a girl must, a man may if he chooses" (14). As a result of this, marriage becomes the only way of actually entering society, the only alternative being a form of social (or literal) death. Between marriage and death lies a transitory limbo world, a world that Lily inhabits throughout the entire novel until her banishment.

One of the symbols and images that recurs is that of the cigarette. Often this appears as a form of intimacy, hence in the cigarette scene in this chapter Selden notices Lily's lashes and her lids. Cigarettes are thus used as a form of flirtation, but also of sexual desire, as will be apparent later in the novel when Lily is confronted with Gus Trenor.

Notice as well the comparison of Lily to the goddess Diana: "wild-wood grace to her outline, as though she were a captured dryad...the same streak of sylvan freedom" (15). Diana, the huntress goddess, happens to also be a virgin goddess. For Lily this dual nature will be the paradox of her character; she will be hunting for a suitable husband on the one hand, but unable to commit herself to marriage (and sex) on the other. The description also explains her deviations from social conformity because as Diana she is a wild character, given to enjoying herself.

A key characteristic of this type of novel is that when lies are told, there are no repercussions if they are good lies. For Lily this is already shown to be a problem because she has told a bad lie to Rosedale, thereby putting herself within his power. Lily's lie to him fails for one major reason though: Rosedale always knows more than he will ever admit to. Here he knows more than she suspects because he owns the building, a rather bad shock to Lily who wants get away as soon as possible. Her bad lie also places her under Rosedale's scrutiny, putting her in a position that she now has to get out of.

Book I, Chapter 2

Lily sits in the cab and chides herself for making such a mess of her encounter with Rosedale. She realizes that she could easily have disarmed the situation if she had only told the truth. After barely catching her train, she sits down and starts to look around for someone else who might be heading to Bellomont with her. She spots a young man named Percy Gryce and immediately concocts a plan to engage him in conversation.

Lily starts walking through the aisle and nearly falls into Gryce's lap when the train suddenly lurches. She laughingly starts speaking to him and then invites him to sit next to her. He moves and they soon share tea together. However, the conversation starts to lag and Lily is forced to bring up the subject of Americana, a topic that she prepared herself to discuss while visiting Selden in the first chapter. Gryce, who inherited the best collection of Americana in the world, is immediately intrigued and starts telling her all about it.

The conversation goes well until Mrs. George Dorset arrives on the train. She immediately interrupts them and sits down next to Lily. Exasperated with her wait, she asks Lily for a cigarette, not realizing that Percy Gryce is strongly opposed to smoking. Lily, who has plenty of cigarettes on her, immediately tries to avoid the question by acting as if the question is absurd. Bertha George Dorset quickly realizes her mistake and covers herself, but ends up smiling brightly when she figures out that Lily is considering Percy Gryce as a future husband.

Analysis

There is always a sense of ascendancy and descendancy implicit in everything that is done in the novel. For example, "Mr. Rosedale was still at a stage in his social ascent when it was of importance to produce such impressions" (18). He is one of the rising elite, a man who will soon join the fashionable New York set even though he is ostracized when Lily first meets him.

One of Lily's attributes is her ability to mold herself into whatever guise is necessary for creating the right effect. This can be seen in the importance of her learning about Americana before speaking with Gryce. Lily has used Selden to learn about Americana already, and although bored to death with the conversation, she is nonetheless able to win Gryce's attentions.

Smoking takes on a new level of meaning in this chapter as well. Having shared a moment of intimacy with Selden by smoking, the same thing will clearly not happen with Gryce. Thus no smoking means no flirting with Gryce. Bad habits such as smoking are condemned by him, and Lily realizes that Gryce will lose respect for her and not be interested in marrying her. This will work against her later with gambling, another vice that Gryce cannot abide in women.

Book I, Chapter 3

Lily is forced to spend her evening at the Trenors playing bridge for money. As a result, when she returns to her room she realizes she has lost a great deal of cash, and her personal wealth has been reduced to a mere twenty dollars.

Lily reflects on her past, informing the reader that her father was ruined financially when she was nineteen. He soon died, and her mother moved with her from one relative to another, always trying to keep the family from falling into poverty. She dies on a visit to New York and Lily eventually is allowed to move in with Mrs. Peniston, her father's widowed sister. She lives well with Mrs. Peniston but is unable to find someone to marry her and now is starting to feel quite old at age twenty-nine. She further realizes that she has too many debts to give up on trying to find a husband, and is therefore stuck in her dull society.

Analysis

Lily's beauty is one of the most remarkable aspects of not only her, but of the novel. It is the only true wealth that she possesses, and her beauty will be mentioned dozens of times by other people and by her. The fear with which Lily looks at the two little lines in her face is real. Since beauty is her only currency, she must remain beautiful in order to marry into wealth. Through the revelation of her childhood, we learn that her mother told her to rely on her beauty as a means of getting out of her poor position.

In reconstructing Lily's past we learn a great deal about Lily's future. In her father we learn that death and financial ruin go hand in hand. This will of course be Lily's ultimate fate as well, as she sinks into what her mother abhors as "dinginess". Lily's entire upbringing is in tune with this attitude of money or death. When her father arrives home ruined, her mother immediately reacts, saying "shut the pantry door" (36). Her immediate sense of what is proper, making sure the servants do not hear anything and sending her daughter away, is the aristocratic desire to preserve the tranquility at all times. This is how Lily will react when her fortunes are dying around her, always relying on a superior sense of tranquility that will save her reputation but destroy her social standing.

Book I, Chapter 4

Lily wakes up the next morning and finds a note inviting her to help Mrs. Trenor with invitations. She reluctantly goes to help her hostess and listens while Mrs. Trenor discusses her various guests and comments on them. She finally mentions Mrs. Bertha Dorset and hints that Bertha might try to start an affair with Percy Gryce. Lily is shocked because she is hoping to marry Percy, but correctly asks Judy Trenor to help her by not asking her to play bridge again that evening, a habit she knows Percy would disapprove of.

Lily happily proceeds to start conniving to win Percy Gryce for herself. The other women start to help her by allowing her easy access to him. She sees her cousin Jack Stepney trying to form a couple with Gwen Van Osburgh, and thinks that she most likely can marry Percy whenever she wants. Hearing a noise behind her, she turns around and sees that Selden has arrived, but before they can speak he is swept away by Mrs. Dorset.

Analysis

One example of how Lily is on trial in the society, rather than a full member of it, is in her activities. She is of use to hostesses, helping them reorganize, redecorate, and invite people. However, this usefulness is of a king that, although important, is still redundant. Her work with Mrs. Trenor promotes a sense of servitude rather than possession, a fact that will allow the society to dismiss Lily when they feel like it.

A structure to look for in the novel is the epigram, denoted as a witty phrase that sums up or freezes part of the novel. One of these occurs with respect to Carrie Fisher: "It's rather clever of her to have made a specialty of devoting herself to dull people - the field is such a large one, and she has it practically to herself." Mrs. Trenor's comment denotes a bitterness towards Carrie Fisher's success, a bitterness we later learn is due to Carrie's borrowing money from her husband.

The description of Gwen Van Osburgh's face, "the girl's [face] turned toward her companion's like an empty plate held up to be filled, while the man...betrayed the encroaching boredom which would presently crack the thin veneer of his smile" (51). In this cruel world the people are portrayed like photographs or paintings. This description is almost like a Degas family portrait.

This is a society of vice, a society in which Lily, the only virtuous person, will suffer. Bertha Dorset, a married woman, spends her time trying to win Percy Gryce until Selden shows up. Note the list of married characters who are affiliated with one of unmarried characters. In this world Lily will be judged as if she were one of the un-virtuous, even though we know that she never breaks in her morality.

Book I, Chapter 5

Percy Gryce, now fully interested in Lily, wakes up early the next morning and prepares to go to church. He is joined by the Wetheralls in the carriage, but Lily fails to show up. Her reason is that she has suddenly become interested in Selden rather than Gryce. Wharton recounts how, the previous evening at the dinner table, Lily started realizing how boring everyone at the table was when compared to Selden.

Instead of going to church, Lily instead goes into the library at Bellomont in order to see Selden. She catches him there, along with Mrs. Dorset, and carefully enters the room. Mrs. Dorset, upset about the intrusion, prepares to leave on the grounds that she had not realized that Selden and Lily had a prior engagement. Lily quickly turns the mistake to her advantage by asking instead whether she had missed the carriage to go to the church. She then leaves and starts walking to the church.

Selden eventually catches up with her and makes fun of the way she is interested in him. Soon Percy and the rest of the people who went to the service arrive, having chosen to walk home. Selden immediately realizes why Lily was interested in his Americana and laughs at her about it. She blushes and thanks him for the information, but Selden tries to instead invite her to take a walk with him that afternoon.

Analysis

One of the main problems with Lily's personality is that her desire to join the elite society is matched by her desire to avoid the boredom of it. As a result, she misses church with Mr. Gryce. Even though the arrival of Selden removes Mrs. Dorset from Percy Gryce and gives Lily a clear field to capture him, she is not sure about wanting to marry him.

The use of books and libraries is also tied up in the elaborate courtship rituals. Books are not read, instead the library is merely used for smoking or flirting, the two being inseparable. Indeed, books represent the split between this world and the working world. No one is ever seen to be reading a book, and even Lily only uses a novel as a pretext for being able to watch Mr. Gryce on the train. We therefore know that there is something dangerous about finding Selden and Mrs. Dorset together in the library, a fact that Lily ignores in her attempts to see Selden.

Book I, Chapter 6

Lily and Selden are on a walk together, Lily having broken her second planned meeting with Percy Gryce in order to see Selden. The excuse she gave Gryce was that she had a headache that first prevented her from going to church and second from going on a walk with him. She instead convinces him to join the other guests and go to the Van Osburgh home in Peekskill.

Selden tells Lily that he views everything she does as having been premeditated. She disagrees, saying she is impulsive, but Selden argues that her genius is being able to convert impulse into intentions. They discuss the freedom that Selden enjoys, and he admits that he is able to be "amphibious" and live in both the wealthy elite society as well as the working society in New York where he is a lawyer.

Selden and Lily continue conversing, discussing her ambitions in the society while Selden chooses to belittle them. She finally asks him if he would marry her, and he responds that maybe he would if she wanted to marry him. They both get caught up in the moment, but it is destroyed by the sound of a motorcar that reminds Lily that she is pretending to be sick back at the house. Selden and Lily share a cigarette at the end, but Selden is no longer as friendly to her, telling her that he took no risks in offering to marry her if she wanted him.

Analysis

Lily establishes a pattern of not being able to commit herself, a pattern that starts here. Instead of going on a walk with Mr. Gryce, she takes the afternoon walk with Selden. This is a huge risk since Bertha Dorset considers it a direct attack on her. Lily is thus again risking her future by associating with Selden.

It was earlier alluded to that Selden essentially belongs to a clerical order as such. This is established in his comments about "the republic of the spirit" (73). Lily immediately knows what he is alluding to and asks him why she cannot join: "Why not? Is it a celibate order?" (74).

Selden's "republic of the spirit" serves as his protective and exclusive society. It allows him to find fault with everyone in order to exclude them, and is one of the reasons he will not marry. Lily tells him, "It is a close corporation, and you create arbitrary objections in order to keep people out" (75). In this sense Selden is the ideal man to be the observer in the novel since his perceptions will not be corrupted by Lily's influence.

Another feature that Selden brings into the novel is that of being amphibious, that is, being able to live with the elite and also with the working classes. "I have tried to remain amphibious." Selden is in fact the only man who works in the novel, and his ability to live in both worlds is symbolic of the role of the bachelor in the society. As Lily pointed out earlier, she would never be allowed the pleasure of living alone and still maintaining her societal position.

Once again the intimacy of the cigarette is shared with Selden, but now the cigarette is used to show casual friendship rather than sexual desire or marriage intrigue. This cigarette puts the final rejection on Mr. Gryce, for not only is Lily avoiding a walk with him, but she is also committing what he considers to be a vice.

Book I, Chapter 7

Mrs. Trenor admonishes Lily for spending time with Selden. It turns out that Mrs. Dorset, upset that Lily was stealing Selden away from her, retaliated by telling Percy Gryce several awful things about Lily and thereby caused him to run away from her. Mrs. Trenor continues with her reproach until Lily realizes that she is now fully back in her position of being a debtor, a position she had hoped Gryce would rescue her from. Mrs. Dorset enters the room and proceeds to mention the speed with which Gryce left Bellomont, striking out directly at Lily.

After the conversation ends, Mrs. Trenor has Lily pick up her husband. She goes to the station and rides back with him. In a moment of impulse, Lily makes him realize what an awful financial mess she is in and solicits his sympathy. He agrees to help her out, and put his hand over hers as if to claim her before they get arrive home.

Analysis

The cruelty of the society, and the way things return to haunt each of the characters, is exemplified in the following line: "they hold their tongues for years, and you think you're safe, but when the opportunity comes they remember everything" (81). This is especially true in Lily's case, where she is not destroyed from anything major, but rather from the many minor things that she does. The first of these is explained by Mrs. Dorset, who informs Lily that Mr. Gryce rejected her because of gambling. "Do you know, Lily, he told me he had never seen a girl play cards for money till he saw you doing it the other night?" The irony of the situation is that had she not played cards, she would have been excluded from the social set in a different way.

Money and claims are intimately tied together at this point. There is a dichotomy between Wall Street and the social life that we see, "This vast, mysterious Wall Street world of 'tips' and 'deals'" (87). Lily asks Trenor to invest her money for her, forgetting that money gives the lender the right to expect something in return. This has been shown already with Jack Stepney trying to introduce Rosedale, and even hinted at by Mr. Trenor when he mentions Rosedale's "advice" to him. It is a game that Lily does not know how to play, and one that will lead to her ultimate failure.

Book I, Chapter 8

Lily soon receives her first check from Gus Trenor for one thousand dollars and is elated to pay off her creditors. She assumes that there is no question of every having losses and having to pay for them. She next attends her cousin Jack Stepney's wedding where he marries Gwen Van Osburgh in an extravagantly done wedding. She spots Percy Gryce and plans to charm herself back into his good graces but then sees Selden and becomes flustered with the remembrance of their previous encounter.

She is interrupted by Gerty Farish who induces her to look at the bride's presents. They stop in front of the jewelry display and look at who gave what. Rosedale has succeeded in giving a huge diamond pendant while Percy Gryce gave a white sapphire. Gerty informs Lily that Percy is completely in love with Evie Van Osburgh, a woman whom Lily considers the dumbest of the Van Osburgh daughters.

Gus Trenor comes over and tells her that he has a fat check for four thousand dollars for her in his pocket. She thanks him, but realizes that he still expects her to do more for him. Trenor then asks her to spend some time with Rosedale, who has arrived but is being ignored by the other women present. Selden arrives and strikes up conversation with her, but is forced to withdraw when Trenor brings Rosedale over to greet her. She stares in silence until he mentions that her dressmaker had done a fine job, at which point she cleverly makes a joke and starts talking to him, wondering if Selden understood the allusion. At the end of her walk with Rosedale she encounters Mrs. Van Osburgh who secretly tells her that Evie and Gryce are already engaged.

Analysis

Epigrams are again made use of, this time with a harsh analysis of others, "it is almost as stupid to let your clothes betray that you know you are ugly as to have them proclaim that you think you are beautiful. Of course, being poor and dingy, it was wise of Gerty to have taken up philanthropy and symphony concerts" (94). This description is almost a betrayal of trust between the people, people who are supposed to be friends. It involves an 'or', and the statement itself makes no choice, but rather lays out the various possibilities.

Trenor, having loaned Lily money, already has started to assert his claim over her. He first touches her and now calls her Lily, using her first name. He indicates that the first debt she must pay by taking the time to speak to Rosedale. We become conscious at this point that Rosedale is not the malicious man he was to introduced to us as. Rather, he is the perfect capitalist trying to break into societies inner circle.

Book I, Chapter 9

Lily returns home to her aunt's house during the annual cleaning period. She encounters the same woman cleaning the stairs that she had first met at the Benedick and sharply orders the woman to make room for her to get by. Later the woman, a Mrs. Haffen, returns to the house with some letters written by Mrs. Dorset to Selden, letters that implicate her in an affair with him. Lily immediately realizes the value of the letters and eventually buys them after some haggling.

Mrs. Peniston returns from having had a discussion with her cousin concerning the Van Osburgh wedding. She mentions that Mrs. Dorset is the reason that Evie Van Osburgh and Percy Gryce met each other. She continues by adding that there had been a rumor that Lily was engaged to Gryce before Evie won him for herself. Back in her own room, Lily resolves to use the letters she has just purchased as a means of getting back at Mrs. Dorset for ruining her chances with Gryce.

Analysis

One of the remarkable ironies of the The House of Mirth is that the only person who resorts to illegal means, blackmail, is a poor woman. The corruption of the top people in society is confined to moral infractions, not legal ones. This is partially what puts Lily into such a bad position later in the novel, when she must decide whether to use the letters. For her to break the moral code that she has upheld means sinking to Bertha Dorset's level, a fact that Lily is not willing to accept.

Lily is also quite good at seeing the irony in her position. "It struck her with a flash of irony that she was indebted to Gus Trenor for the means of buying them [the letters]." That she is able to purchase her means of defeating Bertha Dorset with money gotten rather immorally is something that Lily recognizes as distasteful, and hence, ironic.

Book I, Chapter 10

Lily spends most of the autumn with her aunt, Mrs. Peniston, but soon starts to become bored. She enjoys taking her time to slowly spend the money that Gus Trenor has earned for her. On one occasion she runs into Gerty Farish and philanthropically hands out a large sum of money as a donation to Gerty's charity. She later accepts an invitation to one of Carrie Fisher's parties because she becomes the center of attention since she is the "highest" name on the list who attends, socially at least.

After Lily has returned to her aunt, Rosedale stops by one evening and pressures her into going to the opera with him. He reminds her that he knows everything about Mr. Trenor's investing on her behalf and tells her that she can share his opera box along with Carrie Fisher and Mr. Trenor. At the opera, she soon discovers that Gus Trenor expects her to spend time with him in return for the monetary favors he has bestowed on her. Their conversation is luckily interrupted by the arrival of George Dorset. He invites Lily to his house on behalf of his wife Bertha, an invitation she is happy to accept.

Analysis

Gerty Farish, so quickly rejected in the beginning, plays a large part in foreshadowing Lily's future. When Lily gives her money to Gerty Farish, it goes to a charity for poor woman with no work and no home. Lily pities them, not realizing she will someday be in their position.

There is now continued pressure from Trenor and also Rosedale concerning money. Lily is aware that Rosedale would consider her a wonderful prize if she agreed to marry him. Trenor, on the other hand, is merely interested in her sexually, and wants to spend time with her to make up for the money he has lent.

Book I, Chapter 11

In the poor stock market of the winter, Rosedale and Wellington Bry rank among the only men able to continue making a great deal of money. Rosedale, we are told, has started thinking that Lily might be the perfect person to complement his social ambitions were he to marry her. Meanwhile, Lily has accidentally offended her cousin Grace Stepney by excluding her from one of Mrs. Peniston's infrequent dinner parties. The next time Grace visits Mrs. Peniston she reveals to her that Lily has been seen with Gus Trenor a great deal lately, and insinuates that it is because Lily needs money to pay off her gambling debts. Mrs. Peniston, a highly moral woman, is extremely upset to hear that her niece is spending time with a married man, and even more upset to learn that she is gambling.

Analysis

The issue of revenge emerges again. Grace is seeking revenge here, the same way Bertha Dorset did, for a perceived slight against her. One of Lily's problems is that she is unable to take revenge the way the other women do and therefore suffers for her "immorality" in spite of being the most virtuous of the entire group. Grace will succeed in turning Mrs. Peniston away from Lily and eventually disinheriting her. It is also in Grace's interest to do so, since she stands to inherit everything.

Book I, Chapter 12

Lily, upset by the way things are proceeding, passes Judy Trenor in the street one day and receives a colder reception than she expects. She wonders if Mrs. Trenor has heard anything about her husband and his loans. In order to clear things up, Lily invites herself to a weekend party at Bellomont, but she does not succeed in making things better and returns home.

Meanwhile, the Wellington Brys have decided to throw a big party in order to seduce "society" into accepting them. Most of the necessary people arrive at the party, where the main attraction is a play in which various women present themselves in the settings of portraits. Lily is in the play and cleverly chooses to be in a Reynolds', thereby allowing her beauty to shine.

Selden is so taken in by her looks that he tries to immediately find her. He eventually does, and quickly leads her away to the privacy of the garden. They soon share a kiss and he tells Lily that he loves her, but this causes her to run away in distress. When Selden returns to the coat-room he sees Gus Trenor there. Mr. Trenor complains about the entire evening; he is obviously upset about Lily's display of herself.

Analysis

Lily's greatest triumph appears in this chapter, in the form of acting out a Reynolds' painting. Selden is taken with her beauty: "Its [her beauty's] expression was now so vivid that for the first time he seemed to see before him the real Lily Bart" (142). One question that arises is, what is the real Lily Bart and why does he think he sees her? The answer lies in her ability to display her beauty to the world in a modest yet overpowering way. Coupled with this beauty is Lily's morality, evidenced in this scene by the white dress she is wearing. Selden realizes that the "real" Lily is like a painting, with her beauty on display for the others, and yet maintaining her ethical and moral distance.

The garden scene with Selden is extraordinary in several ways. First, a garden is always a dangerous place to be, going back in literature to Eden in the Bible, and occurring as such in many Shakespearian dramas. The garden is a place where passion overcomes reason. Wharton even acknowledges this by explicitly connecting the scene with Shakespeare, first by alluding to The Tempest (Caliban and Miranda) and later to A Midsummer Night's Dream, "and about them was the transparent dimness of a midsummer night" (144). The scene culminates in a kiss, the only intimate sexual exchange in the entire book.

Book I, Chapter 13

Lily wakes up the next morning and has two invitations, one from Selden and one from Mrs. Trenor. She agrees to meet with Mrs. Trenor that night and goes to the house, but is instead admitted by Mr. Trenor. He tells her Judy is upstairs with a headache, but when Lily tries to leave he prevents her from going. She threatens to go upstairs and tell Judy what is going on, but he laughs and admits that his wife is not even in the house. He then demands that she pay him for the money he has invested for her, implying sexually, and Lily recoils at his advances. At the defining moment Mr. Trenor's old habits and upbringing make him stop accosting her, and she is able to call a cab and leave the house.

Analysis

The use of cigarettes to denote intimacy again emerges here. Mr. Trenor offers her a cigarette, but when she realizes that Mrs. Trenor is not there, she throws it away, symbolizing the rejection of his advances. Lily is saved in this scene by the strict training that each of them receives, namely the avoidance of any emotional dilemma. Trenor is stopped not by reason, but by his abhorrence of emotional conflicts. Note the paradoxical crudity of his manners combined with the force of his training; these two oppositions are at the heart of the elite society that Wharton is so lavishly criticizing.

Lily finds herself "alone in a place of darkness and pollution" (156). This use of pollution and dinginess, words that show up numerous times in the novel, foreshadows her rather swift decline. For Lily, who abhors dinginess, the rest of the novel will be a nightmare of either being involved with moral pollution or living in dinginess.

Book I, Chapter 14

Gerty Farish is excited by Selden's new interest in Lily, an interest that marks the first time he has fallen in love. Selden is excited when he returns to his rooms and finds a note from Lily agreeing to meet with him. He goes to eat with his cousin Gerty that night and compliments her on the way she lives. Later Selden turns the conversation to Lily and talks about her for the rest of the evening before leaving to go to Carrie Fisher's dinner party. He arrives after Lily has already left and overhears them talking about how Rosedale is now inclined to marry Lily after seeing her the night before. One of the people comments that she took off early and went to the Trenor's house, but they doubt it considering that Judy Trenor is at Bellomont.

Selden leaves the party and walks along Fifth Avenue with Mr. Van Alstyne. Van Alstyne points out the new house that Rosedale purchased and the house that the Wellington Brys just built. They stop in front of the Trenor's house and are talking when Lily happens to emerge and catch a cab. Mr. Van Alstyne tries to ask Selden not to talk about what they just saw, but Selden is already hurrying off.

Gerty Farish is livid that Selden has fallen in love with Lily because she feels that she has been pushed away by him. She starts to hate Lily and goes to bed but is unable to sleep. Lily shows up at her door late in the night and is crying, upset about her encounter with Mr. Trenor. Gerty overcomes her hatred and takes care of Lily, finally getting her to tell the entire story. They then share the single bed in the apartment and Lily falls asleep.

Analysis

The use and value of cigarettes is explicitly explicated by Van Alstyne at this point in the novel. "It would be a curious thing to study the effect of cigarettes on the relation of the sexes. Smoke is almost as great a solvent as divorce; both tend to obscure the moral issue" (168). This line indicates the intimate nature of smoking, the way it "obscure(s) the moral issue". By linking it to divorce he is making a judgment, implying that smoking leads people to make poor decisions. Indeed, Lily could easily be said to be the victim of smoking, a vice that twice gets her into trouble as a result of sharing a cigarette with Selden.

The second great mistake is made here, this time due to observational problems rather than revenge. Selden sees Lily emerge from Trenor's house and thinks that the rumors about her and Trenor are true. Selden's fault lies in the fact that he thinks he knows what has happened when in reality he knows nothing.

Book I, Chapter 15

Lily wakes up in Gerty Farish's bed and has some tea. She then heads home to her Aunt Peniston's house and goes to her room. After counting up all the money Mr. Trenor has given her, she realizes that she is nine thousand dollars in debt to him. Lily makes the bold move of going to her aunt and asking for money. Mrs. Peniston listens to Lily but only offers to pay her dress-makers' bills. When Lily admits to gambling debts she becomes stony and refuses to hear another word in addition to refusing to pay the debts.

Lily then realizes that it is almost time for Selden to arrive and meet her. She waits for him, but he does not show up. After an hour the doorbell rings and Rosedale walks in. He soon tells her that he has enough money to be a member of the elite New York society, but that he lacks the right woman to spend it. Rosedale hints that marrying him would end all of her monetary problems forever. Lily, still enamored with Selden, is polite to him and asks for more time to consider his offer. After the next day passes with no message from Selden, she reads in the newspaper that he is sailing on a cruise ship bound for Havana. Later in the day she receives an invitation from Bertha Dorset inviting her to go on a cruise in the Mediterranean.

Analysis

Rosedale, also enamored by Lily, offers her what seems to be a last chance at marriage. Always afraid of actually marrying anyone, Lily again passes it up for Selden, not realizing that he will not marry her anymore. Indeed, she only learns about Selden's departure in the newspaper. This is a sign that rather than making the news, i.e. being in the paper herself, she is now being cut out of the loop and has to receive her knowledge the way common people do.

The end of the first book also marks a move from her aunt's house, a solid location, to a ship. The ship, an unstable location, represents the move in her life from secure surroundings to insecure poverty. This will take place by degrees, but from this point onwards Lily will no longer have a place to call her own and will instead have to rely on the charity of others.

Book II, Chapter 1

Selden is on vacation in Monte Carlo for a week and is wandering around when he runs into a group consisting of the Wellington Brys, the Stepneys, Carrie Fisher, and a European lord. They all head out to lunch in a restaurant overlooking the harbor. From there, they see the Dorset's yacht pulling into the harbor. They soon mention that Lily Bart has been hugely popular among the aristocrats in the area, making Selden remember his feelings for her in a very painful way.

Later that afternoon Selden and Carrie Fisher enjoy a walk together and then sit down to smoke. She soon tells him that Lily was invited onto the Dorset yacht in order to distract George Dorset so that his wife could have an affair with Ned Silverton. Selden becomes quite upset by this news and hastily leaves, pretending that he has to return to Nice and do work. However, at the train station he unexpectedly runs into Lily and the Dorsets, all of whom have also decided to go to Nice and meet the Duchess. Lily is immensely polite to him, but Selden gets the feeling that she is hovering on the edge of a cliff, about to fall in. Later Selden meets with Lord Hubert Dacey and the aristocrat informs him that it is a pity Lily's aunt is in New York, alluding to the fact that Lily is about to fall socially without even realizing it.

Analysis

We see that Selden has not forgotten Lily in spite of his attempts to avoid her. When he sees her he realizes that her beauty "had had a transparency through which the fluctuations of the spirit were sometimes tragically visible; now its impenetrable surface suggested a process of crystallization which had fused her whole being into one hard, brilliant substance" (198). The process whereby Lily moves from youth to adulthood is described here, from a malleable beauty that can adapt to different situations to a permanent one that cannot. Her solid form of beauty will be difficult because she can only rely on her beauty as it has crystallized; no longer will Lily be able to use her skills at being a different person to different people in order to survive.

The change in Lily's nature is reflected in Selden's unconscious opinion of her. "He seemed to see her poised on the brink of a chasm, with one graceful foot advanced to assert her unconsciousness that the ground was failing her" (199). We see the metaphor for Lily falling from her heights and not even being aware of that fact.

The intimacy of smoking cigarettes is continued even between Selden and Carrie Fisher. She takes the moment to reveal secrets and confidences concerning the Dorsets and Lily. For Selden this moment is impersonal as he struggles to not think about Lily. What we see is that cigarettes are used when people want to be intimate in terms of friendship, perhaps with sexual overtones, but never actually leading to any form of sexual act.

Book II, Chapter 2

Lily is aboard the Sabrina, the boat belonging to the Dorsets. She goes on land in order to meet the Duchess, a woman whom most of the wealthy Americans are eager to become friends with. While in the Casino she runs into Carrie Fisher who tells Lily that she is leaving the Brys. Carrie asks Lily to make sure that the Brys are invited to meet the Duchess, an act that would put them in Lily's debt for a short while.

George Dorset catches Lily later in the day and asks her what time Bertha came home. He realizes that his wife was out all night with the young Ned Silverton and that she only got home late the next morning. He breaks down and tells Lily everything that he is afraid has happened to his marriage, and that Lily has been the only person able to help him for the past few months. He plans to go to a lawyer and Lily makes him use Selden, thinking to herself that Selden is the only lawyer capable of saving the reputation of both Dorsets.

Lily returns to the Sabrina and is surprised to find Mrs. Dorset on board along with the Duchess. They are finalizing plans for a dinner with the Brys and the Duchess the next evening. After the guests depart, Mrs. Dorset accuses Lily of being alone with her husband the night before. She hints that Lily was doing something irresponsible. Lily, taken aback by this reversal of the truth, foolishly does not mention the letters she has that Bertha wrote to Selden, and leaves in shame.

Analysis

Dorset is symbolic of the men in his group in that, "he wanted her to suffer with him, not to help him suffer less" (211). Lily realizes that there is a desire to draw people downwards rather than help them move upwards. George Dorset epitomizes this desire after breaking down and revealing his feelings to Lily. Carrie Fisher acknowledges this problem later when she tells Lily that she has found one and a half potential husbands for her, meaning that Mr. Dorset is no longer a full man.

The ability of Bertha Dorset to harm Lily is almost proportional to Lily's inability to harm Bertha. There is no reason at this stage why Lily should not use her letters and force Bertha to become friendly to her again. In this tragic moment we watch as Bertha again reverses the truth and harms Lily rather than herself, all the while making the reader wish that Lily would get off her moral pinnacle and lash out herself.

Book II, Chapter 3

Selden meets with Mr. Dorset and convinces him to do nothing for a while, other than to act natural. That night they all eat dinner on the yacht and Lily struggles to keep up the conversation, but fails miserably since Mrs. Dorset is refusing to be friendly with her. The next day Lily returns to the shore and meets with Selden, who has succeeded in convincing Mr. Dorset to do nothing at all. Selden, after speaking with Lily, quickly realizes that Lily is in over her head and that Mrs. Dorset will likely contrive a story that implicates Lily in the marital scandal. He tries to find her immediately, but instead meets Lord Hubert and Mrs. Bry, who invite him to dinner.

Selden accepts, and meets up with the Dorsets and Lily at the restaurant that night. He takes her aside and asks her to leave the yacht, but she refuses, claiming she is necessary to protect Mrs. Dorset. He agrees that probably nothing will happen and they return to watch the Dorsets act as if nothing were wrong. Selden watches Lily throughout the dinner and notices that she seems in complete command of everything that is going on around her, and wonders about every thinking that she might need his help. However, when they get ready to return to the yacht for the night, Mrs. Dorset announces that Lily will not be joining them. Taken aback, Lily composes herself and acts as if she has decided not to stay on the yacht any longer. She leaves with Selden instead, who makes her go to her cousin Jack Stepney's hotel and spend the night there.

Analysis

The true mark of the irreversibility of Lily's social decline occurs when she is kicked off the yacht. Not only is her permanent home no longer available (her living in Europe is a sign of this fact even if Mrs. Peniston has not yet died), but she now can no longer even live on a transitory boat. For Lily, this means that she will now progress downward through the circles of society. Again, the reader is left with the question of why Lily does not threaten Bertha Dorset in return by revealing her stash of letters. However, the reason lies in the fact that she is different from the social elite in precisely the way that she does not violate the moral codes. For Lily to resort to blackmail would mean that she is no longer Lily.

Book II, Chapter 4

Mrs. Peniston has died and all of her relatives are gathered in order to find out to whom she has left her estate. Lily is almost assured of the inheritance, but is surprised to receive only ten thousand dollars. Instead, Grace Stepney inherits the remainder of the estate, valued at nearly four hundred thousand dollars. In disgrace, Lily leaves the house with Gerty Farish and thinks that it is ironic that her aunt left her with just enough to pay off her debt to Mr. Trenor.

Lily heads off to Europe to escape her declining reputation in America, but soon returns to see if she can remedy the situation. She discovers that it is too late, the lies that Mrs. Dorset spread about her having already been accepted by the other families. She resolves to appeal to Mrs. Trenor, and carefully starts eating in restaurants that she knows the Trenors tend to go to. She succeeds in running into Mrs. Trenor, but the latter's unwillingness to be friendly to Lily implies that Lily has been completely kicked "out" of the social elite group.

Lily realizes that she must pay off her debt to Gus Trenor immediately but she is unable to do so since her inheritance has not yet been paid out. She turns to Grace Stepney and begs her for an advance on the ten thousand, but Grace informs her that she has not received the inheritance yet either. Grace then becomes infuriated with Lily's insistence and informs her that the reason Lily was cut out of the will was because of her debts.

Analysis

Lily's disinheritance nails into place the final act of treachery that will ruin Lily. Grace Stepney, with her false gossip and rumors, wins out over Lily. The cruelest part of the scene is where she even tells Lily what rumors she passed on to Mrs. Peniston, thereby confirming the disinheritance. For Lily it is again a moment where she is called upon to remain aloof and absurdly polite, when by all normal standards she should be despising Grace for her actions.

Book II, Chapter 5

As Lily is leaving Grace Stepney's new house, she is met by Carrie Fisher who has taken pity on her. Carrie invites her to go join the Gormers at a party they are hosting, a party that includes people of a lower social set than what Lily is used to. She quickly joins them, however, realizing that she would rather be part of their society than excluded from it. A few days later Carrie convinces Lily to join the Gormers on a trip to Alaska so that she can stay out of the public eye for a while longer.

After returning to New York, Lily meets with Carrie Fisher and is informed that she will have to marry in order to get out of her present predicament. Carrie suggests either Mr. Dorset, who is having problems with his marriage again, or Sim Rosedale. Lily has been thinking about Mr. Rosedale and decides to try and make him marry her for love since she can no longer help him advance socially.

Analysis

From this point on we will watch as Lily descends from one rung of society to a lower rung. On arriving in the world of the Gormers, "it struck her, now that she was in it, as only a flamboyant copy of her own world" (242). This sets up the image of worlds within worlds, or which she happened to be a part of the innermost circle. The irony for Lily is that all these worlds are the same, and it is merely that actors who are different.

Lily's state has noticeably declined while Rosedale's has risen. She realizes the nature of the change when she contemplates marrying him. Lily states that since she is no longer useful to him in a social context, she will have to rely on love to win him over. This is of course impossible; even Selden was able to prevent love for her from clouding his judgment, and a man such as Rosedale would never be so foolish as to put love before social standing.

Book II, Chapter 6

Carrie accompanies the Gormers to one of their new houses and while there meets George Dorset while taking a walk. He pleads with her to give him some proof of his wife's infidelities, implying that he wants to divorce her and marry Lily instead. Lily becomes afraid and runs away from him, telling him she cannot help. When she returns to the Gormer house, Mrs. Gormer informs her that Bertha Dorset had been there for a visit.

Lily head back to the city and finds a place in a hotel, paying more for her rent than she can afford. She is soon visited by Mr. Dorset who implores her to help him out of his situation, but Lily refuses to reveal anything. She then goes to visit Carrie Fisher and finds Rosedale in Carrie's house, most likely invited there so he and Lily could meet. After the dinner Carrie talks with Lily alone, and tells her that in order to defeat Bertha Dorset, Lily will have to either marry Mr. Dorset or marry someone else.

Analysis

Lily's dual nature, her Diana-like hunt for a marriage that can save her combined with her strong sense of freedom and fear of marital commitment, will permeate her decisions and fate for the rest of the novel. She again has a choice of getting back into the society by either marrying George Dorset or going to Rosedale. Lily, however, refuses to use her letters in order to achieve this goal; she takes the moral high road and will suffer for it.

Book II, Chapter 7

Lily, having decided to try and marry Rosedale, goes on a walk with him. She tells him that she is willing to marry him now, but he informs her that the situation has changed. Rosedale admits that he does not believe the stories about her, but that marrying her would set him back several years in his attempts to break into society.

Rosedale then asks Lily why she has not revealed the letters written by Mrs. Dorset. He lays out a plan whereby Lily forces Mrs. Dorset to renew their friendship, after which she marries him and achieves the financial independence necessary to prevent Mrs. Dorset from ever attacking her again. Lily is suddenly scared by the baseness of the proposition and runs off, leaving Rosedale to think that she is really trying to protect Selden.

Analysis

Rosedale explicates what the reader has already inferred: "Last year I was willing to marry you, and you wouldn't look at me; this year - well, you appear to be willing. Now, what has changed in the interval? Your situation, that's all" (265). Lily has declined to the point where she is no longer useful, and Rosedale has risen to the point where he does not need her. However, her beauty still attracts him, and his one concession is to accept her as a wife provided she reestablish her ties with Mrs. Dorset. We again see Lily recoil from the prospect of marriage at the last minute, running off and avoiding it.

Book II, Chapter 8

Lily continues slipping lower and lower along the social ladder. On one of her visits to Gerty Farish she learns that Ned Silverton has gone deeply into debt with his gambling, thereby ruining the family. His two sisters had just gone to see Gerty and ask her to find them jobs with which to help pay his debts. Lily laments to Gerty the fact that she will soon be in the same plight as the Silverton sisters if she does not find something to soon. She goes to Carrie Fisher, on whom she is relying to find her something.

Gerty meets with Selden and urges him to go to Lily and make sure that she is okay. He takes her advice and goes to visit Lily, but it turns out that Lily has already transferred to another hotel. The clerk gives him her forwarding address, and when he sees that it has a different name on it, Selden rips up the note in a rage and stalks out.

Analysis

Selden's isolated world is revealed more and more, justifying what Lily said about his standards of exclusion in the first part of the book. "It was much simpler for him to judge Miss Bart by her habitual conduct than by the rare deviations from it which had thrown her so disturbingly in his way; and every act of hers which made the recurrence of such deviations more unlikely confirmed the sense of relief with which he returned to the conventional view of her" (281). This is an example of how Selden builds his own world and then exclude others based on minor reasons, in this case the rumors asserted by society. He alone of the characters will fail at an emotional level to come to terms with what he really knows about Lily Bart.

Lily now makes the transition to a hotel, again representing a sign of the lack of permanence of her abodes. The hotel is even more transitory than a ship since it can be left so much more easily. Lily's choice of accommodation is important from here onwards because it reflects the state of her life. Her final moments take place in a boarding house, a place that is as dingy and polluted as she can imagine.

Book II, Chapter 9

Lily's new job is to help a lady named Mrs. Norma Hatch into the next social tier. Lily feels as if she has entered a social level lower than that of the Gormers, but is surprised to see that Ned Silverton and Freddy Van Osburgh are members of the elite class that spend time with her new group. Lily struggles to get Mrs. Hatch to start conforming to her perception of what behavior is necessary to move upwards, and soon realizes that Ned Silverton is trying to get Freddie Van Osburgh to consider marrying Mrs. Hatch.

One afternoon Selden arrives in order to see Lily. They are polite to each other, and Selden offers himself to her someone to talk to. Lily realizes that he is frightened by the prospect of emotional feelings for her, and is upset that he is so desperate to prevent any feelings from emerging. He tells her point-blank that she needs to leave Mrs. Hatch and rejoin Gerty. Lily informs him that she cannot do that since she owes every penny of her forthcoming inheritance. She then rejects Selden as a friend and makes him leave, putting up an unemotional barrier to his presence.

Analysis

The nature of the training that the characters receive is part of what destroys them. In the tense scene between Lily and Selden, "the situation between them was one which could have been cleared up only by a sudden explosion of feeling, and their whole training and habit of mind were against the chances of such an explosion" (287). Neither of them can overcome this training, a form of behavior that prevents the release of any form of emotion. While the bad side of such training is presented in this scene, recall that Lily relied on the same training to stop Mr. Trenor in his desire for her earlier.

Book II, Chapter 10

Lily realizes too late that she has to leave Mrs. Hatch in order to save her own reputation. She returns to Gerty, but is blamed by the elite society with having contrived to set up Mrs. Hatch with Freddy Van Osburgh. Gerty and Carrie Fisher conspire to find her a job in a hat shop and Lily is put to work making hats. However, her skills are no use there, and even two months later she is still being rebuked for her shoddy work. After a second rebuke for the same mistake, Lily pretends that she is sick and heads home.

She stops at a pharmacy and picks up some pills. The clerk tells her to be careful and not take to much, since an overdose of the drug has apparently already killed several people. She resumes her walk home and runs into Rosedale, who is shocked to see her. He invites her to tea, and during their conversation she reveals the entire story of her borrowing the money from Mr. Trenor and how she has to pay it back. Rosedale is shocked to learn the truth and accompanies her home, even more shocked when he sees the poor place where she lives.

Lily is starting to get lonely in her isolation. She has begun taking the drug that she purchased, a drug that is meant to combat sleeplessness but that also allows her to forget her obligations for a while. Concerned over her state, she starts to contemplate implementing the plan that Rosedale offered her before, in which she uses her letters to force Mrs. Dorset to befriend her again.

Analysis

The chloral drug that Lily purchases is a sleeping agent, a means whereby she can put away the troubles of the material world. The danger here is one of death. Lily's desire to escape material problems will cause her to play with death, the only real solution for a woman of her class who has been excluded from material wealth.

Book II, Chapter 11

Lily stands on Fifth Avenue and watches the carriages drive past with the wealthy people that she formerly spent time with. She has lost her job at the hat shop as a result of an annual staff reduction. When she arrives back at her boarding house she finds Rosedale present. He has been so shaken by her situation that he offers to loan her the money to pay off Gus Trenor as part of a pure business transaction. Lily rejects his offer again.

That night she tries to sleep, but lies awake all night, unable to sleep. The next morning she heads outside for a walk and makes a decision to go to Mrs. Dorset. She returns to her room and pulls out the packet of the letters. As she is walking towards the Dorset's house, she passes Selden's apartment. In a sudden moment of inspiration, she enters his house.

Analysis

The House of Mirth is a very well structured novel that has numerous parallels built into it. One of these parallels occurs here in dramatic form, that of Lily walking down the streets and approaching Mrs. Dorset's house on the same street that Selden lives on. She enters his apartment as well, thereby mimicking the first chapter. However, a difference exists in the fact that she is alone at this point. For Lily, being alone is the same as death, in some ways worse, because her entire life has been built on being observed and interpreted. The fact that she is willing to enter Selden's house alone means that her position in society is so low as to be unnoticeable. Recall her earlier "indiscretion" of entering his house accompanied by him. Since doing so alone is infinitely worse, she is in reality already dead and therefore able to break the rules with impunity.

Book II, Chapter 12

Lily's visit with Selden turns into her first truly sentimental moment in the novel. In a moment of emotion, she breaks down a starts crying, telling Selden that his faith in her that she was different from all the others is what has sustained her thus far. She realizes that his former love for her was now gone, but that instead her love for him remained. She makes him build up the fire and before she leaves she drops the letters that she has from Bertha Dorset into the flames.

Analysis

The sentimentalism expressed by Lily here is one of the most unrealistic scenes of the novel. It breaks with everything we know about Lily Bart, and if we are really to believe her sentimentality then it ruins the entire image of her we have had before, dealing with each situation with her stoicism and refined aloofness. In the Wall Street world of boom and bust cycles that Lily is a part of, this scene should not be taking place, and Wharton apparently misses the incongruity it has with the rest of the novel.

Book II, Chapter 13

Lily, worn out from walking, goes and sits down on a bench in one of the parks. A passerby stops and recognizes her. The woman, named Nettie Struther, was one of the working girls she donated money to while spending time with Gerty earlier in the novel. The woman realizes that Lily is sick and takes her back to her place to warm up. She tells Lily that thanks to the money she was able to recover and get married, and even has a baby.

Lily leaves Nettie feeling much more energized than before. She returns home and lays out all of her dresses, including the Reynolds' dress that she wore at the Bry's party. She then puts them all away again. The maid hands her a letter, and it turns out to be the check for ten thousand dollars that Lily has been waiting to inherit. She takes the money and puts it in an envelope addressed to her bank and writes a check for the same amount to Gus Trenor. Feeling extremely tired, she decides to take her chloral sleeping drug. However, desperate for sleep, she measures out more than the maximum dosage and drinks it. Soon her thoughts start to become subdued and she eventually drifts off into a pleasant sleep.

Analysis

The ending is permanently ambiguous concerning the nature of her death: accident or suicide? One of the reasons for the ambiguity is that Wharton has shown us two versions of Lily's life throughout the novel. We have seen Selden's interpretation and also Lily's. We realize at the point of her death that Lily would never need to commit suicide because her morals are so strongly intact; yet according to societies interpretation of her suicide is really the only form of escape.

Lily's moment of death is strongly foreshadowed by her laying out the dresses. They represent her memories, much the same as the last flash of a person's life that is supposed to occur before dying. This is a highly symbolic moment because Lily locks her memories in her trunk, thereby shutting them out of her life forever.

Wharton interestingly raises the specter of salvation at the end in the form of a single word. "As she lay there, she said to herself that there was something she must tell Selden, some word she had found should make life clear between them" (335). However, Lily dies before being able to recall what the word is.

Book II, Chapter 14

Selden goes for a walk that takes him straight to Lily's boarding house where he is excited to see her. He has found a word that he needs to say to her, a way to clear everything up between them. As he enters the boarding house he unexpectedly meets Gerty Farish, who wonders that he should have arrived so soon. With a sense of bad premonition, Selden enters the room and sees Lily lying there dead. Gerty explains that she clearly died from an overdoes of the chloral.

Selden remains in the room alone and looks around, knowing it is his last half hour to be with Lily. He finds the letters that she wrote, but when he sees Gus Trenor's name on the one envelope he recoils from it. Judging incorrectly that she must have some reason for writing Gus so soon after meeting with him, all of his feelings for her dissipate and Selden goes about his remaining search of the room with cold detachment. He finds the note that he wrote her many months earlier, and some of his feelings for her return. Selden also finds her checkbook and reads through it, astonished to discover that Lily was repaying Gus Trenor several thousand dollars. Selden is not sure whether this revelation heightens the mystery or deepens it, but he finally concludes that life has conspired against them both.

Analysis

Selden now parallels Lily in having found a word to solve their mutual problems. "He had found the word he meant to say to her, and it could not wait another moment to be said" (337). We can only assume that Selden is now willing to marry her, but that he is too late. The nature of the word is never revealed, it remains lost the same way his love for Lily is extinguished at the end.

Although Selden is the one person most like the reader, he still judges incorrectly even after Lily's death. He is an observer, a narrator for the reader, but a poor one who jumps to conclusions far to quickly. Thus when he sees the letter to Gus Trenor he assumes more than he should. After reading her checkbook and seeing what her connection with Gus really is, he is still unable to be sure of the facts presented.

Selden's world is one where he cannot except the personal blame for a failure, even an emotional failure such as he has had with Lily. "He saw that all the conditions of life had conspired to keep them apart" (342). Knowing so much more about Lily that Selden does, we know that this is simply not true. Selden's pat excuse to hide his own cowardice and his failure to live up to Lily's expectations represents his further cowardice at confronting the fact that he has lost someone he really loved. It instead maintains the excuse for his life as a bachelor.

• Biography of Edith Wharton
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• Summary and Analysis of Book I, Chapters 1-5
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• Summary and Analysis of Book II, Chapters 6-10
• Summary and Analysis of Book II, Chapters 11-14
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