The House of Mirth Illustrated

By: Wharton, Edith

Lily Bart, a beautiful but impoverished socialite, is on her way to a house party at Bellomont, the country home of her best friend, Judy Trenor. Her pressing task is to find a husband with the requisite wealth and status to maintain her place in New York society. Judy has arranged for her to spend more time in the company of Percy Gryce, a potential suitor who is wealthy but whom Lily finds boring. Lily grew up surrounded by elegance and luxury-an atmosphere she believes she cannot live without, as she has learnt to abhor "dinginess." The loss of her father's wealth and the death of her parents left her an orphan at about the age of twenty. Lacking an inheritance or a caring protector, she adapts to life as ward of her strait-laced aunt Julia Peniston from whom she receives an erratic allowance, a fashionable address, and good food, but little direction or parenting. Lily despises her aunt Julia and avoids her whenever possible while simultaneously relying on her for both necessities and luxuries.Additional challenges to her success in the "marriage market" are her advancing age-at age twenty-nine she has been on the "marriage market" for more than ten years-her penchant for gambling at bridge leaving her with debts beyond her means to pay, her efforts to keep up with her wealthy friends, her innermost desire to marry for love as well as money and status, and her longing to be free of the claustrophobic constrictions and routines of upper-crust society.Threats to Lily's reputation exist because of her tendency to push the limits of polite and acceptable behavior. For example, on the way to visit Bellomont, she impulsively visits the Manhattan flat of her unmarried friend Lawrence Selden during the two-hour wait for the train. While leaving the building, she encounters Mr. Rosedale, a Jewish businessman known to her set. Attempting to cover the appearance of an indiscretion, she makes her gaffe worse by telling an obvious lie: she pretends to have been consulting her dress-maker. g] This, it turns out, is not the only time Lily is caught in an obvious lie: she has the habit of misrepresenting herself and being caught.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B085RTT2Y3
• ISBN13: 9798624104402
• Release Date: January 1
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 448 Pages
• Weight: 1.13 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 8.5"