House of Mirth

Question 1

Critical quotation on Lily posing as Mrs Reynolds in the tableaux vivants

Answer 1

Michael Gora says: “Lily has here turned herself into a commodity, and poses as if she’s up for auction. The scene works to literalize the idea of the marriage market”

Question 2

Critical quotation on the way society is presented in the novel

Answer 2

“Wharton uses Lily as an attack on “an irresponsible, grasping and morally corrupt upper class.” - Shari Benstock “A critical history of the House of Mirth” (1994)

Question 3

2 quotes that describe Lily’s beauty

Answer 3

1. “his eyes had been refreshed by the sight of Miss Lily Bart”
2. Ned Van Alstyne: “I never knew till tonight what an outline Lily has”

Question 4

2 quotes to describe the tragic inevitability of Lily’s life

Answer 4

Selden:
1. “she was so evidently the victim of the civilisation which had produced her, that the links of her bracelet seemed like manacles chaining her to her fate.”

2. “In the long moment before the curtain fell, he had time to feel the whole tragedy of her life”

Question 5

What Mrs Bart says to Lily when she is younger

Answer 5

“You’ll get it all back with your face”

Question 6

Quote to show how the novel uses the concept of social Darwinism

Answer 6

Lily is likened to “the orchid basking in its artificially created atmosphere” which can “round the delicate curves of its petals undisturbed by the ice on the panes”

Question 7

Carry Fisher’s psychoanalytical reading of Lily’s repeated mistakes

Answer 7

“That’s Lily all over, you know; she works like a slave preparing the ground and sowing her seed; but the day she ought to be reaping the harvest she oversleeps herself or goes off on a picnic”

Question 8

Quote from book 2 to show how Lily is ageing

Answer 8

“the warm fluidity of youth is chilled into its final shape”

Question 9

Lily’s feelings about being a woman upon seeing Selden’s apartment

Answer 9

“How delicious to have a place like this all to one’s self! What a miserable thing it is to be a woman.”

Question 10

Quote to show how Lily is ignorant of the world of poverty beyond her social circle

Answer 10

“some of these bundles of feeling were clothed in shapes not so unlike her own, with eyes meant to look on gladness, and young lips shaped for love – this discovery gave Lily one of those sudden shocks of pity that sometimes decentralize a life.”

Question 11

2 quotes about the furies

Answer 11

1. “Oh Gerty, the furies… you know the noise of their wings- alone, at night, in the dark?”
2. “The winged furies were now prowling gossips who dropped in on each other for tea”

Question 12

Lily’s first emotional breakdown at the end of book 1 when she confesses to Gerty

Answer 12

“But I am a bad- a bad girl- all my thoughts are bad- I have always had bad people about me”

Question 13

Lily’s view on marriage and the way it differs for men and women

Answer 13

“a girl must, a man may if he chooses”

Question 14

2 quotes in which marriage is being spoken about using the language of business/money

Answer 14

1. Selden: “There must be plenty of capital on the lookout for such an investment”
2. Upon proposing to Lily, Rosedale says “I’m just giving you a plain business statement”

Question 15

2 quotes to show Lily’s view on how women are treated by society

Answer 15

1. “A woman is asked out as much for her clothes as for herself. Who wants a dingy woman?”
2. “The truth about any girl is that once she’s talked about she is done for”

Question 16

How Selden and Lily view the rest of society

Answer 16

“How dreary and trivial these people were!”

Question 17

2 quotes to describe New York society in the gilded age

Answer 17

1. “The great gilt cage in which they were all huddled for the mob to gape at”
2. “They hold their tongues for years and you think you’re safe, but when the opportunity comes they remember everything”

Question 18

2 quotes about Lily’s relationship with Gus Trenor

Answer 18

1. Lily wants Gus to help her make money through investment, so she lets him “lean a little nearer” and hold her hand
2. “Hang it, the man who pays for the dinner is generally allowed to have a seat at the table”

Question 19

Lily’s relationship with money

Answer 19

“You know I am horribly poor and terribly expensive. I must have a great deal of money.”

Question 20

Mrs Stepney showing how high society views money

Answer 20

“Well it’s only about four hundred thousand”

$11m today

Question 21

Description of Simon Rosedale (2)

Answer 21

“a plump rosy man of the blond Jewish type, with smart London clothes that fitted him like upholstery, and small sidelong eyes which gave him the air of appraising people as if they were bric-a-brac”

“he was the same little Jew who had been served up and rejected a dozen times at the social board”

Question 22

Description of Bertha Dorset

Answer 22

“She was smaller and thinner than Lily Bart”

Question 23

Description of Selden

Answer 23

He has a “stoic carelessness of material things, combined with Epicurean’s pleasure in them” (epicurean- lavish, pleasure seeker)

Question 24

What Selden says to Lily on the subject of them marrying

Answer 24

“If I had, it should be yours, you know” (if he was rich, he would marry her)

Question 25

2 quotes to show what Lily thinks about Gerty Farish

Answer 25

1. Lily describes Gerty Farish as typifying “the mediocre and the ineffectual” and calls her “dingy” (society is reflected in how Lily perceives other women)
2. She is a “parasite in the moral order”

Question 26

3 physical characteristics of Gus Trenor

Answer 26

Gus has an “intensely white forehead” and “fat red fingers”, he is a “beast”

Question 27

What Gerty Farish does when she realises that Selden does not love her; he loves Lily

Answer 27

“Woman-like, she accused the woman”

Question 28

Judy Trenor on Bertha Dorset (a comment on society)

Answer 28

“it’s much safer to be fond of dangerous people but she is dangerous”

Question 29

Description of Judy Trenor

Answer 29

“Mrs Trenor ranked as the woman who was least likely to ‘go back’ on her”

Question 30

Lily’s relationship with luxury

Answer 30

(at Bellomont) “Her whole being dilated in an atmosphere of luxury; it was the background she required, the only climate she could breathe in”

Question 31

What Lily says to Selden about them marrying

Answer 31

“you can’t possibly think I want to marry you”