I love books about people who perish for staying true to their principles, regardless of what these principles are. I also love books which make me wonder what I would have done in the hero/heroine's situation -- whether I would have given in to temptation or let my better self prevail. So I love Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth, which delivers on both counts, and then some.

The House of Mirth chronicles the rise and fall of Lily Bart, a stunningly beautiful late-nineteenth-century socialite whose fortune sadly doesn't match her looks. Raised to believe beauty and fun are all that matters in life, Lily has trouble reconciling herself to her reduced circumstances. She realises she has to marry a rich man to keep up her current lifestyle, and doesn't lack for wealthy admirers, but each time she comes close to making a good match, she sabotages her prospects. Partly this is because she is unconsciously in love with a man who sadly has no great fortune to put at her disposal; and partly it's because despite her increasingly urgent need of money, she is too snobbish and refined to bring herself to marry a man who offends her aesthetic and social sensibilities. So far, so Jane Austen, but Wharton wouldn't be Wharton if she didn't add some venom to the story, and some tragedy, too. Rather a lot of tragedy, actually.

The House of Mirth can be read on several levels. First of all, it's a parlour drama in the grand style of Jane Austen and Henry James (but more modern than either). Secondly, it's a love story -- a very tragic one indeed. Mostly, though, it's a critique of a society that creates women like Lily -- a society in which well-bred women are not taught to be independent, but rather to be just charming and beautiful enough to ensnare a wealthy man whose fortune they can then squander without any moral compunction. It's a critique of a hypocritical society in which married women (and men) can do as they please, but unmarried girls like Lily Bart have to be very careful indeed. Lily's Gilded-Age New York is a society in transition -- a society in which old manners and morals are increasingly being replaced by money and conspicuous consumption. On the outset, Lily seems to be part of a fast, shallow and profligate modern crowd, but as the story unfolds, the reader discovers she is not quite so corrupted as she seems. She still has some Old New York values left in her: naïveté, loyalty, chastity, discretion, and most of all, dignity. Needless to say, modern society being what it is, these old-fashioned values prove to be her undoing. Even when she is dealt a card with which she could turn a distinctly disadvantageous situation to her favour, Lily refuses to use it, choosing instead to suffer in silence and penury. Whether this is because using her trump card would place her on a par with the morally bankrupt people who make up her set or because she is too weak and exhausted to put up a fight is anyone's guess, but it makes for interesting speculation. And for introspection, for one inevitably ends up wondering how one would have behaved in Lily's position. Provided one would ever have found oneself in such a position in the first place, for unless I'm very much mistaken, most sensible women would have married Selden a few chapters into the book and dispensed with the rest of Lily's adventures. But that wouldn't have left Wharton with much of a story, would it?

Wharton's first novel suffers from a minor overdose of melodrama and may be a bit too heavy on descriptions of parties and social events for those of us who don't particularly care about such things, but in all other regards it's a triumph. As a depiction of an era and of changing upper-class society, it's as powerful as anything Wharton ever wrote, although the social satire isn't as scathing as it is in The Custom of the Country. As a portrayal of a tragic heroine, it is quite simply superb. For all her blindness and ineffectiveness, Lily is an excellent protagonist -- witty, socially astute, an asset to any assembly. If she has a spectacular talent for making bad decisions, it only serves to make her more likeable. For that is the amazing thing about The House of Mirth -- the reader never quite loses his sympathy for Lily, despite her obvious flaws. Wharton may satirise the society that has produced Lily, but she never goes so far as to satirise Lily herself, which makes her fate all the more tragic.

The House of Mirth may not be Wharton’s best novel (I think I prefer both The Age of Innocence and The Custom of the Country), but like all her work, it's eminently readable -- beautifully written and full of acute social and psychological insights (particularly into Lily's position). If it's only for people who like flawed heroines and tragic endings, so be it.