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The House of Mirth

Edith Wharton

Start date: March 1, 2018

Finish date: May 31, 2018

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Nov 14, 2024 Shirley (stampartiste) rated it it was amazing

Shelves: to-read-in-2024, challenge-bingo-2024, setting-france-riviera, read-classics, published-1900-1999

To many of us alive today, only a century or so separates us from Lily Bart, the heroine of The House of Mirth. The restrictions by which women such as Lily were bound during New York’s Gilded Age are almost unimaginable today to American women. Feeling frustrated at times with Lily’s self-sabotaging, I had to keep reminding myself that Lily was trying to be true to herself in a society that would only allow her to be true to it.

When we meet the beautiful, self-assured Lily, she is 29 years old ...more

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Jan 30, 2014 Ed Lehman rated it really liked it

Shelves: completed-1001-list-book, 1001-list

I was left less than satisfied by this Wharton novel. I loved Age of Innocence but Lily Bart in House of Mirth is a spoiled semi-rich girl in high society New York who loses her rank due to even worse characters. Although Wharton probably is accurate in her portrayal of New York's aristocracy in the 1890s, Lily seems to be the unworthy focus of all the negative karma that comes her way. Maybe I would have felt better if Bertha Dorset had shared in the bad karma. ...more

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