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Kindle Notes & Highlights
She was so evidently the victim of the civilization which had produced her, that the links of her bracelet seemed like manacles chaining her to her fate.
Feminism / Social Expectations
Notes to Lily's beauty and role as a woman which makes her valuable but imprisons her. The bracelet, a symbol of wealth and femininity
suppose every girl does; and you know I am horribly poor—and very expensive.
Class / Identity Performance
wanting wealth and luxury, but denied the independence
“Don’t you ever mind,” she asked suddenly, “not being rich enough to buy all the books you want?”
No amount of money could buy you enough knowledge and literature. It's power.
Desire vs Intellectual Hunger
A world in which such things could be seemed a miserable place to Lily Bart; but then she had never been able to understand the laws of a universe which was so ready to leave her out of its calculations.
Class Injustice.
Society is a revolving body which is apt to be judged according to its place in each man’s heaven; and at present it was turning its illuminated face to Lily.
Social Status.
Society is an illusion. One day you are the spotlight but revolves around another based on timing and significance.
the glitter of their opportunities she saw the poverty of their achievement.
Class illusion
All those expensive things and glamorous ideals of society are all facade
“My idea of success,” he said, “is personal freedom.” “Freedom? Freedom from worries?” “From everything—from money, from poverty, from ease and anxiety, from all the material accidents. To keep a kind of republic of the spirit—that’s what I call success.”
Idealism vs reality.
“There never is—it’s a country one has to find the way to one’s self.”
One's journey to true success is through freedom and self-discovery
He had meant to keep free from permanent ties, not from any poverty of feeling, but because, in a different way, he was, as much as Lily, the victim of his environment.
No one escapes the system
