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    A Study Guide for Edith Wharton's "House of Mirth"
    A Study Guide for Edith Wharton's "House of Mirth"
    A Study Guide for Edith Wharton's "House of Mirth"
    Ebook37 pages26 minutes

    A Study Guide for Edith Wharton's "House of Mirth"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Edith Wharton's "House of Mirth," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateJun 15, 2016
    ISBN9781535824989
    A Study Guide for Edith Wharton's "House of Mirth"

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Edith Wharton's "House of Mirth" - Gale

      1

      The House of Mirth

      Edith Wharton

      1905

      Introduction

      While The House of Mirth was only Edith Wharton's second novel, Cynthia Griffin Wolff points out in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, with it Wharton emerged as a professionally serious, masterful novelist. Published in 1905 it had the fastest sales of any of its publishing house's books at the time. The novel, as well as many of Wharton's other works, continues to enjoy great success to the present day.

      In The House of Mirth, Wharton explores the status of women at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century; indeed, Wolff believes that the novel echo[es] the many dissatisfactions Wharton felt at this time. Heroine Lily Bart is a beautiful woman who has been brought up to achieve one goal: marry a wealthy, well-placed man. Although Lily, twenty-nine when the novel opens, has had opportunities to do so, her spirit has always recoiled from taking the step of marrying for money. However, the fate dealt to Lily in life is not spinster-hood but a fall from grace, that is New York's social circle, which comprises the only world Lily has ever known.

      Over the past century, scholars and readers alike have applied numerous interpretations to this complex novel. Upon its initial publication, many readers saw it as a critique of the so-called marriage market. Contemporary scholars, however, have tended to read the novel, and Lily's actions, with a feminist slant. As Linda Wagner-Martin writes in her study The House of Mirth, [It] is a key example of a woman's voice exploring signif women's themes in a covert manner: fiction as disguise.

      Author Biography

      Edith Wharton (born Edith Newbold Jones) was born on January 24, 1862, to a wealthy and well-connected New York family. After the Civil War ended, however, Wharton's parents were hit hard by inflation. To save money the family lived and traveled throughout Europe until Wharton was about ten years old, by which time she spoke five languages. After the family returned to the United States, Wharton embarked on a program of self-education, primarily fostered by her extensive reading. Just before her fifteenth birthday, Wharton finished her first creative work, a novella entitled Fast and Loose, which did not see publication until 1977. She also had a poem published in the Atlantic

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