The House of Mirth

Synopsis

The House of Mirth is a novel written by Edith Wharton, an American Author and a Pulitzer Prize winner remembered for her short stories which portrayed the privileged classes in her works such as The Greater Inclination, The Fruit of the Tree and The Glimpses of the Moon.

This novel explores the story of a woman who is unable to choose between her desires of luxurious living and true love, ending her life isolated and distressed from society. Lily Bart rejects her first true love proposal on the account of social status. Her desire for luxuries life drives her through many wealthy people including scandalous meetings. However she does not compromise the sexual favors for luxury. Her endless search for true love with luxurious life style only indefinitely delays her marriage.

As the days passed talks on her scandalous meeting takes the front stage and has been rumored and gossiped by her own friends which rules out many possibilities of getting her married even by tolerating her desires. She loses even inheritance from her wealthy aunt on account of the scandalous talks about her; though to some extent those talks are true also. Running into debts, she repays it with the finally received inheritance and meets death due to overdose of sleeping pills, though it is revealed that she might not have consumed it knowingly, but it happened as a habit of usage.

Similar Bookshelves