The House of Mirth - Personal Freedom Over Society's Will.

Wharton accurately shows how men have almost an innate desire to accumulate material wealth, but that wealth is more or less useless unless they ‘accumulate’ a woman who will extend a man’s power beyond the commercial world into the society at large. Simon Rosedale is a perfect example of this relationship that Wharton asserts and the passage in question also touches on this. Lily, however, is an oddity in this world as she so openly violates the moral and social conventions, which society expects. Lily’s visit to Selden’s apartment in the beginning of the novel, her borrowing of money from a married man (Gus Trenor) and her close relationship with another married man (George Dorset) displays Lily’s behavior and ambitions to be that of a nonconformist. She has “fits of angry rebellion against fate when she longed to drop out of the race and make an independent life of herself” (31). The seal on her stationary with the motto “Beyond!,” represents her true aspirations: she wants to escape – she wants to govern her own course in life. Therefore when the societal conformist, Gus Trenor, and the nonconformist, Lily Bart, have a violent encounter in this passage, the brutal confrontation serves primarily as a window in Lily’s mind and is a starting point for the spiraling fall that she is about to make. Gus Trenor feels as if he has already bought Lily when he ‘lent’ her a large sum of his money and tries to collect by being a “friend” (116) or more primitively he wants to have an affair with her or possibly rape her. Wharton on the surface seems to show that Trenor wants to ‘accumulate’ Lily but unlike Rosedale who attempts the same thing, his intentions are darker. “He rose, squaring his shoulders aggressively, and stepped toward her with a reddening brow … He laughed again. ‘Oh, I’m not asking for payment in kind. But there’s such a thing as fair play – and interest for one’s money’” (116). He touches her and his “face darkened to rage; her recoil of abhorrence had called out the primitive man” (116). Lily in this exchange finds herself almost for the first time under the power of someone, a man nonetheless. She had been living and spending the money under false assumptions, and now it had put her in a knot that could not be undone. She would have to repay Trenor in order to be out of his grasp, an affair would lead horribly to “scandal” (116) and thus that road was undoubtedly out of the question. Lily while she still seems to embody society’s ideal of the female that of being subservient, dependent, submissive, nonassertive, and docile – it is her “invulnerable” (116) self-esteem and her ability to mask her terror and fear that forces Trenor to crack and let Lily go. If Lily had broken emotionally, Wharton leads us to believe that Trenor would have sprung. We therefore witness such an emotional clash of wills that is unseen elsewhere in the novel. Trenor is obviously trying to bully Lily into submission but yet Lily’s façade of confidence seems to diminish the fighting “primitive” spirit of Trenor. The choice of words by Wharton shows the extremity of the confrontation: “brute,” “primitive,” and “formidable” for Augustus Trenor but “moral shame,” “physical dread,” “fearful,” and “helpless” for Lily. Wharton’s ambivalence is plainly obvious: indirectly Trenor holds all the cards but yet the ‘victory’ (if it can be called that) is with Lily as she is able to escape unscathed. The supposed “moral shame” (116) also brings Lily’s supposed morality into light. But the question before the reader is whether Lily has a ‘correct’ sense of what is right and wrong for example Lily sees rape of a lesser evil in comparison to scandal. What moral sense we see in this scene is lost again in Book II where Lily places herself in a precarious position vis-à-vis her relationship with George Dorset. It seems as if Lily just does not learn from her mistakes but instead compounds them. Whether Wharton is upholding conformity or asserting nonconformity is something that remains unclear throughout the progression of the book. The debt and burden that Lily takes upon herself, makes her a slave throughout the book until the very end, moments before her untimely death. Lily lives and bears a life of “dinginess” (something she tried so hard to avoid) until the moment when she is able to break the bond holding her by paying off her debts and one can understand why Wharton purposefully allows Lily to pay off her debts before she dies. This passage shows a central part of the novel: Lily values personal freedom over security and does not want to spend her life by being owned and ruled by a man any more than she wants to spend it dependent on the charity of her aunt, Mrs. Pensiton. Lily would not submit to Gus even though her chances of paying him back were bleak and likewise she would not submit to anyone else.         The feeling that Lily exemplifies in this passage echoes through the entire novel and into the final moments of Lily’s life. Early on in the book, she saw marriage with Percy Gryce as a “game” in which if successful she would become “the one possession in which he took sufficient pride to spend money on it” (48). But this early enthusiasm for being a decorative showcase wife significantly subsides by the time Lily envisions marriage with Rosedale. She imagines he will be “kind in his gross, unscrupulous, rapacious way, the way of the predatory creation with his mate” (137); and the very thought evokes an image of “acquiescing in this plan with the passiveness of a sufferer resigned to the surgeon’s touch” (137). This image of terrible helplessness reveals a lot about Lily’s attitude toward marriage. True, she refuses to marry Gryce, Dorset and Rosedale because she does not love them but less obviously Lily is disgusted and appalled by any relationship where the women is powerless.         Lily’s final actions seem to portray a duality that Wharton has been building throughout the novel and especially in this passage. When Lily receives Mrs. Peniston’s check, she finally has found a way to freedom and is therefore able to successfully break from the clutches of Trenor by paying off her debts and this illustrates how even in the worst times Lily will not submit or be owned. Yet it is very strange how in death however, Lily does not die victoriously but in defeat to the society she tried to fight against. Suicide may have been a signal of victory but yet her death was not: “She did not, in truth, consider the question very closely – the physical craving for sleep was her only sustained sensation” (255). Lily craves the submissiveness society had all along expected of her in death. She increases the dosage of the sleeping medicine to achieve the “gradual cessation of the inner throb, the soft approach of passiveness … the sense of complete subjugation” (255).         Therefore we see that while the passage shows, Lily in a sense maintaining her sense of free will and personal freedom, in death however society is still enforcing a permanent passivity on Lily Brat. Therefore a sense of duality and ambivalence clearly comes as out in the conflict between personal freedom and choice, and conformity and subjugation. While the former is seemingly glorified we see the pain and suffering that could have been avoided if the later had been chosen. The passage I feel was exhilarating and fast paced, which is a far cry from the normal slow tempo of the rest of the novel on the whole. The struggle and downward spiral that Lily faces from that point captivates the reader and Wharton successfully draws one in - hook, line and sinker. While we have to wait until the end to find a conclusion to Lily’s struggle and battle against society, her death undoubtedly touched all readers.  I fully believe Wharton’s other novels will follow in the example of this excellent passage.