The house of mirth, by Edith Wharton

An interesting classic novel to have picked up to read during a pandemic lockdown. In many ways, beautiful Lily Bart is as constricted and confined by society as those of us hunkered down in our homes are today. Published in 1905, this is a devastating portrait of the lives of the wealthy and influential at the turn of the twentieth century. The star of her debutant year in New York, as the book opens, Lily is still unmarried at 29 and knows that she must soon commit to a union with some wealthy man in order to maintain her position in society, or, in fact, to have a life at all. Her parents are deceased and left her with very little money. She lives from day to day and year to year by trading on her beauty and wit, moving from one country estate to another in the warmer months, and returning to her aunt’s house in the winter for the glittering New York season. But a series of ill-advised decisions, missed opportunities, and just bad luck set her on a downward spiral. Although I thoroughly enjoyed it, I was disturbed by the author’s underlying anti-Semitism which figures in the characterization of one of the main characters in the novel. 401 pp.