The House of Mirth is a 1905 novel by American author Edith Wharton.
The novel is set among the upperclass of New York City, the social set Wharton grew up in (and criticized in her writing), and explores themes of wealth, financial security, and the result of this environment on human psyches. It follows Lily Bart, a socialite who, despite her great beauty, is running low on funds and getting too old for the marriage mart, and thus needs to secure a husband quickly if she wants to maintain the luxurious lifestyle she has become used to. But her pride, gambling addiction, and unwillingness to commit make this difficult for her, not helped by the duplicitous natures of some of her peers, and her social capital begins to deteriorate.
It has been adapted several times, on stage in 1906 (as a play co-written by Wharton herself) and 1995, and to film in 1918, 1956, 1981, and 2000.
Tropes:
- Ambiguous Situation: Whether Lily purposefully overdosed on sleeping draught after having repaid her debts at the end of the book is deliberately left ambiguous.
- Cast Full of Rich People: The novel tells the story of Lily, a single-minded socialite who suffers a fall from grace after a failed marriage proposal reveals the rigid rules of her wealthy society friends leave no place for her.
- Classical Anti-Hero: Lily Bart, the heroine. She fails at anything and everything she tries her hands at, only ever succeeds at alienating the few people who genuinely do care about her, is a whiny, insufferable Jerkass with an entitlement complex bigger than Brazil, and dies at the end without having attained the wealth she wanted so badly.
- The Gambling Addict: Lily is unfortunately very into gambling and racks up thouseands of dollars in debt as a result.
- Impoverished Patrician: Lily grew up the daughter of a rich man, and wants to retain this lifestyle even after the loss of her family fortune. This proves to be her undoing, and she is eventually cast out of high society for her associations with societal inferiors.
- Nephewism: The death of her father has left Lily in the care of her aunt Julia, whom she dislikes.
- Nouveau Riche: Simon Rosedale, one of Lily's suitors, is a Jewish businessman whose recent fortune makes him a social inferior to the New York old money families.
- Old Maid: Lily is twenty-nine, almost "on the shelf" as far as the Gilded Age is concerned.
