The House of Mirth | Social Concerns
In The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton tells the story of the decline and death of Lily Bart a beautiful but impoverished socialite in turn-of-the-century New York. The novel is appropriately named, for the society of the rich is presented as a kind of floating pleasure dome cut off from lasting ties to the past. Lily Bart passes her days in a variety of settings ranging from a country house in Bellomont, New York, to a yacht off the coast of southern France where her primary duty is to swell the progress of the rich. Near the end of her brief life, she comes to recognize the inward...
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