The search for independence can be a tedious task and individuals may go their whole lives looking for it and being unable to find it. This is true for that of Lily Bart in The House of Mirth written by Edith Wharton. Lily is not content with the life she now lives and craves an independent lifestyle where she does not have to rely on others for social and financial support. Yet by further analyzing the text Lily’s search for independence leads to her ultimate demise.
In the first chapters of The House of Mirth Wharton establishes various conditions that Lily desires. She is in search of wealth, social prosperity, and marriage. But Lily’s craving for independence is an added aspect that cannot go overlooked. The craving is established early on, in chapter three of the text. Lily is seen longing to, “drop out of the race and make an independent life for herself” but yet knows it would not be a fit lifestyle for her because “she hated dinginess as much as her mother had hated it, and to her last breath she meant to fight
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She has no one to lean on for financial support and is forced to become part of the working class. At first Lily embraces it because independence is something she has been searching for throughout the novel. There is even an instance when Rosedale offers to help her, claiming: “ ‘I’d set you up over them all-I’d put you where you could wipe your feet on e’m’ ” (Wharton, 300). Rosedale offers Lily the ultimate social standing upgrade. She has the ability to live the way she has always wanted to, yet Lily turns down the offer. It poses the question of why she did so. It could be interpreted that Lily wants to stay independent in every sense because in the past when she has relied on others, such as Gus Trenor or Bertha Dorset, she experiences betrayal. Again supporting that Lily believes she will be happiest when she only has to depend on
Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence offers a distinctive close examination of the Gilded Age's New York high society where critics have the opportunity to study and analyze several aspects of this exclusive American milieu, and as a result, the novel offers a glimpse of this society's social institutions of the time. In Age of Innocence, the elite of New York reside solely in their own sphere; they all live very close to one another, save for the van der Luydens, in a predetermined area, effectively shutting themselves from those outside their social circles. This isolation is shown with the uproar Ellen Olenska caused when she chose to place her home among artisans instead of other well-respected families, and it is further emphasized during
Lily had given up, she lived her entire life with the idea that her mother
Many factors are present in this type of question and is demonstrated within the novel. During the hardships of Lilys abuse, she constantly wonders what other people would think of her in terms of staying, especially after finding out that she is pregnant by claiming, “She'll pity me. Shell wonder why I never left him. She'll wonder how I let myself get to this point. She’ll wonder all the same things I used to wonder about my own mother when I saw her in my same situation.
(Moddelmog 353). Lily tries to create a prominent, satisfying place for herself in society through commodification such as masking a social performance. She conflicted between feelings of “consumerist elation” and a desire to break free from the restraints of her society.
Lily’s mother is the cause of much of her grief, through her journey she imagines her mother in a way that does not accurately depict who her mother truly was. When she finds out what her mother actually was she, “I stood
Continuing, another theme that led us through Lily’s adventure of growing up was her discovering how important storytelling was. She was going through gruesome horrid things, and when she read things like Shakespeare she realized how important it was because it helped her escape to a fantasy world for a little bit of time. Lastly, Lily learns the power of the female community. Lily grew up without a mother, so for a large chunk of her life she didn’t know the real power the female community held.
The memoir, The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls, centers around her unorthodox childhood, with her parents avoiding parental responsibilities and acting in accordance to their non-conformist beliefs. During some events in the book, responsibility is seen as equal to self-sufficiency in this book, and Rex and Rose Mary encourages Jeannette and the other children to look out for themselves instead of depending on others. Even though Jeannette’s parents were irresponsible and reckless, they managed to instill responsible, independent, self-sufficient qualities within Jeannette, creating a well-adjusted child. Hardships as a child allow the opportunity to develop a thick skin and become resilient. From a young age, Jeannette Walls and her siblings learned how to be independent for their basic needs because of their father’s, Rex, alcoholism, and their mother, Rose Mary’s, carefree attitude and indulgence in the arts.
However, she learns that everything is not always black and white. Which changes her perspective on life. Towards the end of the novel Lily has grown up and changes into a mature young lady. She changed the way she thinks about her father.
Lily mourns for her mother several times throughout the novel. She always had some of her mother’s items throughout her time to help her cope during the reading. She didn’t leave her own home without said items. She didn't leave her own home without the items to remember her mother. Like the bees in the jar they needed time to mourn for their queenlessness like lily with her mothers items lily uses the items to cope then leaves her jar and flees.
Everyone is born with different privileges, yet these privileges do not define people. The adversities that someone has in life should not define their success or happiness. No one is destined to have a life full of misery. It is people’s attitude towards their resources -good or bad- that defines this. People write their own endings through the choices they make.
Although Lily is young, she feels that she has the right to make this statement because she has already experienced so much in her life. With that being said, people may judge Lily because of what she says or does but that is because not everyone knows about
Love is an involuntary factor that many people have come across in life. In the novel The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, the main character Lily, has an internal conflict with her mother which affects how open she is to love. Lily grew up with her father and the culpability of her mother's death.(more info) She was raised with a harsh understanding of love due to the lack of love given to her all throughout her life, for she was more open to love because she hasn't doted as a child. However, Lily found love through the Daughter of Mary, the Boatwright sisters, and Rosaleen, who later taught her how to love herself.
The one person that was mainly influenced by this tragedy would be Lily because she had to suffer the pain of growing up without a
Unlike the three ladies we must think about the consequences of our actions, especially when we are making decisions for others. Lily no matter if she had a disability was still human and deserved to be happy and not sent off to a place where she would be lonely and possibly sad. Ellisville could have been a special institute to help these “feeble-minded” people but as it was mentioned in the story it had over crowding and it just seemed like it wouldn’t be the best place for young Lily to be at. The biggest significance of the story was that the ladies finally in the end realize the mistake they are making by sending Lily to Ellisville and that Lily received that happiness and got the chance to what she wanted to do with her life, which was getting
Edith Wharton is an important, though neglected novelist in the history of American literature. Her novels study the status of the women and explore their relationship with men in a male dominated society. Again and again she presents the state of exceptional, rising, ‘New Woman’ of the turn of the century to break out of her compressible role and attempting a venture rebellion. The Age of Innocence is on the theme that deals ironically with the affluent social world of New York. The novel has a theme of entrapment and the struggle of the intruder, both to maintain an adult sense of self in a childish society and to rescue a trapped male from that society.