House of Mirth Loneliness
Lily Bart's Loneliness: A Self-Realization Loneliness is a prevalent theme throughout Edith Wharton's novel, The House of Mirth. The following passage relates to the theme of loneliness and dramatizes Lily Bart's dilemma of poverty: "All she looked on was the same and yet changed. There was a great gulf fixed between today and yesterday. Everything in the past seemed simple, natural, full of daylight-and she was alone in a place of darkness and pollution.-Alone! It was the loneliness that frightened her." (p.142) The passage shows the abrupt loneliness Lily feels since she loses her friends, and it also dramatizes her poverty by enabling her to reach a startling realization about herself. Lily realizes that the loneliness she feels is not due to not having friends or money, but the fact that she had been living a life so poor in purpose or reason. Lily begins to feel lonely after she quickly loses the company of her friends. In the past, she enjoyed a simple life of playing bridge and attending fancy dinners with the wealthy women of high society. But now, her reputation is shattered and she realizes the women in her society are cruel and would not hesitate to talk about her be
Nettie Struther's child was laying on her arm. She knows that if she had money she could pay off all of her debts and maybe go on to win back her friends. Without the discomfort of loneliness, Lily peacefully falls asleep believing that she could beat the odds like Nettie Struther had done. Before falling asleep Lily feels Nettie Struther's baby against her arm: "she suddenly understood why she did not feel herself alone. Lily knows she is alone in a terrible position, and feels trapped: "She seemed a stranger to herself, or rather there were two selves in her, the one she had always known, and a new abhorrent being to which it found itself chained. 142) Suddenly she is no longer the strikingly beautiful Lily Bart that everyone attends to, but a poor and lonely woman in a crowded restaurant whose "eyes sought the faces about her, craving a responsive glance, some sign of an intuition of her trouble. The novel ends dramatically when Lily dies still feeling Nettie's child beside her, with all her debts paid, and all the loneliness vanished; yet Lily Bart is still "something rootless and ephemeral, mere spindrift of the whirling surface of existence. But after the reading of the will, "Lily stood apart from the general movement, feeling herself for the first time utterly alone. 306) Being poor made Lily feel lonely, but now she is sickened by the realization that her life quickly passed by without any meaning or substance.
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