The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

This is wonderfully written book and deservedly sits in the classic pantheon. Set at the tail end of the 19th century, the heroine is a beautiful New York socialite, Lily Bart, who has to make her way in the world of the rich, with very little money. She lives in luxury with her rich aunt who willingly funds her niece in the vast expenditure of her wardrobe but refuses to pay her gambling debts. The only way out for Lily is to marry a wealthy husband. There are plenty of men in the offing, some already married, but she rebels at the prospect of a stiffling life as a rich man’s possession.

The first possiblity is Percy Gryce:

“ She had been bored all afternoon by Percy Gryce - the mere thought seemed to awaken an echo of his droning voice - but she could not ignore him on the morrow, she must follow up her success, must submit to boredom, must be ready with fresh compliances and adaptabilities, and all on the bare chance the he might do her the honour of boring her for life.  It was a hateful fate - but how to escape from it? What choice had she?”

In immaculate prose Edith Wharton chronicles the hollow, dog eat dog, world of the rich with its greed and shallow friendships, and plots the increasingly desperate life of Lily, as she moves from the centre of this bright, glittering world  out into the shadows. True friends remain but the reader senses the ghost of Hardy’s Tess hovering over the novel and tragedy looming.

The House of Mirth is beautifully written and my Penguin edition had an excellent afterword by Hermione Lee, but I was frustrated by Lily as a character, she was a victim of circumstance but also an agent of her own destruction?