Lily's Loneliness

3 Pages 836 Words

Loneliness is something that many people suffer from. In Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth, loneliness is caused by poverty and depression. At the beginning of the novel, Lily Bart is lonely, but has the novel progresses, her situation only worsens. Loneliness is a dominant theme in The House of Mirth.
Lily Bart has been lonely all of her life. Her father was always at work and her mother was too worried about maintaining her social position. She constantly told Lily that her beauty was the only thing that she had going for her, since they were not wealthy. Her mother once told her, “But you’ll get it all back--you’ll get it all back, with your face”, referring to the money they had lost (25). This had a negative affect on Lily in the long run.
Everything in Lily’s life, a live of poverty and wanting more, has been the same until recently. But what frightens her the most about this change is not her increasing poverty, but the loneliness. She now has few friends and little money, and she is starting to see lines on her face. As Lily was looking in the mirror one evening, “She was frightened by two little lines near her mouth” (25). This is displeasing to Lily because she believes that all she has left is her beauty, and now that is starting to fade.
In the past, Lily took pleasure in attending dinners and playing bridge with the women of high social status, such as Judy Trenor. But this pleasure is starting to disappear. Her so-called friends turn against her and ruin her reputation. Lily is seen as a beautiful woman and everyone admired her. When the curtain open on Lily, everyone was amazed how “It was as though she had stepped, not out of, but into, Reynolds’s canvas, banishing the phantom of his dead beauty by the beams of her living grace” (106) Though Lily is a beautiful woman and many admire that, these women talk about her behind her back and she is becoming frantic trying to rebui...