Lady Castaways in the Gilded Age in Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth

Abstract

In House of Mirth, first published in 1905,1 Edith Wharton exploits trope of castaway to signal a shift from antebellum era, when heroic individualism was vaunted, to Gilded Age, when fashion defined and elevated women to a realm of status above world of work and toil. novel takes place during prosperity of 1880s and 1890s, when second-tier millionaires from railroads, banking, steel, clothing, meat-packing, banking, real estate, publishing, and law sought to climb social ladder and create a society separate from concerns and dictates of working world. Wharton exploits figural castaway as a bridge between physical suffering of castaway and dazzling privilege of wealthy. Hermione Lee writes that during this period: Americans' fascination with ostentation of post-war big spenders was beginning to sour, and a campaign of criticism and attacks on 'the Trusts' for rapaciousness and exploitation began in muck-raking journals.2In 1894 a New York Times article entitled The Unattached Females expressed this criticism in its description of enormous hordes of unattached females living on interest and dividends that block the pavements in front of fashionable shops when it used to be an argument against frivolity and idleness that to them must be ascribed hard lot of Cinderellas and Fantines - that mere fashion was essentially unproductive, except of castaways, victims high and low to craze for enjoyment.3This attack on young women shielded from world of work and domestic duty by their trust funds characterizes women as no longer animated by feminine models of humility, poverty and work, as exemplified by fairy-tale characters like Cinderella or fictional ones like Fantine in Les Miserables, but rather by frivolity of high fashion. author exploits image of castaway as an icon of self-made man who mastered island through his hard-won knowledge and practical know-how to emphasize these young women's alienation from founding labour and sacrifice that supports their privileges and wealth.4 wealthy women of New York high society seem worlds apart from figure of lone shipwrecked being on a desert island, but power of castaway as a figure of sympathy and an ethos of self-reliance is used both to heighten this difference and to highlight humanity of individual's suffering and misfortune.In Wharton's use of lady castaways of Gilded Age, women from high society do not meet with good fortune if they happen to fail in any way. Unlike their male counterparts, they do not fantasize about gaining from a felix culpa, a fortunate fall - idea that God allows evil to happen in order to bring a greater good therefrom.5 Indeed, for men, such a fall may constitute a test of their innate skills and self-mastery. Instead, in House of Mirth, Wharton uses shipwreck and castaway figures as tropes to suggest endpoint of aspects of two female characters, Gerty Farish and Lily Bart, and emotional ruin and social abandonment they experience.The world of House of Mirth certainly presents no heroic characters. terrain of this novel is concerned with strategies and manoeuvres used to both protect and secure one's position in social hierarchy, hence real possibility of condemnation after simply a hint of a mistake. Lily is cast out of high society by rumours of sexual indiscretions, and is henceforth perceived as a fallen woman. As a result, wreckage of Lily's reputation brings her isolation from patriarchal realm of individual perseverance through trial and suffering.For male castaways, island serves as an armature for spiritual growth. As he faces a discrete set of obstacles, male castaway develops his innate characteristics and builds new skills to rise in this microcosm. Lily, in contrast, cannot remake or reconstitute her self once she has been rejected by her peers. …