Abstract
Abstract: Critics of Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth have interpreted Lily Bart's death and Nettie Struther's story as scenes that undermine the novel's realism. I show how they reveal Wharton's negotiation of transcendence within the genre of realism. Nettie's redemption and Lily's death destabilize a secular mode of economic exchange, offering a way to transcend this mode by means of a gift exchange. I argue that the idea of the gift embedded in Netty's story and Lily's death operates both as a scandal and vehicle of transcendence
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