SOURCE: Davidson, Cathy N. “Kept Women in The House of Mirth.” Markham Review 9 (fall 1979): 10-3.

In the following essay, Davidson discusses the options for women, particularly of Lily's class, in early-twentieth-century American society.

Edith Wharton, while writing her first major novel, contemplated calling that work either “The Year of the Rose” or “A Moment's Ornament” but finally decided on The House of Mirth.¹ This choice, alluding to Ecclesiastes 7:4 (“the heart of fools is in the house of mirth”) and rich with metaphoric and ironic implications, is, as I will subsequently argue, clearly the wisest one. Yet the two earlier provisional titles also suggest something of the basic plight of the novel's protagonist and the general predicament of women in the society that Wharton portrays. Lily Bart, who has no fortune of her own, is defined by the monied aristocracy of fin de siècle New York primarily in...