SOURCE: Showalter, Elaine. “The Death of the Lady (Novelist): Wharton's The House of Mirth.” Representations 9 (winter 1985): 133-49.

In the following essay, Showalter discusses the “crisis of adulthood” faced by Lily Bart and the nonfictional women upon which her character is based, who had to conform to the social expectation of marrying before the age of thirty or facing personal and economic disaster.

The lady is almost the only picturesque survival in a social order which tends less and less to tolerate the exceptional. Her history is distinct from that of woman though sometimes advancing by means of it, as a railway may help itself from one point to another by leasing an independent line. At all striking periods of social development her status has its significance. In the age-long war between men and women, she is a hostage in the enemy's camp. Her fortunes do not rise and...