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.
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