comment on style/ language

The metaphor of the sea and water is crucial to The House of Mirth. Lily uses a seal that reads "Beyond! beneath a flying ship" to close her letters. As Katherine Joslin writes in Edith Wharton, this seal "symbolizes an impossible quest, the romantic flight to another world." Joslin points out how Wharton uses sea metaphors and imagery to depict Lily's plight as well as the environment of old New York. The world that Lily inhabits is one where the "new people" in society "rose to the surface with each recurring tide, and were either submerged beneath its rush or landed triumphantly beyond the reach of envious breakers."