IngentaConnect Consuming Clothes: Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth

Author: Hughes, Clair

Source: Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture, Volume 9, Number 4, December 2005 , pp. 383-406(24)

Abstract:

Lily Bart, in Edith Wharton's novel, The House of Mirth, conscious of a failing bank account and fading beauty, needs to find a husband. To do so, amongst the Gilded Rich of fin de siècle New York, she must not only participate in the social round but “pay her way” as a guest by keeping up appearance - whatever the cost. This essay focuses on Lily's deteriorating situation as she tries to sustain her social status and fashionable elegance without compromising her respectability or her own vaguely formulated, but idealistic self-image. Rejecting solutions of loveless, mercenary liaisons, she decides to re-fashion herself according to her own ideals. She therefore appears at an evening party in a tableau vivant based on a celebrated portrait, unaware that the realisation of the painting's suggestive, diaphanous drapery simply sets up smutty associations among male guests. Lily's career starts its downward spiral from this point, ending in shabby lodgings where we see her looking over her few remaining dresses, shimmering fragments of former days. Wharton conveys Lily's exquisite but consuming wardrobe, not through details of style or ornament but through its effect on others, through touch, smell, sound and colour, creating a powerful impression that, while free from the limitations of a particular moment in fashion, is also convincingly of its time.

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