The House of Mirth, Book One, Sections III and IV

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

Having lost a large sum of money during a game of bridge, Lily Bart finds herself in a difficult predicament at the beginning of section III.  Wharton utilizes this gambling loss to draw parallels between Lily's current fiscal situation and the period following her father's death.  In recounting a lengthy anecdote about Lily's childhood, her father's bankruptcy, and the subsequent deaths of both her parents, Wharton informs his reader on Lily's fall from aristocratic grace and how she ended up poor and searching for a provider.  Within the anecdote, Wharton also describes Lily's father as more of an ATM than a loving caregiver and from that description, Lily's perception of men becomes understandable.  From her mother, Lily learned to take advantage of beauty and manipulate others in order to achieve wealth and success. As such, section III was largely expository, sharing the aforementioned information about Lily's childhood and development as well as her dependence on a Mrs. Peniston.  Additionally, throughout the third section, Wharton included a multitude of French words and phrases to further emphasize the atmosphere of elegance and refinement Lily had been brought up in.

In section IV, another expository chapter, Lily aids Mrs. Trenor in inviting guests as she prepares for her party.  Mrs. Trenor introduces a multitude of characters with her superficial ranting about pleasing guests and outdoing the Van Osburgh party.  However, most of the character information, while most likely important later in the novel, has no significance at this time.  The few critical points Mrs. Trenor makes concern Lily, Lawrence Selden, Percy Gryce, and the now obvious antagonist of the novel, Bertha Dorset.  First, through Trenor, Wharton informs that the Dorset marriage is in trouble and incorporates an epithet as she describes George Dorset as "poor George" several times (Wharton 35).  This information leads to a description of Bertha Dorset flirting with both Selden and Gryce, Lily's two possible suitors.  The conflict in suitors makes Bertha Lily's enemy, but the conflict seems negligible when Wharton writes, "The certainty that she could marry Percy Gryce when she pleased had lifted a heavy load from her mind, . . . " (Wharton 39).  Nevertheless, the section ends with an intriguing encounter between Lily, Selden, and Bertha at the Trenor party.  What conflict will arise from this situation?