The House of Mirth, Book One, Sections XI and XII

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

Section XI opens with the weather warming and the season for superficial high-society intermingling beginning.  This season would be a dull one as many people were suffering set backs at the hands of the stock market, save Welly Bry and Mr. Rosedale, who continues, for reasons I cannot deduce other than contemporary prejudice, to be described by Wharton in antisemitic language.  Furthermore, in the midst of this new societal season, Wharton's readers learn from a third person omniscient narrator that Miss Grace Stepney, due to Lily Bart's advice, had been excluded from her aunt's, Mrs. Peniston's, most recent party.  As such, Stepney becomes infuriated with Lily, so instead of continuing to secretly have a distaste for her, Graces's "dull resentment turned to active animosity" (Wharton 100).  With humiliating Lily and tarnishing her name as motivation, Grace assumes the role of a new antagonist when she reveals to Mrs. Peniston, Lily's only real surviving family member and provider, that Lily has been alleged of flirting with married men, angering her closest friends, and wasting her funds on gambling.  Grace aims to turn Peniston against Lily and introduce a new external conflict to the novel.  She succeeds somewhat as, near the end of section XI, Peniston begins to be sickened by the accusations against Lily.

Mrs. Lloyd, the picture Lily Bart
embodied in her tableaux vivant.

Following Grace Stepney's outpouring of rumors against Lily, the first half of section XII serves primarily to explain the accusations.  The rumors began with Bertha Dorset's summons of Lily in section X, which ended up being amicable after all, as it resulted in the two women mutually benefiting from each other: Lily gained the high social standing that acquaintances of the Dorsets assume and, in return, she occupied George Dorset so that Bertha could pursue a new man.  As a result, Lily was thought to be flirting with both Mr. Dorset and Gus Trenor, the man who made all her money on the stock market.  Lily, however, blows off these rumors as common gossip against well-to-do ladies.  The real focus of section XII is the Brys' party.  During the party, many of most renowned women pose in tableaux vivants, living pictures, to entertain the guests.  All of the women's scenes go over spectacularly, but none of them compare to Lily's.  The "flesh and blood loveliness of Lily Bart" in her simple dress stunned those in attendance, especially a Mr. Lawrence Selden.  Accordingly, the internal conflict within Lily of her luxurious desires versus her feelings for Selden and the external romantic conflict between Selden and Lily.  Lily articulates her inner struggle perfectly when, after a spontaneous kiss, she speaks to Selden, "Ah, love me, love me - but don't tell me so!" (Wharton 112).  With Selden lovestruck and Trenor angered at a lost opportunity to converse with Lily, section XII takes a dramatic, climactic close.