The relationship between Mrs. Norma Hatch and Lily introduced in section IX reminded me of the relationship between Celia Rae Foote and Minny Jackson in The Help. Like Celia, Norma is a young wealthy woman looking for guidance in assuming the role of a proper high-society woman. Lily parallels Minny in her attempting to aid Norma, as Minny aids Celia, in becoming the perfect civilized woman. However, Minny's motives were much more pure than Lily's, and Celia possessed a purity of heart that drew her away from high-society whereas Norma embraced it. If only Lily and Norma weren't so corrupt by wealth, they would have perfectly paralleled their Help counterparts. The only other truly interesting turns in sections IX and X were Lily's shift from admiring Selden and scorning Rosedale, to vice versa and Lily's taking up of manual labor. Lily, angered by Selden's past abandoning of her, refused to heed Selden's advice and decided she would "rather persist in darkness than owe her enlightenment to Selden" (Wharton 228). Lily's emotions have been changing so rampantly across the course of the novel that, honestly, I've grown tired of it. Furthermore, even though Lily's new found employment impressed me at first, she was still restless knowing that "Rosedale was ready to lend her money" and that all her financial problems could be answered immediately (Wharton 240). Lily enjoys wealth, loses it all, turns to possible husbands for salvation, and then repeats. The cycle has simply gotten uninteresting and bland. It's time Wharton; give the reader some resolution already.
 |
| Celia (left) and Minny (right) from The Help. |
No comments:
Post a Comment