Many critics who read the novel with a Darwinian perspective tend to see Lily’s vacillating behavior and unsuccessful mate search as a result of her inherited biological failure. Analyzing the evolutionary concept in Wharton’s novels, Paul Ohler points out that Lily lacks the “intention” and an “inarticulate instinct” guiding her to a most “proper” response to her circumstances (58). Thus, at Bellomont, though she lies to Percy that she is a regular churchgoer, she changes her mind at the last moment to absent herself, leaving a crestfallen Percy rolling away with the Trenors’
girls. In “The Lying Woman,” Ellen Goldner also attributes the “provisionality” of Lily’s lies to her own “conscious will” and “uncertain aims” (289). However, whether her capricious emotional make-up is an inherited passion or an inborn scruple, I will consider it a result of her “nostalgic homesickness” for a place of attachment. This longing requires her to negotiate a relation that will fulfill her many non-economic desires, and most importantly, to come to terms with a divided self which on the one hand, has to be fluent with the world around it, while on the other hand, embraces a life based on love and friendship.
In The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness (1960), the Scottish psychiatrist Ronald David Laing points out that one’s self-consciousness is divided by “an awareness of oneself by oneself and an awareness of oneself as an object of someone else’s observation” (113). To some degree, everyone is defined by others; yet when the individual fails to “ take the realness, aliveness, autonomy, and identity of himself and others for granted, then he has to become absorbed in
contriving ways of trying to be real…of preserving his identity…to prevent himself losing his self ” (44). For Lily, while she is conscious of herself as a commodity, she is also aware of a self who is supposed to be “alive,” to have her own autonomyand to transcend the social configurations.
Analyzing the politics of capitalism in The House of Mirth, Robert Shulman considers Lily’s “divided self” an example of the power of the market society to divide people internally (268). Meanwhile, in The Figure of Consciousness (2002), Jill Kress also notices the tension between “a singular conception of the self and the idea of a self that is continually shifting” in Wharton’s texts (xv). For Kress, Wharton’s protagonists, oftentimes in their struggle between a “socially constructed self” and an “authentic self,” have to concede to a self “saturated with the contents of the social world” (172). However, here Lily is hankering for a relationship beyond the bargain and trade of the market place. As a commodity, she has no real identity and is the mere embodiment of each suitor’s fantasy. Therefore, investigating the psychological space of the novel, Sean Sanlan suggests that we should see Lily as a
“possible person,” a “human being” rather than a “deployed” theme (208). Lily is unable to find a partner because what she wants is not just another trade-off, but a chance for her to establish a place of attachment from which she can draw strength and strengthen her role as a human being.
Since she was orphaned, Lily has gone into a social-climbing career in which she acts as a transient, a guest, a pensioner and a boarder, and she is constantly oppressed by “the feeling of being something rootless and ephemeral, mere spin-drift of the whirling surface of existence, without anything to which the poor little tentacles of self could cling before the awful flood submerged them” (HM 314). Thus, throughout her life, she is not only searching for a husband but also a place she can call home, and home does not exist when love is nowhere to be found. Nevertheless, before she
can find such a place, she has to rise above her economic dependency, and her working in the millinery is her first step.
After rejecting Rosedale’s offer and leaving Mrs. Hatch’s fancy hotel, with the help of Carry Fisher, Lily went to live in a boarding house and worked in Mme.
Regina’s renowned millinery factory. She refused Mme. Regina’s kindness to put her in the show-room as a displayer of hats and volunteered to take a job in the work room. There she used her work as an agency to decommodify herself and to fight against the exchange system. In his labor theory of value, Marx argues that all commodities are products of labor, and their value is determined by the amount of labor that goes into its production. Thus, in Capital, he claims that “(a) useful article…has value only because human labor…has been embodied or materialized in it” (45). For Marx, when unaffected by the private ownership of capitalism, labor is an essential source for a human being’s self-conception and sense of well-being. It is as much an act of personal creation and a projection of one’s identity as it is a means of survival. By working on and transforming the objective matter into objects of use-value, human beings meet the needs of existence and come to see themselves externalized in the world. In other words, a commodity is valuable because labor is involved; and when Lily joined in the workforce, she reversed her pervious role as a commodity and made herself a distributor of such value.
Lily had recognized herself as part of that effort of production since the very early stage of her career. After a night’s bad luck in cards and losing lots of money, it struck her that “she and her maid were in the same position, except that the latter received her wages more regularly” (HM 27). In “Edith Wharton’s Hard-Working Lily” (1990), Elizabeth Ammons also points out her working class position: although Lily was associated in most part with the richest people in town, she was linked to the young women laborers “by the common bond of economic struggle.” Later when
admiring Miss Van Osburg’s bridal jewels with Miss Farish, Lily was fascinated by their artistry and the skills that had gone into their cutting and presentation:
﹝Her﹞heart gave an envious throb as she caught the refraction of light from their surfaces—the milky gleam of perfectly matched pearls, the flash of rubies relieved against contrasting velvet, the intense blue rays of sapphires kindled into light by surrounding diamonds: all these precious tints enhanced and deepened by the varied art of their setting. (HM 89)
While Lily’s longing for a luxury life was further aroused by these finely-crafted stones, she was also conscious of an enormous human endeavor involved in the production of these treasures. This process of value production is a process of
“self-creation” that will empower a woman to create and add value both to her economic status and her self-identity.
In Women and Economics (1898), Charlotte Perkins Gilman suggests that when it comes to the economic ability of men and women, men always seem to be thousands of years in advance compared to his female counterparts: “men produce and distribute wealth; and women receive it at their hands” either as their wives or their daughters (5). Gilman shares Veblen’s disdain for conspicuous waste in that the conspicuous leisure only renders the well-off women completely idle, and their exclusion from production shrivels both of their social and maternal instincts. In addition, she emphasizes the importance of human labor, writing that “to do and to make not only gives deep pleasure, but it is indispensable to healthy growth” (78).
The consumption, on the contrary, as Marx and Engels indicate, is “the destructive antithesis of production” because it uses up resources and consumes the consumers.
So in “Consuming Clothes,” Clair Hughes considers Lily one of Veblen’s parasitic
“vicarious consumers” and a member of the “spurious leisure class” whose demand for a nice wardrobe only consumes and wastes her. The fashions she pursues do not only eat away at her but also erase her unique personality. However, while a woman is working or producing, she is utilizing her labor powers to obtain her independence, whether financially or emotionally. Thus, Gilman believes that human labor defines what it means to be human, and Lily’s identification with the girls in the girls’ club is an exertion of that labor that would help her create a new definition for her own existence.
For many critics, it is unlikely for Lily to have herself attached to the working class scenario. For instance, both Judith Fryer and John Clubbe believe that the different social layers that Lily descends is a “downward spiral” which will lead her to spaces with increasing disorder and make her a “lesser” Lily” (Clubbe 552). Eager to display her beauty, Lily seems to feel most at home in the mansions of her “old set”
where her body can merge with the glittery surroundings. However, from her reluctance to sell herself to the society, we can see that these mansions can never provide the home that she eventually comes to yearn for. It is only when she disowns her “Vebelenian fate” of unending consumption for the sake of love will she be able to find Gerty Farish and Nettie Struther’s simple tenements noble alternatives to her own tainted public life (Hughes 403).
After deciding to defer the purchase of an elegant dressing-case, Lily donated a generous amount of that price to the Girls’ Club, which was one of Miss Gerty Farish’s philanthropic efforts. Through this act, she was turning a potential consumption into a meaningful production facilitated by an instinct for love and connection between human beings. As she reflected, “These were young girls, like herself; some perhaps pretty, some not without trace of her finer sensibilities. She pictured herself leading such a life as theirs….” (HM 110). And her contribution was
praised highly by Gerty in a talk with Lawrence:
Do you know she has been there (Girls’ Club) with me twice?—yes, Lily!
And you should have seen their eyes! One of them said it was as good as a day in the country just to look at her. And she sat there, and laughed and talked with them—not a bit as if she were being charitable, you know, but as if she liked it as much as they did. They've been asking ever since when she's coming back; and she's promised me——oh!" (HM 131)
Here a sense of sisterhood has formed, and a union between women is created. The working girls’ club becomes a symbolic home where a love for home is fostered and a sanctuary in a very unhomelike surrounding is established. As Eileen Connell argues in “Edith Wharton Joins the Working Classes” (1997), the working girls’ club in New York City invents a “home” that suits the needs of the working class girls. It is a
“representative home” or “a training school to the home” that would bridge the gap between class differences (564). In this “home,” Lily shares with these girls a secondary social and economic position, a similarity that will become a binding force offering Lily a place of attachment and foreseeing her later enlightenment.
Thus, to turn a place into home, a particular human relationship is needed for a possible people-place bonding to take place; and sisterhood, generally understood as a nurturing, supportive feeling of attachment to other women which grows out of a shared experience of oppression, is considered a unifying force to confront male chauvinism and patriarchy. Hence, after Lily refused Mr. Trenor to pay back her debt with her body and freed herself from the suffocating mansion, she had a sudden craving for compassion and human nearness that would comfort her torn heart.
Though previously, she despised Gerty’s tiny apartment, seeing it as a horrid little
place suitable only for unmarriageable girls, now Gerty was the only one she could turn to. She knew that in her enfolding arms, she would no longer be alone, and she would feel warm and safe again. Frightened by her encounter with Trenor, there in Gerty’s room, she lay in Gerty’s arms like a “tossing child” clinging to her mother (HM 165). At this rare moment of intimacy, Lily finds herself in a place to which she has a strong sense of affiliation.
Her determination to extricate herself from the commodity system was further strengthened after Rosedale refused to marry her unless she could renew her status with Bertha’s love letters to Selden. Not going to betray her love to Selden, she decided to keep Bertha’s affair with Selden as a secret and burn the letters. However, before she made the decision, she went to visit Selden; and there in his room, she bade farewell to her “old self”:
There is someone I must say good-bye to…. ﹝She is﹞the Lily Bart you knew. I have kept her with me all this time, but now we are going to part, and I have brought her back to you—I am going to leave her here. When I go out presently she will not go with me. (HM 304)
She was to go on living, but not with the old Lily who was forever after wealth and status, but with a brand new self who saw a life with love and sincerity as her ultimate goal. Through this act of determination, she was able to discover the real value of things not in their outlook, but inherent in their own nature; and Nettie’s humble house was just another place for this enlightenment.
Here Lily found her home in the bond that she felt with Nettie’s child. The baby gave her a glimpse of a continuity of life based on a mutual understanding without the interference of the monetary system while Nettie, the poor working girl, seemed to
Lily to have reached “the central truth of existence” by finding strength to build herself a shelter with the fragments of her life (HM 314). In the novel, Nettie was not an embodiment of someone’s wealth. She was not loved for her “aesthetic value” but for the strength and competence that she exuded (Rosk 346). Her working together with her husband stabilized her identity as a working girl, a wife and a mother. From these roles, she felt a connection with those she loved and treasured. There was the love that she felt for her family and the gratitude that she felt for Lily. When she reached out for Lily, she was offering her an “alternative family” and Lily’s confession of herself being in great trouble indicates such need for a family.
At this moment, Lily came to terms with her helplessness and inability to relate emotionally with other human beings. There in Nettie’s kitchen, she held the baby in her arms, feeling “the child entered into her and became a part of herself” (HM 310):
the frozen currents of youth had loosed themselves and run warm in her veins: the old life-hunger possessed her, and all her being clamored for its share of personal happiness. Yes — it was happiness she still wanted, and the glimpse she had caught of it made everything else of no account. (HM 315)
The happiness no longer came from the new dresses she bought or the parties to which she was invited, but from a feeling of knowing that she was close to someone physically and emotionally. Having realized what she wanted in life, she returned to her boarding house with a clutch of solitude at her heart. The material poverty had ceased being her primal concern and the arrival of her aunt’s legacy no longer aroused in her any great excitement. After writing out the check for Mr. Trenor, she died in her sleep with a sense of fulfillment—having found her place of attachment in the
simplest human contact in life.
Lily’s quest for a place of attachment is a process of decommodification that will enable her to transcend the commodity form to build a social relation based on love and mutual understandings. The material culture of the Gilded Age has produced a distorting and alienating effect in which one’s dignity, worth and honor is measured solely by money and has shaped an environment in which people were treated like things and things like people. Lily’s inability to adapt or to commit herself to the space of competition stems from a longing for an identity-anchoring place and her refusal to be treated like a commodity. Her rejection of Gus Trenor’s sex demand and her insistence on “working” her way out of her debts by herself are proclamations of her autonomy.
Like Ellen Olenska in The Age of Innocence, Lily is a victim of her time and space. However, while Ellen’s sense of placelessness is immense and must be sent back to Europe, by a reversal of the producer—commodity relationship, Lily is able to survive and find herself a “home” in a rare moment of human intimacy. Although in the end, she dies of an overdose of chloral, she has proved to the world her every struggle against the influence of her surroundings and her victory in escaping the vulgarity of exchange, use and abuse altogether. It is a tough and long journey for one to realize where her heart is attached.
Chapter Three
Undine Spragg and Her Homes in Mobility in The Custom of the Country
I. Hotels as Homes in the Gilded Age
In The Custom of the Country, Undine Spragg is constructing her place of attachment out of the mobility of her life. As an ambitious young woman aspiring to be the most prominent society grand dame in the New York fashion society, Undine is constantly in motion. She is moving from one place to another, forever looking for a better marriage. Dissatisfied with her life with Ralph Marvell, a member of the old New York family who no longer enjoys the significant wealth, she longs for a marriage with Peter Van Degen, a rich yet tasteless nouveau riche. When her wish fails to come true, she turns to marry the French count, Raymond de Chelles. Later when her life with the count becomes more and more tedious and unbearable, she divorces Raymond and again marries Elmer Moffatt, who now makes a great fortune and is a successful businessman.12
12 Elmer Moffatt is both Undine’s first and fourth husband. While Undine was still a young girl in Apex City, she eloped with Moffatt. However, the marriage only lasted two weeks and Undine was hauled back home by her parents. This incident occurred before she married Ralph Marvell. Later when Ralph discovered the truth, he committed suicide.
However, she is not to stop here. While still enjoying the luxurious life provided by her husband, she already begins to dream about her life as an ambassador’s wife. Unlike Lily in The House of Mirth whose restless life only results in her a feeling of lost and a feverish search for “home”, Undine feels most at home when she is moving. The freedom of movement allows her to go beyond the gendered spheres and to achieve her goals. Thus, to discuss how
However, she is not to stop here. While still enjoying the luxurious life provided by her husband, she already begins to dream about her life as an ambassador’s wife. Unlike Lily in The House of Mirth whose restless life only results in her a feeling of lost and a feverish search for “home”, Undine feels most at home when she is moving. The freedom of movement allows her to go beyond the gendered spheres and to achieve her goals. Thus, to discuss how