The House of Mirth: Meet Miss Lily Bart

Right away, Edith Wharton introduces the reader to to Miss Lily Bart who will clearly be the focal point of the The House of Mirth. She is a young women, age 29, who, according to another character we meet, Lawrence Seldon, is incredibly beautiful.  Its amazing to me how much society has changed since the era about which Wharton writes.  Today, it is perfectly acceptable, if not encouraged, for a women to wait until her late twenties or early thirties to marry. In contemporary times many young women are focusing on their education and/or career in order to secure their future.  In contrast, Lily Bart is considered especially old for being a single women and is apparently still single because she is holding out for a very wealthy  man to marry.  Miss Lily remarks to her friend Seldon while she is scandolously visiting his apartment, "What a miserable thing it is to be a woman," referring to the marriage expectations that society places upon women (Wharton, 4). It's odd to think that it was no uncommon circumstance for women of this time to be married at my age of eighteen. If I were to get married this year it would be a scandal, rather than the opposite being true in Miss Lily's time.  It is also difficult to place myself in Lily's mindset regarding marrying a rich man so that she would be well-off.  I know that this was common at the time, and for good reason because women did not receive the education that men did and therefore could not have the same opportunities.  However, it has been drilled into my mind over and over to study and do well in school so that i can go to college and succeed in my future.  The differences between our two societies make them seem like separate worlds altogether.