The naturalism of Edith Wharton's 'House of Mirth.'

Twentieth Century Literature, Summer, 1995 by Donald Pizer

Toward the end of The House of Mirth, however, Wharton juxtaposes this conscious deterministic theme of victimization by one's familial and social environment--of being forced into roles and attributes which both imprison and destroy--with two striking alternative forms of belief and value. The first involves Nettie Struther, the second the final "union" of Lily and Selden. These are alternative forms of belief, I will suggest, because they are non-materialistic in their conception of the human will and emotion--that is, they posit either a transcendent strength, one which can defeat the forces making for victimization in life, or a transcendent faith, one which holds that some values exist despite their seeming defeat in life.

Nellie Struther, as some critics have pointed out, has on her appearance toward the close of The House of Mirth the effect of seeming to be a refugee from another kind of novel. As she is remembered by Lily from an earlier phase of their lives, when Lily has encountered her at a working-woman's club organized by well-meaning society ladies, Nettie was "one of the discouraged victims of over-work and anemic parentage; one of the superfluous fragments of life destined to be swept prematurely into [the] social refuse-heap" (313). This interpretation was indeed confirmed by Nettie's later serious illness and by her jilting by the somewhat more highly socially positioned man she had hoped to marry. But in fact, when Lily meets Nettie again immediately after Lily herself has broken for the last time with Selden and is returning home deeply disconsolate and with the thought of chloral "the only spot of light in the dark prospect" (311), "Nettle Struther's frail envelope was now alive with hope and energy; whatever fate the future reserved for her, she would not be cast into the refuse-heap without a struggle" (313).

Nettie, we learn, has returned to life through marriage with a good man who has accepted and loves her despite her relationship with a previous suitor. Nettie explains, "If George cared for me enough to have me as I was, I didn't see why I shouldn't begin over again--and I did" (315). The infant which she now dotes on is thus the symbol of the triumphant rebirth of her will to live and indeed to live happily. "The strength of the victory shone forth from her as she lifted her irradiated face from the child on her knees" (315). Nettie's progress from "victim" to "victory" within her own category of social determinism is thus a clear gloss on a potential of a similar kind within the category represented by Lily. If Nettie can triumph in the face of the physical and social handicaps which are hers from birth, this victory is also possible for Lily within her own seeming manacles of environmental conditioning. What differs in the two instances, in other words, is not an absolute distinction but a relative one. Nettie, unlike Lily, has both a sufficiently powerful will and the providential actuality of a man willing to take a chance on her. As Lily herself tersely sums up the differences between Nettie's fate and her own: "It had taken two to build the nest; the man's faith as well as the woman's courage" (320).