art and architecture of the self: Designing the "I"-witness in Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth, The

College Literature, Fall 2000 by Totten, Gary

As I have suggested, in Selden's gaze Lily sees her self, this self-reflection producing a kind of mise en abyme, the infinite specular regression which occurs when one sees one's reflection between two facing mirrors. Literary analyses of mise en abyme ascribe various functions to this narrative phenomenon. Lucien Dallenbach notes that one of the mise en abyme's functions in literature is to bring to light "the way in which the writer constructs the writing, and vice versa" (1989, 15). Though the two reflections (the writer and his or her reflection) "are dependent on each other, they remain distinct" and, unlike the instantaneous visual experience of an actual mirror, "can only speak to, and answer, each other in turn" (17). The gaze between Lily and Selden conforms to Dallenbach's description. Lily sees her self in Selden's gaze, revealing that her subjectivity is dependent upon this gaze (since it "brings to light" the way in which Lily constructs herself, and the ways in which the act of specular creation constructs Lily); however, Lily's subjectivity, though dependent on Selden's answering gaze for its formation, remains distinct. Mieke Bal, using terminology similar to Dallenbach, suggests the term mirror-text for literary examples of the mise en abyme (1997, 58); thus, in Bal's narratological terms, the embedded text or "subtext" (embedded fabula) of Lily's self which she sees reflected in Selden's gaze is a "sign" of the "primary text" (primary fabula) of her subjectivity. Bal argues that the images of the infinite regress are only parts of the text, not "the totality of an image" (58), and this fact of narrative suggests that Lily's aesthetic triumph at the tableaux vivants is only partial.

Although most analyses of mise en abyme suggest that the phenomenon is antithetical to narrative, prematurely revealing the ending, Ann Jefferson chooses to regard mise en abyme as identical to any other form of advanced notice or flashforward (prolepsis) in narrative, with the added function of illuminating overall design (1983, 206). Since narrative contains a "teleological force" making it an "end-dominated" form of discourse, the ending is generally implied by the creation of a mystery within the text which is maintained until the revelation at the end: "the revelation of the truth marks the end of narrative, and the end is constituted by the revelation of the truth" (196).Thus, we might legitimately expect the mise en abyme generated by the tableaux vivants scene to reveal the overall design and perhaps even the ending of The House of Mirth. However, Lily's failure of subjectivity at the novel's conclusion contradicts her success during the tableau. In criticism of Wharton's novel, the ending reveals everything from Lily exhausting her options to the birth of a new literary age.12 I suggest that the ending also reveals the mechanisms of a Realist ideology which works to maintain a common or universal vision of reality by diffusing Lily's individual articulation of subjectivity during the tableaux vivants scene. Though Lily's gaze exposes ideology within the text, contemporary criticism of the novel often works to sustain the Realist ideology that denies Lily subjectivity. When we as critics continue to fetishize Lily's existence and focus on her death as the failure of subjectivity, we perpetuate such ideology, destroying Lily's possibilities for subjectivity (however temporary) each time we read her as object of the gaze rather than a gazing subject, or "I"-witness, with access to technologies of self and vision in order to design and construct her own subjectivity.