The House of Mirth (1905) by Edith Wharton is a piercing portrayal of New York's elite society at the turn of the twentieth century. Lily Bart, a beautiful but penniless socialite, must secure a wealthy husband to maintain her place in fashionable society. Yet her taste for luxury, moral scruples, and longing for genuine love—embodied in the ambivalent Lawrence Selden—undermine every opportunity. When scandal and debt strip away her alliances, Lily descends the social ladder with tragic speed. A masterwork of irony and social critique, the novel exposes the cruelty of a world where a woman's value is measured in dollars.
