The book that made Wharton’s reputation, The House of Mirth features Lily Bart, a beautiful woman of elite New York society. An orphan, dependent upon her aunt for money, at age 29 Bart is rapidly losing her bargaining power in the marriage market.
Wharton later wrote, “In what aspect could a society of irresponsible pleasure-seekers be said to have… any deeper bearing than the people composing such a society could guess? The answer was that a frivolous society can acquire dramatic significance only through what its frivolity destroys. Its tragic implication lies in its power of debasing people and ideals. The answer, in short, was my heroine, Lily Bart.”
