House Of Mirth Character Analysis

Words: 1595
Pages: 7

In life, without money, you are nothing in the society. If you do not have money, people will disregard you and have no value of you. Lily Bart, the protagonist of a fiction novel, The House of Mirth, was in a similar situation. Lily, an unmarried orphan living with her aunt, Mrs. Peniston, desired to be socially successful and rich by utilizing her beauty. Lily was aware that having money is the most important element that will lead her to social acceptance and power and thus decided to marry a rich man. However, every step she took in order to get social acceptance tripped her over. I believe that Lily continued to mess up while trying to become wealthy because of her flightiness and because she really did not want what she was trying to achieve, which was to marry a wealthy gentleman just for power and social acceptance. First of all, the main goal …show more content…
However, her fate does not stay by her side and thus he leaves her and she moves on to another rich men, Gus Trenor. She becomes close with him because he said he will help her become earn money by investing it in the stock market, in which Simon Rosedale added tips. Lily does get a lot of money from this, but conflicts arise between her and Gus and thus Lily leaves Gus and moves on to Simon Rosedale. Lily was not so sure about whether or not she wants to marry Simon, because he had seen her come out of Benedick, Seldon’s apartment, the very first day of their encounter. This secret can ruin Lily’s reputation and societal power if it came out in public, and thus she decides to distance herself from him. That does not really work out, because at the end, Lily had to go to Simon to ask him to marry her because she was left with no other option. She wanted money, social power and success, and Simon wanted a wife. Thus, because of Lily’s flightiness, she keeps on failing while trying to earn wealth and