Edith Wharton, "The House of Mirth"

            Lily Bart, in her complicated situation of lacking financial resources yet maintaining a place among the social elite, is constantly engaged in an interior struggle. She has an escapist mentality—an aversion to the constructions and guises of wealth—as well as an imprisoned one, desiring to exist outside of social limitations and the performative self.

            One of the major factors hindering Lily’s ability to distance herself from the constructions of wealth is her upbringing. Mrs. Bart was preoccupied with material display and exhibitions of wealth, these values in turn were internalized in her daughter. Though not with abundant monetary resources, for Lily’s childhood was “tugged at by the overflow of a perpetual need—the need of more money” (31), Mrs. Bart was renowned for living with the appearance of being richer than the family actually was. Concepts verbalized by her mother, such as those not flaunting wealth as “living like pigs,” echo within Lily as the plot continues and her own financial state becomes an object for speculation. She continually refers to “her old incurable dread of discomfort and poverty… the fear of that mounting tide of dinginess against which her mother had so passionately warned her” (288).

In addition, the value and promise of physical beauty leaves Lily to hinge on her chances to remain in among the rich. Without other means, the heroine seeks opportunity to objectify her own beauty as a commodity to reap wealth and fortune. Such traits imprison Lily Bart, perpetuating her cycle within the social strata of the upperclass and her desire to remain there. The importance of wealth, display, and appearance have been ingrained in her social values and serve as a barrier, preventing her from breaking from the guised world of wealth.

            Lily recognizes that “she had learned by experience that she had neither the aptitude nor the moral constancy to remake her life on new lines; to become a worker among workers, and let the world of luxury and pleasure sweep by her unregarded” (293). Despite her yearning to reconcile her desires to be both among and apart from the rich, Lily is able to trace the opposition of her dual mentality. Her escapist convictions are reinforced by her indebtedness to Tenor and the limited legacy given by her aunt, but the forces of her upbringing and accustomed comforts burden her pursuit of financial independence.

            Lily Bart’s interior conflict—the escapist versus the imprisoned mentality—links the search for financial agency, and subsequently, personal freedom, with the pressures of identifying with the powerful affluent and their performative exhibitions of wealth. The struggle of mentalities for Lily becomes a microcosm of the individual conflict in the world of social class.