![]() The possession of a family fortune means that a complete nonentity such as Percy Gryce is regarded as a desirable catch for any New York matron wishing to marry off a daughter, whereas even someone as beautiful and intelligent as Lily Bart has been unable to locate a husband, because she has no grand inheritance and has fallen in the social pecking order since the collapse of her father’s business. Like other forms of upper class and aristocratic society its main impetus towards the preservation of power and influence via marriages based on wealth – preferably inherited. ![]() Everything rested on the appearance of respectability, no matter how far its remoteness from the truth of things. She wrote about a subject she knew intimately – the upper echelons of ‘old money’ New York society and their amazingly clannish not-to-say snobbish notions of what was and was not socially acceptable. ![]() But from The House of Mirth onwards, she regarded herself as a serious novelist – even though she claimed that her apprenticeship to the art of fiction only ended with the publication of her novella Ethan Frome in 1911. Indeed she went on in her prolific career to produce travel writing, essays, journalism, and memoirs. She had published short stories before, and even a best-seller on interior design – The Decoration of Houses (1897). The House of Mirth (1905) was Edith Wharton’s first major success as a novelist. Tutorial, commentary, study resources, further reading ![]()
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