The House of Mirth (Blog 12)

By: Edith Wharton

Lily spontaneously travels to Alaska with Carry Fisher
in hopes of making her Bellomont friends
realize that they miss her.

So many times throughout this story, I have thought that Lily changed who she is.  However, she proves me wrong every single time, and she does it again in chapter 5.  "It seemed to Lily, as Mrs. Peniston's door closed on her, that she was taking a final leave of her old life.  The future stretched before her dull and bare as the deserted length of Fifth Avenue, and opportunities showed as meagrely as the few cabs trailing in quest of fares that did not come" (Wharton, 187).  When the chapter opens with these two sentences, I truly thought that Lily was closing the door to her past.  I thought that she was going to stay away from her friends in Bellomont, and I thought for sure that she had forgotten the idea of marrying for money.  Unfortunately, she proved me wrong on both of these thoughts.  With all the stress and loneliness that Lily feels when she is in Bellomont or with those people, I think it would be logical for her to find new friends.  Lily does make new friends; however, she jumps on the opportunity to travel to Alaska with Mrs. Carry Fisher.  Lily's motive for taking this trip with Carry is to make her Bellomont friends realize how much they miss her.  I don't think that Lily should even bother being friends with them anymore, so I do not think that the trip to Alaska is even worth it.  In addition, Lily proves that she will always resort to her gold-digging ways.  While on the cruise, Carry talks to Lily about how she needs to marry soon.  She suggests both George Dorset (because his marriage is likely to end in divorce any day) and Simon Rosedale (because he is extremely wealthy and is interested in marrying Lily).  Because of the earlier rumors about George and Lily in the Mediterranean, Lily is not a fan of the idea of marrying him.  She does strongly consider marrying Rosedale, though.  This angers me so much.  Since the beginning of the book, Lily has consistently shown annoyance and hatred towards Rosedale.  She still doesn't even like him, yet she thinks about marrying him.  She only wants to marry him because he is very rich and has a high social status.  She wants to marry him so that she can have money to pay off her debt, and she knows that Rosedale has a great deal of money that would definitely keep them financially stable.  In addition, she believes that marrying Rosedale can restore her lost social status.  All that Lily seems to care about are money and social status.  I honestly am starting to think that she will never change her ways.