The House of Mirth (Blog 5)

By: Edith Wharton



Lily seeks a way to find financial securtiy at this point in the story.

 By chapter 7, we can see how stressed out Lily is becoming.  She is extremely close to being completely poor, and she does not seem to know how to become financially stable again.  When Mrs. Trenor needs her husband Gus Trenor picked up from the station, she asks Lily so that Carry Fisher will not be able to ask for money from Mr. Trenor.  "'...I fancy she must have got a lot more bills this morning.  It seems to me,' Mrs. Trenor feelingly concluded, 'that most of her alimony is paid by other women's husband's!'" (Wharton, 63).  Mrs. Trenor seems annoyed that Carry always is asking for help paying her bills, and it seems that she has recently been asking for help from Mr. Trenor.  When Mrs. Trenor asks Lily to pick her husband up, I'm sure the last thing she expected is for Lily to do the same thing as Carry.  Because she is so wealthy, Mrs. Trenor does not understand the stress of needing financial help.  I think that this makes it even harder for Lily to deal with her situation; she does not have any friends that can relate to her because all of her friends are very rich.  I also think that the memory of her mother's last request stresses her out.  Right before she passed away, Mrs. Hudson Bart's last request for her daughter was to find some way to become rich again.  I believe that this is one of the main reasons that Lily stresses about money so much.  Not only is she used to being rich, but she doesn't want to let her mother down.  When she picks Gus Trenor up, Lily realizes that he can help her.  "She could not, indeed, imagine herself, in any extremity, stooping to extract a 'tip' from Mr. Rosedale; but at her side was a man in possession of that precious commodity, and who, as the husband of her dearest friend, stood her in a relation to almost fraternal intimacy" (Wharton, 66).  Lily's idea to resort to Mr. Trenor for financial support will hopefully help her get her life back together.  At the beginning of chapter 8, Wharton states that Lily received a first check from Mr. Trenor for $1,000.  I think that Gus Trenor is willing to help her because his wife is best friends with Lily.  I do not think Gus is going to tell his wife, so I am curious to see how this plan between Lily and Gus carries out in the story.