House of Mirth

My Review

I heard this book referenced in the Reese Witherspoon rom-com, Your Place or Mine, that I watched with Jessica a couple weeks back. While the movie wasn't great, the book was.

I've surprised myself over the last couple of years with how much I enjoy these sorts of novels - drama, relationships, high society. Starting with Pride & Prejudice, The Scarlet Pimpernel, and Wuthering Heights, not only am I immersed into a simmering pot of uncommon vocabulary, I am drawn to the trials and tribulations of the elite class of rich socialites. I don't know why. Perhaps because the stories are so well written. (ok, Wuthering Heights isn't high society, but it's old and related in many ways).

I was not surprised by the ending of The House of Mirth. But I was still moved by it.

Notable Quotes:

"Mrs. Dorset never came down till luncheon: her doctors, she averred, had forbidden her to expose herself to the crude air of the morning." - I thought this was just funny.

"That's Lily all over, you know: she works like a slave perparing the ground and sowing her seed; but the day she ought to be reaping the harvest she over-sleeps herself or goes off on a picnic"

"You asked me just now if I could understand why Ned Silverton spent so much money. Of course I understand - he spends it on living with the rich. You think we live ON the rich, rather than with them: and so we do, in a sense - but it's a prviliege we have to pay for! We eat ther dinners, and drink their wine, and smoke their cigarettes, and use their carriages and their opera-boxes and their private cars - yes, but there's a tax to pay on every one of those luxuries. The man pays it by big tips to the servants, by playing cards beyond his means, by flowers and presents - and - and - lots of other things that cost; the girl plays it by tips and cards too - oh, yes, I've had to take up bridge again - and by going to the best dress-makers, and having just the right dress for every occasion, and always keeping herself fresh and exquisite and amusing!"

"One of the surprises of her unoccupied state was the discovery that time, when it is left to itself and no definite demands are made on it, cannot be trusted tomove at any recognized pace. Usually it loiters; but just when one has come to count upon its slowness, it may suddenly break into a wild irrational gallop."

"The poor little working-girl who found strength to gather up the fragments of her life, and build herself a shelter with them, seemed to Lily to have reached the central truth of existence." - when Lily had hit rock bottom and realized some of life's most basic truths.

Vocab:

Several of these I could guess their meaning in context but wanted to know the specific meanings. Some I should know, like conjecture, mettle, and aphorism, but even though I've seen the words a good deal I wasn't quite sure of their exact meaning.

desultory

cotillion

axioms

conjecture

char-woman

unwonted

dissembling

inculcate

pliancy

didactic

enmities

chary

colloquy

dyspeptic

jocularity

leer

mettle

anecdotes

coquetry

vehemence

puerile

propinquity

milksop

supernumerary

appositeness

obsequious

prosaic

infelicity

propitiate

conjecture

innuendo

connivance

cuirassed

effulgence

caterwauling

apothegm

assiduity

abjured

damask

loquacity

sumptuary

tableau

aphorisms

panacea

denouement

ostentatiously

effusiveness

tacitly

sepulchral

plethoric

impenitent

rapacity

adumbrations

indolence

abeyance

florid

excrescences

millinery

penitent

allusiveness

antimacassar

opprobrium

officiousness

penury