The House of Mirth: Book 1, Chapters 13 and 14

After reading chapters 13 and 14 of Edith Wharton’s novel, The House of Mirth, I recognized a topic that has been building up throughout the entire book. This topic is friendship. In my opinion, a friend is someone who genuinely cares for one and wishes for their well-being, and it occurred to me that this word is much more loosely used by the characters in the book. At the beginning of the novel, Lily Bart, the main character, considers herself to have many friends. However, as time goes on and Lily’s reputation becomes increasingly tainted and disastrous, she begins to discover that those so called “friends” were only using her to their advantage. This becomes a pattern among many of the characters. They only befriend a person if they can gain something from the relationship, and if the usefulness of said person runs its course, everyone abandons them. As Lily was considered very beautiful, many of the others used that to their advantage, yet have not repaid her by trying to learn the other stories regarding her supposedly appalling actions. This, in my opinion, is the exact opposite of friendship and is rather the definition of manipulation.

One character, Gerty Farish, discovered that her beloved cousin, Lawrence Selden, had paid her a visit only to learn more about Lily. Because of this realization, Gerty turned all of her anger towards Lily, and “she lay face to face with the fact that she hated Lily Bart,” (Wharton, 132). Selden was inconsiderate one time, and because of it, Lily fell from being a dear friend to being hated. Furthermore, before her abrupt hatred towards Lily, I respected Gerty as a character, but she proved to be a perfect example of how fickle and insincere the word “friend” could be during the time period in which the book takes place.