The House of Mirth is a tragedy about Lily Bart, a well-born but penniless young woman belonging to New York City's high society of the 1890s. Written by American author Edith Wharton, it came out October 14, 1905. The House of Mirth traces Lily's slow two-year social descent from privilege to a lonely existence on the margins of society as she fails to marry a man of wealth and status to secure her a place in affluent society. Wharton uses Lily as an attack on "an irresponsible, grasping and morally corrupt upper class."
The House of Mirth was serialized in Scribner's Magazine beginning in January 1905 which created great interest in the story. In November 1905, Charles Scribner wrote to Wharton that the novel was showing "the most rapid sale of any book ever published by Scribner."
Literary reviewers and critics at the time categorized the novel as both a social satire and a novel of manners. Its commercial success allowed critics to classify it as a genre novel. In 2003, Carol Singley describes it as "a unique blend of romance, realism, and naturalism, [thus transcending] the narrow classification of a novel of manners." The House of Mirth continues to attract readers over a century after its first publication because Lily Bart's life and death matters as the existential struggle between "who we are and what society tells us we should be."
The House of Mirth was Wharton's second published novel,
"A moment's ornament" represents the way Wharton describes Lily's relationship to her reference group as a beautiful and well-bred socialite. Her value lasts only as long as her beauty and good-standing with the group is maintained. By centering the story around a portrait of Lily, Wharton was able to address directly the social limitations imposed on her. These included the mores of the upper crust social class to which Lily belonged by birth, education, and breeding.
The final title Wharton chose for the novel was The House of Mirth (1905), taken from the Old Testament:
The House of Mirth spotlights social context as equally important to the development of the story's purpose, as the heroine. "Mirth" contrasted with "mourning" also bespeaks a moral purpose as it underscores the frivolity of a social set that not only worships money, but also uses it ostentatiously solely for its own amusement and aggrandizement. At the time the novel takes place, Old New York high society was peopled by the extraordinarily wealthy who were conditioned by the economic and social changes the Gilded Age (1870–1900) wrought. Wharton's birth around the time of the Civil War predates that period by a little less than a decade. As a member of the privileged Old New York society, she was eminently qualified to describe it authentically. She also had license to criticize the ways New York high society of the 1890s had changed without being vulnerable to accusations of envy motivated by coming from a lower social caste.
Wharton figured that no one had written about New York society because it offered nothing worth writing about. But that did not deter her as she thought something of value could be mined there. If only the writer could dig deeply enough below the surface, some "stuff o' the conscience" could be found. She went on to declare unabashedly that: