Lily reminisces about her debut in society and how it was clouded by financial troubles. During this flashback, Wharton uses a metaphor of stormy weather to describe the effect of financial insecurity on Lily's youth, ultimately foreshadowing her troubles to come:
Lily was nineteen when circumstances caused her to revise her view of the universe. The previous year she had made a dazzling debut fringed by a heavy thunder-cloud of bills. The light of the debut still lingered on the horizon, but the cloud had thickened; and suddenly it broke. The suddenness added to the horror; and there were still times when Lily relived with painful vividness every detail of the day on which the blow fell.
This flashback to Lily's debut gives context to her present circumstances and attitudes towards money. A glimpse into her past like this helps the reader understand the transactional relationship between her youth and beauty and the ugly reality—having to marry for money—she now faces.
The metaphor of bills and debts mounting as being a “thundercloud”—and her successful debut as a “light” parting it—captures the duality of Lily’s situation even at this early age. Even her earliest introduction to society was somewhat overshadowed by her family’s lack of money. Their impending financial troubles literally cast a shadow over her youthful “light.” It's implied that she only made a successful debut because of her beauty: her financial troubles remain.
The mention of the stormy weather of her parents’ finances foreshadows the many money problems that will continue to plague Lily throughout the novel. The “blow” that Wharton refers to here is the news that Lily’s father is financially “ruined,” an event that starts a domino effect of cascading debt and failure. This sets up an expectation for the reader that Lily's journey will be fraught with challenges—an expectation that quickly proves to be true.
As Lily's financial and social ambitions and her feelings for Selden collide, Wharton uses a metaphor suggesting she has split into two “beings” to illustrate her internal conflict:
There were in her at the moment two beings, one drawing deep breaths of freedom and exhilaration, the other gasping for air in a little black prison-house of fears.
Lily needs money. She also wants to be happy and safe. The first of those things is incompatible with continuing a relationship with Selden, but she considers the possibility anyway. The metaphor of "two beings" inside Lily illustrates this intense inner dispute. One represents her desire for “freedom and exhilaration” and the genuine happiness she might have if she married for love. Compared to the other men whose airless company she has been forced to endure, a life with Selden seems to offer her the opportunity to “breathe.” She thinks later in the same chapter that he makes her feel "a sense of buoyancy" which is in opposition to her usual restraint.
The other, more practical “being” within Lily is confined by her fears of financial ruin and her concern with societal expectations. The “little black prison-house” of her fears of losing her life of luxury make a relationship with Selden seem impossibly unappealing, even at this early stage. This is especially true because of how often the narrator tells the reader that Lily hates “dingy” and “small” places. She can’t imagine not pursuing her dreams of marrying well. Even the idea of there being another way is intensely destabilizing for her.
Gerty Farish reflects—or tries not to reflect—on the kindness shown to her by her cousin, Lawrence Selden. In this passage, Wharton uses a metaphor likening Selden's attention to the delicate wings of a butterfly that Gerty is unwilling to crush:
Gerty would no more have dared to define it than she would have tried to learn a butterfly's colors by knocking the dust from its wings. To seize on the wonder would be to brush off its bloom, and perhaps see it fade and stiffen in her hand: better the sense of beauty palpitating out of reach, while she held her breath and watched where it would alight.
This metaphor highlights the scarcity of kindness in The House Of Mirth. Like a butterfly, which is beautiful but can be easily harmed by touch, kindness is portrayed as something fragile. The world is unkind to women like Gerty, so she has learned to treat kindness and attention as scarce resources.
Gerty feels that by trying to analyze or possess Selden’s kindness, she might destroy its beauty or damage their relationship. She doesn’t want to think too hard about why he might be nice to her because that way she can enjoy it without troublesome thoughts of Lily Bart. She is extremely cautious about the dangers of “seizing on” it or drawing too much attention to herself. She believes that if she can leave her relationship with Selden unexamined and not “defined,” it will remain intact. If she addresses it or thinks too much about it, it will “fade and stiffen in her hand” like a butterfly crushed to death.
In Book 2, Chapter 14, Gerty reflects on Selden’s attentions towards her. The narrator employs a metaphor of illumination to describe Selden’s effect on her, supporting this description with visual imagery of light and shadow:
Now she was the centre of a little illumination of her own: a mild but unmistakable beam, compounded of Lawrence Selden's growing kindness to herself and the discovery that he extended his liking to Lily Bart. If these two factors seem incompatible to the student of feminine psychology, it must be remembered that Gerty had always been a parasite in the moral order, living on the crumbs of other tables, and content to look through the window at the banquet spread for her friends.
This metaphor of a “little illumination” portrays Selden’s attention as a beam of light, not focusing on Gerty but casting light on her anyway. The visual imagery of partial illumination powerfully illustrates the intensity of Selden’s feelings for Lily. It also shows the extent to which Gerty is living in her shadow. It suggests that Selden’s kindness and attention make Gerty feel special, as though she is in the spotlight even though she isn’t.
This sheds light on the younger woman's character. She’s so used to being ignored that she revels in the smallest attention, even the “light” she gets as someone associated with Lily. The metaphor gives the reader insight into her longing for recognition and appreciation. However, the other metaphors in this passage paint Gerty in a less pleasant light. The narrator acknowledges that it might seem odd to the reader that Gerty would feel “illuminated” by Selden’s love for someone else. They go on to explain that it’s because she goes through all her life looking in from the outside of things. They describe her as a “parasite,” content to eat the “crumbs” of affection and attention that come from other people’s actions and relationships. Gerty only knows how to be an outside observer who lives on the scraps of a “banquet spread” for others. The image of her “looking through the window” and her status as a “parasite” indicate her lack of emotional depth. It also points to her exclusion, as a member of a lower social class, from the world that Lily and Selden precariously inhabit.
Gerty is overwhelmed when she realizes the depth of Selden's affection for Lily. In this passage, Wharton invokes the novel's motif of metaphors describing water and drowning to illustrate Gerty's extreme emotions. In addition to this, she uses vivid sensory language, invoking hearing and touch to represent Gerty's total lack of control over her romantic situation:
She tried to follow what he was saying, to cling to her own part in the talk—but it was all as meaningless as the boom of waves in a drowning head, and she felt, as the drowning may feel, that to sink would be nothing beside the pain of struggling to keep up.
The imagery in this passage evokes the scale and helplessness of a human body against the ocean. Describing Gerty's confusion and despair as making Selden's words as "meaningless as the boom of waves in a drowning head," Wharton allows readers to vividly imagine the sensory experience of drowning. As Selden speaks, readers feel Gerty’s disorientation and her struggle for breath. Auditory imagery of the “booming,” thunderous sound of crashing waves covers Selden’s speech. The language here is not only about what Gerty hears, but also about what she feels. The passage immerses the reader in the tactile sensation of water engulfing Gerty, allowing them to experience her struggle to comprehend this horrible news.
The motif of water appears throughout The House of Mirth and is intimately connected with the struggles of women to survive within societal constraints. Women not born into wealth "drown" under the weight of the expectations and limitations imposed upon them. They struggle to control their emotions and to maintain their individuality and personal desires against the relentless tide of societal norms and financial pressures.
The motif of rushing, powerful water appears in almost every chapter of the book. For example, in Book 1, the narrator describes Lily as a “water-plant in the flux of the tides.” By Chapter 13, Lily is subsumed by “the sea of humiliation,” and Mr. Trenor’s touch is “a shock to her drowning consciousness.” By Book 2, Chapter 13, Lily is dying and abandoned by society. Fittingly, she leans on a man’s shoulder as she is overcome by a “great wave of physical weakness.” Fighting against the current is fruitless in The House of Mirth. Wharton uses this repeated motif to enact a broader critique of the society she depicts. Gilded Age American high society might have been glittering, but it was also a place where women could be easily consumed by forces beyond their control.
Wharton layers similes and metaphors referring to letters and time passing as she depicts Lily going through her belongings after meeting Nettie Struther unexpectedly. Everything in her trunk of remaining belongings leads Lily to reflect on her past:
An association lurked in every fold: each fall of lace and gleam of embroidery was like a letter in the record of her past. She was startled to find how the atmosphere of her old life enveloped her. But, after all, it was the life she had been made for: every dawning tendency in her had been carefully directed toward it, all her interests and activities had been taught to centre around it. She was like some rare flower grown for exhibition, a flower from which every bud had been nipped except the crowning blossom of her beauty.
The simile comparing the details of dresses to “letter[s] in the record of her past” illustrates how Lily's possessions hold memories and associations. These objects serve as tangible reminders of her history, representing her previous, more hopeful existence. With this simile, Wharton emphasizes the sentimental value attached to material objects and their power to bring the past into the present. Lily is forced to re-experience the loss of her prospects for a wealthy and secure future, as unpacking her dresses evokes memories and emotions from her catalog of failures.
The metaphor in this passage depicts Lily as a rare flower grown for exhibition. When flowers are grown for this purpose, gardeners will often clip off all the buds but one. They do this so that the remaining flower can get all the nutrients and grow strong. Lily has had all her “buds except beauty” clipped off. The metaphor summarizes how her upbringing and societal expectations deliberately stifled her potential in any area but marriageability. This is one of many moments in the novel where Wharton criticizes the social rules for women that inhibited the full development of their capacities and talents. By likening Lily to a flower grown only for its appearance, the author comments on the dehumanization faced by women in the early 1900s.
At the end of the novel, Lily reflects on her now-realized fears of poverty and solitude, which make her feel rootless and ephemeral. Wharton uses a simile comparing Lily to a plant pulled from the ground, and this simile is accompanied by a metaphor of flooding water:
It was indeed miserable to be poor—to look forward to a shabby, anxious middle-age, leading by dreary degrees of economy and self-denial to gradual absorption in the dingy communal existence of the boarding-house. But there was something more miserable still—it was the clutch of solitude at her heart, the sense of being swept like a stray uprooted growth down the headless current of the years. That was the feeling which possessed her now—the feeling of being something rootless and ephemeral, mere spin-drift of the whirling surface of existence, without anything to which the poor little tentacles of self could cling before the awful flood submerged them.
The author gives the reader a sense of Lily’s despair using simile in this passage. Lily is compared to a “stray uprooted growth” being swept away in a current. She has no support system and nothing to cling to. This emphasizes her feeling of helplessness and her total loss of control over her life. This comparison also points to Lily's feelings of detachment from her surroundings. She cannot feel at home or put down “roots” in the boarding-house when she has been used to finer things. The descriptions of a “shabby, anxious middle-age” evoke feelings of despair and bleakness, as Lily dreads the dreary life she believes she is condemned to. Her worst fear—that she will become “dingy”—has come true, and it’s accompanied by an awful feeling of loneliness. The impoverished circumstances in which Lily finds herself are echoed in the passage’s language of grayness, shadow, and shabbiness.
As if this were not already tragic enough, Wharton closes the description of Lily’s new circumstances with a pitiful metaphor. Lily’s "self," the narrator says, is futilely attempting to grasp at “existence.” Her spirit, with its “poor little tentacles of self” fails to cling to anything before being submerged by the “awful flood” of societal decline and misfortune. Her identity, once so precious to her, has been washed away amidst the overpowering tide of societal expectations and public disgrace.
