Throughout the novel, the motif of beauty as a currency recurs over and over. Through this, Wharton highlights the value placed on female attractiveness by Gilded Age high society, and beauty's inextricable ties to wealth and security. Take, for example, when the narrator describes the lavish house at Bellomont in Book 1, Chapter 3:
There were moments when such scenes delighted Lily, when they gratified her sense of beauty and her craving for the external finish of life; there were others when they gave a sharper edge to the meagreness of her own opportunities.
The beauty of the house is a source of conflict for Lily. She takes pleasure in it, but it also reminds her of the “meagreness” of her own diminishing “opportunities.” Beauty, like money, is a resource to be exchanged for goods in The House of Mirth, and Lily is always worried she won't be able to trade one for the other. Wharton makes this explicit later in the same chapter when she writes that:
Lily understood that beauty is only the raw material of conquest, and that to convert it into success other arts are required.
Lily is aware that her physical beauty is a form of capital that can be leveraged for social mobility. However, she also understands its limitations. Beauty by itself with no refinement or restraint is not enough. It’s like a “raw material” that needs to be utilized skillfully. Lily hopes to exchange her beauty—by getting married—for a life of financial comfort. Throughout the book, Lily expresses her fear of “dinginess”: it’s the opposite of beauty, and it represents her vision of a working-class life without opulence or loveliness.
This isn't a fear that's exclusive to Lily. When Mrs. Peniston compares Lily to Carry Fisher and to the impoverished, admiring Gerty Farish, she does so in terms of their relative “dinginess”:
She was quite aware that she was of interest to dingy people, but she assumed that there is only one form of dinginess, and that admiration for brilliancy is the natural expression of its inferior state.
The tragedy of Lily’s life is that she does become what she would most likely consider a “dingy” person by the end of the novel, even if her beauty isn't "inferior." Just as she doesn’t have enough money to sustain her lavish lifestyle, her beauty doesn’t quite get her where she wants to go. Her story is a chilling critique of a world that values women’s looks over their accomplishments.
Wharton repeatedly tells the reader that Lily’s only purpose in life is to be beautiful and marriageable: she also, however, emphasizes the unfairness of this obligation. Thinking about beauty as a currency plays a critical role in understanding the societal pressures and constraints placed on characters like the unfortunate Miss Bart. Women in her situation had their value largely reduced to their physical beauty and were forced into an often futile race against time to secure stability before they supposedly lost their value.
Throughout the novel, the motif of beauty as a currency recurs over and over. Through this, Wharton highlights the value placed on female attractiveness by Gilded Age high society, and beauty's inextricable ties to wealth and security. Take, for example, when the narrator describes the lavish house at Bellomont in Book 1, Chapter 3:
There were moments when such scenes delighted Lily, when they gratified her sense of beauty and her craving for the external finish of life; there were others when they gave a sharper edge to the meagreness of her own opportunities.
The beauty of the house is a source of conflict for Lily. She takes pleasure in it, but it also reminds her of the “meagreness” of her own diminishing “opportunities.” Beauty, like money, is a resource to be exchanged for goods in The House of Mirth, and Lily is always worried she won't be able to trade one for the other. Wharton makes this explicit later in the same chapter when she writes that:
Lily understood that beauty is only the raw material of conquest, and that to convert it into success other arts are required.
Lily is aware that her physical beauty is a form of capital that can be leveraged for social mobility. However, she also understands its limitations. Beauty by itself with no refinement or restraint is not enough. It’s like a “raw material” that needs to be utilized skillfully. Lily hopes to exchange her beauty—by getting married—for a life of financial comfort. Throughout the book, Lily expresses her fear of “dinginess”: it’s the opposite of beauty, and it represents her vision of a working-class life without opulence or loveliness.
This isn't a fear that's exclusive to Lily. When Mrs. Peniston compares Lily to Carry Fisher and to the impoverished, admiring Gerty Farish, she does so in terms of their relative “dinginess”:
She was quite aware that she was of interest to dingy people, but she assumed that there is only one form of dinginess, and that admiration for brilliancy is the natural expression of its inferior state.
The tragedy of Lily’s life is that she does become what she would most likely consider a “dingy” person by the end of the novel, even if her beauty isn't "inferior." Just as she doesn’t have enough money to sustain her lavish lifestyle, her beauty doesn’t quite get her where she wants to go. Her story is a chilling critique of a world that values women’s looks over their accomplishments.
Wharton repeatedly tells the reader that Lily’s only purpose in life is to be beautiful and marriageable: she also, however, emphasizes the unfairness of this obligation. Thinking about beauty as a currency plays a critical role in understanding the societal pressures and constraints placed on characters like the unfortunate Miss Bart. Women in her situation had their value largely reduced to their physical beauty and were forced into an often futile race against time to secure stability before they supposedly lost their value.
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.
