The tone of The House of Mirth is sarcastic, restrained and erudite. It is sometimes lighthearted, but more often the attitude of the work is pessimistic and serious.
The narrator consistently speaks from the third-person limited point of view. A limited narrator—although they can and do describe other people—focuses mostly on one character. Wharton’s narrator in this novel is mainly concerned with the rise and fall of the protagonist Lily Bart. This perspective allows the reader to have deep insight into Lily’s thoughts and emotions while maintaining something of a sense of mystery about those of other people. For the most part, the reader learns what Lily thinks long before the motivations of others are revealed. This mirrors the novel's attention to the results of gossip and the telling of partial truths. For the most part, the narrator is wry and objective, speaking in a tone that’s almost like a social study. The acute detailing of social interactions and manners adds to this sense: Wharton puts 20th-century American aristocrats under an unflinching microscope.
However, despite this scientific approach, the narrator shows an underlying sympathy towards Lily Bart, especially in portraying her internal struggles and the societal constraints she faces. Throughout the novel, there is an ironic undertone that serves to highlight the hypocrisy and superficiality of the society of early-1900s New York. The narrator often makes small, judgmental jabs at people’s appearances and choices. These add some variation to the book’s tone, as they’re always where Wharton's narrator is funniest. As the novel progresses, the narrator's tone evolves from being somewhat detached to obviously and consistently somber, reflecting Lily's tragic decline. This shift in tone draws the reader into the poignant conclusion. Because of the narrator’s previous objectivity, this shift makes the moral injustice of the ending seem more grave than it might otherwise.
