Fate, society, and determinism

Fate, Society & Determinism.

In comparing the two heroines in Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth and Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Lily and Emma, one cannot help but wonder if these two grandiose protagonists have anything in common. The background of their stories is certainly not the same, their drives and inner most desires are fired by divergent impulses, their struggles take on different shapes, their deaths have contrasting meanings.

The social milieu in which Lily Bart is presented in The House of Mirth is an image of an entire society in transaction, it is an image of the old New York, of the veritable bourgeois, inevitably mingling with the new one, that of the "invaders," of the Civil War millionaires, of the industrial exploiters who are gradually buying their way into the high society, producing, thus, a change into the older social values -- a change which deeply affects the life of the heroine.

From the very beginning of the novel, we are let into knowing the exact age of Lily Bart, namely twenty-nine, which one would consider to be quite advanced for a Miss still. Orphan and living under her widowed aunt's cheerless shelter, Mrs. Peniston, Lily can see only one way out of the misfortune that her parents' financial ruin has led her into: making a suitable marriage for money. To this end, she keeps in the company of women of wealth, who, although at the beginning all seem to take her in, to be her friends and help her accomplish her goal, in the end, are the very same ones to turn their back on her and let her fall in her own misery.

Nor is her aunt, Mrs. Peniston, very sympathetic with Lily and her way of life, either. Though, everyone expects Lily to inherit Mrs. Peniston's fotune, when the old lady dies, she leaves her niece a mere ten thousand dollars, barely enough for Lily to cover her debt to Gus Trenor, who tricks her into making her believe he makes investments in the stock market for her, which hopelessly compromises Lily into accepting great sums of money from him. Mrs. Peniston's will is a clear expression of her disapproval of both Lily's social habits -- the endless parties she takes part into, her gambling at bridge -- and Lily's breaking the social code of conduct for unmarried women -- the seemingly appearance of her being involved with a married man, again, Gus Trenor, of whose unwanted amorous advances she is exposed to.

By breaking a few social codes, Lily Bart attracts the enmity of her so-called friends, particularly Mrs. Bertha Dorset who, jealous of Lily's outstanding beauty and her sex-appeal to men, is the one to push Lily down the social ladder -- the beginning of her tragic fall and ultimate end. If, at the beginning of the novel, Lily is a regular and esteemed guest within the highest circles of society, towards the end, she is completely and harshly displaced from that milieu, to which she was ambiguously attached, but without fully belonging to.

Lily Bart misses out several opportunities to make a so-called suitable marriage and, thus, to finally attain that stability that a certain social status confers. We could say that Lily does not have a real fatal flaw, however, she does seem to have a dangerous weakness: the inability to resist a certain kind of temptation, which is not by all means erotic, but material. This is quite clear in her attitude towards Rosedale and his marriage proposal, when she, seeing no other way of regaining her social status, goes as far as bringing herself to want to marry him, although she dislikes him.

Thus, it is quite a paradox how her unsteadiness of purpose, her contradictory attitude -- her urge toward and repugnance to -- makes her slide away from all the material opportunities that come her way. Talking about Lily's instability of her own pursuits, Mrs. Fisher remarks:

That's Lily all over, you know: she works like a slave preparing the ground and sowing her seed; but the day she ought to be reaping the harvest she over-sleeps herself or goes off an a picnic...Sometimes...I think it's just flightiness -- and sometimes I think it's because she despises the things she's trying for. " (Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth, 197)

She regards her refusal to make the final compromise as a failure of an impulse. She passes up on Percy Gryce, a well-rooted millionaire, by putting him aside for the sake of a brief pleasure in the company Lawrence Selden, the one whom Lily seems to be most compatible with, but who cannot even be considered a "suitor," for he is not a wealthy man by the standards of their society. However, it is in her rendezvous with Selden that the voice of Lily's authentic self is heard in preference to the commands of social discipline.

Throughout the novel, we see Lily Bart fall from the highest social status to the lowest one, but we also witness a personal and emotional growth in her. We see Lily's contradictory aspirations seeking fulfillment in two contradictory worlds, that of the matter and that of the spirit. She inwardly rebels against her condition as a woman in the high society she herself aspires to, however, she allows herself to admit it only the presence of Selden, who she feels connected to. When she visits his apartment for the first time, in a moment of truthful lucidity, she admits with sympathetic regret what a miserable thing it is to be a woman, to be limited to marriage as your sole vocation in life, to have to live up to the social and moral standards imposed to you by society.

Eventually, her life indeed proves miserable, and the social pressures lead to Lily's complete destruction, and to her accidental death by taking too many sleeping pills, which greatly resembles a suicide.

The story of Emma Bovary seems at first glance to be very different. She lives in a quiet, provincial town in France, and she eventually marries a village doctor. She marries him willingly enough, in the same aspiration for marriage, any kind of marriage, just like in Lily's case. However, still like Lily she soon discovers that she does not fit in that world, and her discontent begins to grow. The actual point where the crisis begins is the ball at Vaubyessard, where she first meets with the world of luxury and romance that she desires. She then has two adulterous affairs, with Rodolphe and Leon, both of which disappoint her terribly. In the course of her affairs she overspends her husband's money, making so many debts that she has no way to repay. She commits suicide by taking an overdose of opium.

Already we can see that the social and economical backgrounds of the two heroines are very different: Emma Bovary lives in nineteenth century France, in a little, modest provincial town, while Lily Bart lives in the same century, but in New York, during what has been called "the gilded age," an age of opulence in America, which was the land of prosperity. The American scene was, nevertheless, one full of contrasts in this sense, and people ranged from the poorest to the richest:

During the "Gilded Age," every man was a potential Andrew Carnegie, and Americans who achieved wealth celebrated it as never before. In New York, the opera, the theatre, and lavish parties consumed the ruling class' leisure hours. Sherry's Restaurant hosted formal horseback dinners for the New York Riding Club. Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish once threw a dinner party to honor her dog who arrived sporting a $15,000 diamond collar. "

The "Gilded Age" was certainly an age of excess and contrasts, which differs widely from the dull provincial life in which Emma Bovary is immersed. Moreover, aristocracy in Europe was definitely older and more established than the American one, and not so glamorous in its display of riches.

Still, in spite of these differences in background, it is the very background that appears to link the stories of the two characters, as Wharton implies in The House of Mirth:

No; she was not made for mean and shabby surroundings, for the squalid compromises of poverty. Her whole being dilated in an atmosphere of luxury; it was the background she required, the only climate she could breathe in. But the luxury of others was not what she wanted. A few years ago it had sufficed her: she had taken her daily meed of pleasure without caring who provided it. Now she was beginning to chafe at the obligations it imposed, to feel herself a mere pensioner on the splendor which had once seemed to belong to her. There were even moments when she was conscious of having to pay her way." (Wharton, 25)

Thus, the background is, for both Emma and Lily, the high society that they both aspire to. But this is not the most relevant fact related to background in the two novels. When Edith Wharton tells us that "it was the background that she [Lily] required," we understand that both Emma Bovary and Lily have a very important thing in common. They are first of all women in the nineteenth century society, fettered by social conventions to fulfill any kind of aspirations or ideals. A woman, as it is clearly stated in both novels, had no other means of being having a place in society than by acquiring respectability and money through a good marriage. To marry was the only vocation of a woman, as Wharton tells us.

Of course, there interferes a great difference between the two heroines here, because Madame Bovary, as her very title proves it, is already a married woman, while Lily in Wharton's book is in constant pursue of a redeeming marriage. But, essentially the frustration of the two heroines is the same, as Emma is as unhappy with her marriage to a modest and dull country doctor as Lily would have been had she made such a marriage. Both women were forced into this: Emma in her marriage, and Lily in desperately pursuing one.

The subject of marriage is what best defines the place of a woman in nineteenth century society. For both Emma and Lily the marriage is not merely a matter of attaining material stability or climbing the social ladder. What both of them actually need is a man's name since they can not have any freedom and any status or identity inside the society without it.

This is obvious in Madame Bovary's case and in the fact that the novel is significantly entitled this way, making use of the husband's name, and not merely "Emma," for instance:

Ah! you see," replied he in a melancholy voice, "that I was right not to come back; for this name, this name that fills my whole soul, and that escaped me, you forbid me to use! Madame Bovary! why all the world calls you thus! Besides, it is not your name; it is the name of another!" (Flaubert, 163)

Rodolphe's statement that "Madame Bovary" is a man's name fits very well within the typical dialogue that takes place between them as a result of his breaking social conventions of familiarity when calling her by her first name, Emma. It is in this issue regarding the names, where we see the way social conventions worked at that time. While keeping at distance familiarity, by not using the first name of a person during a conversation, society also kept at a distance the true identity of a certain individual, and this was even more so in the case of the women.

As we can see, in both novels, society places a great number of constraints on the two heroines, and the examples are very many in the case of Lily also. Even at the beginning of the first chapter of The House of Mirth we find Lily pressed by doubts and fears with regard to the seemingly innocent fact that she indulged in a nonconformist act: going by herself to her Lawrence Seldon's apartment and having tea with him. Thus, when upon going out of the latter's house, she meets on of her rich suitors, but whom she had rebuffed, she feels constrained to tell him a lie, which he subtly exposes on the spot. Even her encounter with the char woman on the stairs of Seldon's house is relevant, since Lily's fears regarding her will be later confirmed in the novel, when the woman forces her to buy some love letters from Bertha Dorset to Lawrence.

In every detail of the social life presented to us in Wharton's book we can sense the immense and incessant pressure that society was constantly putting on the personal life. The novel is full of the intrigues and gossip that constantly travel among the social circles and which affect the lives of all characters, not only that of Lily.

For example, Simon Rosedale refuses to marry Lily when she had finally decided upon it, being in desperate situation. The reason for his refusal is the fact that she had accumulated too much of the social disapproval, and too much gossip was associated with her name.

Nevertheless, he tells her that he will marry her, if only she would use the letters written by Bertha that she had bought, to clear her name in front of the others. It is plain to see, thus, the power that society had over the individual. In front of society, there was no defense for the individual.

Still, we do see that Wharton's novel places an emphasis on the fact that it was still worse to be a woman in this society. This is shown in the contrast between Lily's life and that of Seldon. The latter has far more freedom as a man, to live both in society and outside it. He has an Emersonian, transcendentalist view of life, but at the same time he shares some of the taste for luxury and society that Lily has:

Selden calls upon Lily to be a nonconformist. He argues that society (theirs in particular, in all its wealth) is in conspiracy against their selfhood. Society "distorts all the relationships of life," Selden -- in Emersonian voice -- proclaims to Lily; and in conforming to it, "so much of human nature is used up in the process" (70). Selden believes Emerson's proclamation (in "Spiritual Laws") that "What your heart thinks great, is great. The soul's emphasis is always right" (Essays: First Ser. 158); and in his conversation with Lily, he appropriates the mantle and majesty of Emerson's "The Transcendentalist." (Cahir, 99)

The conversations between Lily and Seldon are clearly in the Emersonian vein, blaming society for the chains that it lays on the true spirit and the true nature of man. But although this may be the truth about society, it is also true that the lessons on transcendentalism that Seldon showers upon Lily can not be of much use to her. He can afford to take up solitude rather than society, or to make a permanent swing between the two, but Lily, as a woman can not. He, as a man can work and support himself, although he is not rich. Seldon is a lawyer and has an apartment where he can arrange the furniture in however he wants to, as Lily observes:

daresay I could manage to be happy even in her flat. It must be pure bliss to arrange the furniture just as one likes, and give all the horrors to the ash-man. If I could only do over my aunt's drawing-room I know I should be a better woman." (Wharton, 6)

In her genuine and apparently so modest aspiration to be able to have the freedom to arrange the objects around her in the way she pleases, we see the full impact of social constraint. It is both a material constraint and a spiritual one, as the woman is not free even to use her imagination if she is not given the means to. Also, significantly, Rosedale is appalled when he sees Lily towards the end of the novel, being forced to work, which was one of the most degrading things in society, again, especially for a woman, who was confined to do the so-called base work, like sewing.

It is the same with Emma Bovary as with Lily, and thus we can understand what the common desires between the two to have a "background" of luxury. They are both beautiful women, almost strikingly beautiful, and what they need to fulfill is their secret aspiration for beauty, for the ornamental, which would be the only thing that would suit their own beauty.

It is true that both Emma's and Lily's aspirations seem material at first sight, since they both want to be surrounded by fairytale-like luxury. But they are actual two beautiful women in search for other instances of beauty, or for the right context in which their beauty would be displayed.

Both novels thus are very liable to a feminist reading, since their heroines are equally oppressed by the cruelty of the society they move in. In Emma Bovary's case, her desire to have a son, which does not materialize eventually, is very telling:

She hoped for a son; he would be strong and dark; she would call him George; and this idea of having a male child was like an expected revenge for all her impotence in the past. A man, at least, is free; he may travel over passions and over countries, overcome obstacles, taste of the most far-away pleasures. But a woman is always hampered. At once inert and flexible, she has against her the weakness of the flesh and legal dependence. Her will, like the veil of her bonnet, held by a string, flutters in every wind; there is always some desire that draws her, some conventionality that restrains. "(Flaubert, 175)

The freedom to travel and to satisfy those needs for beauty and knowledge which were denied to a woman is the source if the tragedy behind both stories. Emma Bovary is even more so a hunter for the ideal, a Platonist more than a transcendentalist, who can never find her place in the world she is confined to. Her feelings and aspirations are always ahead of the actual reality, and she deceives herself in the relationships with both Rodolphe and Leon:

As to Emma, she did not ask herself whether she loved. Love, she thought, must come suddenly, with great outbursts and lightnings -- a hurricane of the skies, which falls upon life, revolutionises it, roots up the will like a leaf, and sweeps the whole heart into the abyss. She did not know that on the terrace of houses it makes lakes when the pipes are choked, and she would thus have remained in her security when she suddenly discovered a rent in the wall of it." (Flaubert, 190)

The great difference between Emma and Lily is the fact that the former, is a lot keener on her idealistic view of life. She knows life from books, just like Don Quixote, and she can only interpret it according to what she reads. Although Lily too shares in these ideals through her desire for beauty, and the fact that she does not manage to contract a marriage after all because she is partly aware of her feelings for Seldon, she is not so steeped in them as Emma Bovary is.

In chapter six of the first book, Lily wanders if the feeling she has while sitting alone with Seldon in the middle of a natural and beautiful scenery, has anything to do with love. Then she remembers that she does know what love is, and had been in love once. The man that she loved was poor as she was, and he married someone else for money, like she was desperately trying as well. Thus, although this example could have made her aware of the terribleness of contracting marriage for money only, she still remains persuaded that a marriage for material purposes only is her only escape.

Emma is not in any material straight, that's why she does not pine so much for money, as she does for the mere glamour of the high society, which could impart its shine to her as well. On the whole, Lily, although sharing into Seldon's idealistic views of life, almost always remains pragmatic in her purposes.