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Edith Wharton

	The Buccaneers [VHS] List Price: $39.98 Sale Price: $7.98
	As four young American women find their way through the labyrinthine social world of 1870s England, their fortunes rise--and sometimes, with brutal abruptness, fall. Based on Edith Wharton's unfinished novel, The Buccaneers, this lavish BBC production follows Nan and Virginia St...

	Ethan Frome [VHS] List Price: $9.99 Sale Price: $5.90
	Here's the film of a novel nobody liked in high school (but probably succumbed to when they read it in later life, as they should). Based on the book by Edith Wharton, it's one of those repressed romances of longing and regret carried out in real time and real life...

	The House of Mirth [VHS] List Price: $14.95 Sale Price: $4.95
	Meticulously adapted from Edith Wharton's 1905 novel, The House of Mirth may seem at first to be as dry (and as flat) as pressed flowers, but it's quickly evident that director Terence Davies and X-Files star Gillian Anderson (in a breakthrough film role) have tapped directly into the venality of Wharton's New York society...

	The Buccaneers List Price: $14.98 Sale Price: $10.95
	Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 04/18/2006 Run time: 300 minutes Rating: Nr

	The Age of Innocence List Price: $14.94 Sale Price: $6.59
	Story of the manners and morals of New York society in the later 1800's, focusing on a handsome young lawyer who cannot decide between passion and pro

	Ethan Frome List Price: $9.99 Sale Price: $3.98
	A man torn between his joyless marriage to one woman and his passionate love affair with another. Studio: Buena Vista Home Video Release Date: 05/09/2006 Starring: Liam Neeson Patricia Arquette Run time: 99 minutes Rating: Pg Director: John Madden

	ID CREDIT CARD HOLDER OR CIGARETTE CASE: EDITH WHARTON NOVELIST WRITER BY PENNY SILVER List Price: $14.99 Sale Price: $9.85
	This great handy case is perfect for holding credit cards, business cards, gym membership cards, cash, cigarettes -- all those small items that are easy to lose track of. IT'S NOT JUST FOR SMOKERS. It's made of durable stainless steel, and it measures 4" x 2...

	Summer List Price: $0.00
	This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Does anyone know any good quotes from the book THE AGE OF INNOCENCE by Edith Wharton?

At the end - something like "Mother told me that you gave up something you really wanted once, when she asked you" and the response "she never asked"

About Madame Olenska.

Edith Wharton's The House Of Mirth - 100 Years Later

"Selden paused in surprise. In the afternoon rush of the Grand Central Station, his eyes had been refreshed by the sight of Miss Lily Bart."

With these words Edith Wharton begins Lily and Selden's tale of woe. Since 1905, the year of publication of The House of Mirth this tale has been the true depiction of the plight of the 19th century American women: branded a lesser gender, financially dependent, and socially victimized

How things have changed in one hundred years!

Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique started it all with her clarion call to identify "the problem that had no name." The problem still has no name, but the solution does: a feminism that labors for more equality and more representation. This is nothing new; one can recall Chaucer's moral satire "Wife of Bath." In that tale, the Queen commutes a knight's death penalty if he can find out (in one year) what "women want the most?" As it turns out the Queen is satisfied with the answer: "a woman wants sovereignty over her husband."

Of course that turns out to be extreme, for sovereignty means absolute power over a husband. The problem for Lily Bart is that --despite her intelligence, pedigree, and fine looks-- she can't find an acceptable suitor. And when on the throes of desperation she decides to accept the repugnant (to her) but wealthy Rosedale, he rebuffs her. Irony thy name is woman!

Today we no longer find Lily Barts, but strong professional competent women such as Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. But in 1905 women's education was geared to keep them in continuous subservience. Her limited education allowed her limited possibilities for independence. Practical skills she had none. And when she attempts to make a living in an embroidery shop, she finds that she can't; her efforts becoming the object of gossip and humiliation:

Lily had taken up her work early in January; it was now two months later, and she was still being rebuked for her inability to sew spangles on a hat-frame. As she returned to her work she heard a titter pass down the tables. She knew she was an object of criticism and amusement to the other workwomen.

Lawrence Selden --the weak hero-- who misleads Lily into thinking that he could be her salvation, is a reprehensible character who never lifted a finger to help her. In the end, with no one to turn to, she overdoses with sleeping pills. She dies in a dingy furnished room: "There was no token of her personality about the room, unless it showed itself in the scrupulous neatness of the scan articles of furniture: a washing-stand, two chairs, a small writing-desk, and the little table near the bed."

The House of Mirth recreates the atmosphere of a New York Society, a corrupt elite caste system which devoured its own children. Lily Bart --a poor relation-- is victimized not only psychologically but also physically by the well-portrayed villains.

This is a book about money, and it will go on interesting readers avid to learn about such a theme. It's in the same class as Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Taylor Caldwell's Captains and Kings, Theodore Dreiser's The Financier, and Sinclair Lewis' Babbitt.

In Ecclesiastes 7, 4 we read: "The heart of the wise is the in house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth." Who are the wise and who are the fools in this novel? While Lily Bart may be thought to be a fool, her seriousness and attitude towards a moral life proves her to be wiser than the rest of the cast of characters.

About the Author

Retired. Former investment banker, Columbia University-educated, Vietnam Vet (67-68).
For the writing techniques I use, see Mary Duffy's e-book: Sentence Openers.
To read my book reviews of the Classics visit my blog: Writing To Live

	The Buccaneers [VHS] List Price: $39.98 Sale Price: $7.98
	As four young American women find their way through the labyrinthine social world of 1870s England, their fortunes rise--and sometimes, with brutal abruptness, fall. Based on Edith Wharton's unfinished novel, The Buccaneers, this lavish BBC production follows Nan and Virginia St...

	Ethan Frome [VHS] List Price: $9.99 Sale Price: $5.90
	Here's the film of a novel nobody liked in high school (but probably succumbed to when they read it in later life, as they should). Based on the book by Edith Wharton, it's one of those repressed romances of longing and regret carried out in real time and real life...

	The House of Mirth [VHS] List Price: $14.95 Sale Price: $4.95
	Meticulously adapted from Edith Wharton's 1905 novel, The House of Mirth may seem at first to be as dry (and as flat) as pressed flowers, but it's quickly evident that director Terence Davies and X-Files star Gillian Anderson (in a breakthrough film role) have tapped directly into the venality of Wharton's New York society...

	The Buccaneers List Price: $14.98 Sale Price: $10.95
	Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 04/18/2006 Run time: 300 minutes Rating: Nr

	The Age of Innocence List Price: $14.94 Sale Price: $6.59
	Story of the manners and morals of New York society in the later 1800's, focusing on a handsome young lawyer who cannot decide between passion and pro

	Ethan Frome List Price: $9.99 Sale Price: $3.98
	A man torn between his joyless marriage to one woman and his passionate love affair with another. Studio: Buena Vista Home Video Release Date: 05/09/2006 Starring: Liam Neeson Patricia Arquette Run time: 99 minutes Rating: Pg Director: John Madden

Berkshires 2006 Edith Wharton's house