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 The Lily We Know: Captivity, Narrative, and Heteronormativity in The House of MirthMonika I. Hogan
Pasadena City College
He knelt by the bed and bent over her, draining their last moment to its lees; and in the silence there passed between them the word which made all clear (329).[1]
Much has been said about this ambiguous ending to The House of Mirth, with the consensus among feminist critics being that Selden is free, once Lily has died, to re-write the whole history of their encounters, to re-write her, and to find "all that his heart craved" in this posthumous reconstruction. As Susan Gubar explains, the word in this final passage "is Lily's dead body; for she is now converted completely into a script for his edification, a text not unlike the letters and checks she has left behind to vindicate her life."[2] He will tell the history (his story) of her life and death as a "lady," and we know that he will erase much of the complexity that made her such a "fascinating study" for him and for us. In this way, Selden more than any other character in the novel is indicted by Wharton for his sentimental notions of romance and his cowardly inability to deal with Lily in her full humanity.
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[1] Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth (New York: Schribner's, 1905). Penguin Classics Edition, 1986.
[2] Elaine Showalter, "The Death of the Lady (Novelist): Wharton's House of Mirth," Representations 9 (Winter 1985), 137, citing from Susan Gubar, "The 'Blank Page' and Female Creativity," in Writing and Sexual Difference, ed. Elizabeth Abel (Chicago, 1982), 81.
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