This section of The House of Mirth plays around with character perspectives more than the previous section. Switching mainly between Lily and Seldon allows Wharton to create confusion in their relationship. Throughout this part of the story, these two develop a deeper relationship for each other, one possibly resulting in love. However, Wharton uses situational irony to fracture the relationship that these two could have had.
As book one draws to a close, readers see Seldon thinking over what he can offer Lily, repeatedly thinking about the “beyond” that the two can escape to together. We see here that without the disruption of worldly difficulties, the two would likely have a good relationship together. Much of the irony in the ending of book one comes from the confusion between Seldon and Lily. As the two characters keep missing each other, rumors about Lily intensify. During Fisher’s dinner party, guests gossip about how Lily has left to visit the Trenor’s household while Judy is away form home. This cements the idea of an affair between Lily and Gus in many of the guests minds. Hearing this, Seldon leaves the party and heads towards the Tenor house, likely to “save” Lily. If not, simply to see for himself whether or not she is there. As we know from Lily’s perspective as she left Gus, there was the figure of a man in the yard that night. In Lily’s hast and confusion, she does not investigate this figure further. However, here we learn that it was Seldon who witnessed Lily leaving the Trenor home. Seldon, with fresh rumors on his mind, assumes the worst and quickly leaves the scene.
Soon after Wharton shows readers that Seldon believes there to be an affair going on between Gus and Lily, we see Lily go to Gerty’s house. While there, Lily asks Gerty is she thinks Seldon will “loathe [her] …or… pity [her], and understand [her], and save [her] from loathing [herself]” (172). Without knowing that Seldon feels betrayed by Lily despite her not actually having any sexual affair with Gus, Gerty tells Lily that Seldon will help her.
Later, after Mrs. Peniston refuses to lend Lily money to pay off Gus, Lily finds hope in Seldon. She laments that “now his love [is] her only hope”. However, as the reader has likely already guessed, Seldon never comes to Lily. Instead, Rosedale, who was the one to spread rumors that Lily and Seldon were having an affair which spurred Gus’s jealousy that lead to him trapping Lily in his home the night that Seldon saw the two, arrives. Rosedale offers Lily a marriage proposal, which she at first denies. However, after learning that Seldon has sailed off to Havana, she is forced to reconsider the opportunity that marrying Rosedale would be.
I appreciate your attention to this key literary device that Wharton continually uses. It’s really everywhere: when Gerty has hopes that Selden might have feelings for her, and he instead effuses about Lily; when Lily shows up in the midst of her disgust–the last person she would want to see. It’s an extremely useful device for amplifying the sense of doom that marks the narrative: one is trained, eventually, to read so many passages with a sense of foreboding, primed for a deep sense of misunderstanding and miscommunication.
At the same time, because it is uses so heavily, it can become exhausting. We enter that last scene between Selden and Lily so confident that the novel is heading towards a tragic end that the surprise of the eventual reversal–still somewhat fresh as Selden lingers outside the Trenor residence and spies Lily–seems inevitable. But then, one wants to double back and ask why this is a fitting narrative strategy for the novel: a novel about a heroin that periodically enters moments that she assumes are of perfectly staged perfection and control. In that sense, the use of situational irony continually casts a shadow on Lily’s false sense of control over her narrative, even as it sets up the broader theme of failure, gaps, silences, etc., throughout the novel.
I edited your images so that the text wraps around them; you can also add captions so folks know exactly what it is you’re depicting.