House of Mirth is set before a time where women could vote. Before society had realized the equality of the sexes, or people in general. Wharton gives readers a deep look into the inner workings and machinations of the New York elite society as a whole. We get taken from their vacation homes to their Opera boxes and extravagant weddings. One scene that sticks out harshly against the gilded fascinations present in almost every facet of the book, is the scene where Gus Trenor threatens Lily Bart.
Bart’s relationship with Trenor is one of economic dependence in which he invests her money and gives her back the returns. This relationship is not uncommon, but Trenor decides that he is being unfairly treated in that Bart never wants to go out of her way to spend time with him. The reasoning for this, as the reader knows, is that Bart is reasonably uncomfortable with how Trenor treats her.
Trenor falsifies an invitation to Bart in order to lure her into his residence in the late hours of night. Like a spider trapping its prey in its web, Trenor is in charge of this area. Bart is out of her element and unable to maintain composure, Bart “felt suddenly weak and defenceless” (142). A few paragraphs later Trenor states, “I don’t want to insult you. But a man’s got his feelings – and you’ve played with mine too long… I tell you what, Miss Lily, you’ve got to pay up for making me think so” (143). This sense of obligation expounded by Trenor, as despicable as it is, is understood by Bart.
The scene escalates even farther with Trenor using his bulk of a body to prevent Bart’s escape from his home. Fortunately, Trenor does not push it farther than this and Bart escapes his predatory motives, but she leaves in such a way to not add, “scandal with it – a hideous mustering of tongues… there must be nothing to excite conjecture in her way of leaving” (144). Lily Bart acts respectful to this undeserving man because he has a hierarchical placement above her in this society. Not only that, but she is acting in accordance with how society would view an abuse on a woman, where they would speculate and blame the woman involved despite her having done nothing wrong.
If this sounds familiar, it is because our modern world, though progressed as it has, is still not unhinged from the mentalities of the past. Recently, in the case of former senator Roy Moore, multiple women stepped forward and shared their stories of abuse and predation at the hands of the elderly man, then in his thirties, when they were between the ages of 14-17.
One of Moore’s victims explained why she had not come forward sooner, saying, “she thought of confronting Moore personally for years, and almost came forward publicly during his first campaign for state Supreme Court in 2000, but decided against it. Her two children were still in school then and she worried about how it would affect them. She also was concerned that her background — three divorces and a messy financial history — might undermine her credibility”
This mentality of being concerned with her own image and how others would treat her due to the implications of having three divorces and a “messy financial history” reflect perfectly a modern reiteration of the same issues which have plagued society for as long as it has existed.
Lily Bart wants to leave, she wants to escape, but instead of doing what her instincts are shouting at her to do, she submits to acting cordial because she has no choice. When society would rather attack the character of a woman than pursue justice, it is understandable to the reader why Lily Bart acted the way she did. When the President of the United States himself has been on record stating how he grabs women “by the pussy” and a section of modern society defends that as “locker room talk,” I think Edith Wharton’s brief, but strong, passage involving this threatening action from Gus Trenor to be extremely important to modern readers. It is an uphill battle to fight “traditional” (read sexist) views and to shape our country and humanity as a whole in a way that will allow progress to continue to be made.
There is no moral or family value that dictates women should be suppliant to men. It is easy to look at House of Mirth as a product of its time, and say “look how dumb they were back then!” but I believe it even more important to be able to recognize that we deal with these issues still.
Great close engagement with this key scene between Lily and Gus Trenor: the falsities and evasions, the aggression and power. It is a scene, as you say, that wasn’t new then, and certainly isn’t new now. Even the seat of power–money, position, gender–hasn’t much shifted. And we catch many glimpses of what Trump has called “locker room talk” throughout–at the Tableaux Vivants scene most importantly. The element of male power is perhaps the single greatest factor–predominating over matters of heredity or any fault of Lily’s own–that hinders Lily and keeps her from telling her own story.
Because this post is quite long, I feel you spend adequate time on the ‘CloseRead’ portion before contextualizing in more contemporary terms. So, though this might also qualify as an ‘AfterSchocks’ post, the attention to detail in that scene, I think, warrants inclusion in the CR category. Hey, if you added an article about these kind of assaults in the newspapers circa the turn of the century, it could have been a “novel worlds” post: many ways to approach passages and themes of interest!