| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立清華大學 === 外國語文學系 === 102 === Lily Bart’s Lingering Awakening and Disintegration in Wharton’s House of Mirth.
Elaine Showalter observes the phenomenon in turn-of-the-century America that men usually saw an aristocratic woman as a work of art, as Lily Bart is regarded as an artistic object in the Tableaux Vivants in Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth. How do you move beyond woman as art to woman as artist? This is the question that I want to take on for my thesis.
The novel describes Lily Bart’s husband hunting in her circle as a beautiful socialite and details her eventual downfall as a disgraced outcast from her own social circle. To her, marriage to a wealthy man means the security of surviving in high society. However, meanwhile, she gradually awakens to her eager desire for creativity and female solidarity. Lily’s performance in the Tableau Vivant reveals men’s view of patrician women as portraits instead of genuine individuals.
My thesis begins with Elaine Showalter’s observation on Lily Bart as an art object. The ttractive socialite is fixed in a dilemma. On the one hand, she is pleased with men’s flattery on herself as an artistic object; on the other hand, she aspires to becoming an artist herself. Lily Bart reflects Edith Wharton’s thinking of high society as an enclosure that confines women as aesthetically pleasing objects but does not allow them the freedom to become themselves.
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