In this next section of Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth, we are more acutely aware of the Dorsets’ situation, and its possible consequences for Lily. Seldon sees the potential problems for Lily and strongly advises her to move out of the yacht before things get bad. She doesn’t take his advice at first, and unfortunately she will come to greatly regret that decision. Bertha Dorset, in an attempt to save her own reputation, throws Lily out under the bus saying that she tried to have an affair with her husband and it made her very jealous. After all Lily had done for Bertha during the entire trip, entertaining her husband so she could enjoy the company of Ned Silverton! I was so disappointed to read that about Bertha, however, I was not at all surprised.
These kinds of situations go on in the real world as well. All of us have known that person who wants to be your friend to get something out of you. Then the second things get bad, they take off running and leave you to pick up the pieces. This would be Bertha in a nutshell. Our antagonist has found yet another way to prevent our protagonist from surviving in the “society”. And poor Lily just accepts it for what it is, and Edith Wharton describes it perfectly, “She had risen, and stood before him in a kind of clouded majesty, like some deposed princess moving tranquilly toward exile.”
What happens next throws all the characters in the novel for a loop, though not surprising at all to myself. Mrs. Peniston passes away and leaves her fortune to Grace Stepney, only leaving a small amount to Lily to survive on for a while.
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