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Written by alyssa
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Saturday, 30 March 2002 |
The
House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton, isn't really a book I would
recommend to anyone. I had to read it for some psychological novel class
in college, and it was right up there with The
Awakening on my "least favorite books" list.
Mary and I watched
the stupid movie anyway, because she had read the book too, so we thought
we'd have plenty to say about it. The House of Mirth is about a
poor girl with rich friends, trying to find a rich husband in old New
York society even though she's in love with a poor guy who would do anything
for her. She spends the whole book perpetuating self-created tragedies
until she winds up killing herself in some shanty of a hotel room, dying
as a social outcast. In the book, her cousin and her poor love decide
to tell everyone she died from illness, to keep up appearances for her.
So none of her fruity cohorts will learn that the pressures of their society
ruined her tragic little life, and she died in vain. The circumstances
of her death are really the only good part of the book. The
movie is every bit as crappy, except they cut out that ending,
so we don't have the benefit of knowing that her life and death amounted
to nothing. As if the director couldn't have found an extra minute somewhere.
I'm pretty sure I'd have given up part of the "five minutes of changing
seasons and running water" scene for that.
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