Chapter VIII
Throughout Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth, the differences between Lily Bart and Gerty Farish have been quite evident: Lily fears a life of poverty; Gerty accepts her less-than-dazzling lifestyle. Lily acts on selfish desires and feelings, always manipulating others for her own achievement; Gerty is selfless and willing to put her own feelings aside to help others (ie-disregard for her feelings for Selden to console Miss Bart). Lily expects a man to come along to pay her debts and take care of her; Gerty works for a living. 
Despite such differences, the women are close friends. Further analyzing this realtionship, I realized that Gerty acts as foil character in contrast to Miss Bart. The two women balance seem to balance eachother out. As I began to form this idea, I came across this passage of the story: "There was something irritating to her in the mute interrogation of Gerty's sympathy: she felt the real difficulties of her situation to be incommunicable to anyone whose theory of values was so different from her own, and the restrictions of Gerty's life, which had once had the charm of contrast, now reminded her too painfully of the limits to which her own existence was shrinking" (Wharton, 213). After read this quote from the novel, my notion was confirmed. The contrasts are so evident! I guess they do say, "Opposites attract!" 
No comments:
Post a Comment