After an initial attraction, they begin seeing one another casually until Nick’s wealthy, married, petulant , jealous “ patroness,” Ursula Gillow demands that the relationship ends. Susy’s plans begin to falter when she meets Nick Lansing, a young writer, at a dinner party. In common with Lily Bart, Susy is penniless and makes a career as a hanger-on, being useful to the rich party people she feeds off of, and her goal in life is “ eventually to marry, because one couldn’t forever hang on to rich people but she was going to wait till she found some one who combined the maximum of wealth with at least a minimum of companionableness.” This impression is only fed by the superficiality of Susy’s character.
#THE GLIMPSES OF THE MOON PROFESSIONAL#
In Susy’s case though the ‘marry wealth’ or work decision doesn’t seem so dire, so desperate (there were more professional opportunities in the 1920s for women), so while Lily’s agonizing dilemma seems real, Susy’s dilemma seems more superficial. The lack of choices Lily Bart faced are also in front of Susy, the female protagonist of Glimpses of the Moon. The House of Mirthstill seems decidedly 19th century whereas Glimpses of the Moonis set in the giddy Jazz Age. Glimpses of the Moon, however, was published 17 years later in 1922 and Wharton shows us an entirely different world. The House of Mirthwas published in 1905 when women like Lily had few choices. In Glimpses of the Moonwe find a similar sort of set-up, but the novel seems superficial in comparison, and perhaps I would have enjoyed Glimpses of the Moonmore if I hadn’t already been blown away by The House of Mirth. Lily effectively manages to self-sabotage opportunities for security, and if you’ve read the novel you know how it ends. Lily is a complex character who knows she needs to marry for money but is attracted to Lawrence Seldon, a man who cannot offer Lily the lifestyle she wants. The House of Mirthgives us one of Wharton’s/literature’s greatest tragic heroines, Lily Bart, a penniless young woman addicted to luxury who leads a parasitic life by being ‘useful’ to the wealthy set. Glimpses of the Moon(great cover btw) covers some of the same sort of territory as The House of Mirth–considered to be one of Wharton’s finest novels, and you won’t get any argument from me about that. She remains one of my favourite American authors, and so I was rather surprised to pick up an unread Wharton novel and discover that I felt lukewarm about it. Years ago, I spent a summer reading every Edith Wharton novel I could get my hands on. “ Money, luxury, fashion, pleasure: those were the four cornerstones of her existence.”
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