Later in the novel, “as [Selden and Van Alstyne] walked down Fifth Avenue [to Mrs. Fisher’s] the new architectural developments of that versatile thoroughfare invited Van Alstyne’s comments” (I, 14, 126). (Wharton may be commenting upon her techniques for outlining the “redundant” manners and modes she must contend with in society and in constructing, “corseting,” her fictions.) Then Van Alstyne remarks about Mrs. Bry’s architect:
What a clever chap. how he takes his client’s measure! (1, 14, 126)
Architecture, to Wharton’s thinking, can reveal the whole of a character. When Van Alstyne and Selden reach the Trenor house, Van Alstyne reports it’s empty and remarks offhandedly that Mrs. Trenor is away.
The house loomed obscure and uninhabited, only an oblong gleam above the door spoke of provisional occupancy. (I, 14, 127)
At this moment, whose consequences also loom obscure, Lily is discovered in the doorway with Gus Trenor. She has just fought him off and is leaving. Her provisional presence, not inside, not outside, endangers her. Compromised, in the wrong place at the wrong time, seen by Selden, whose heart has recently turned more decisively toward her, and by her relative, Van Alstyne, her fortune is immediately reversed. But her name is never used; she has entered the realm of the unspeakable.
Wharton deploys a discourse on houses, about how an architect (maker/writer) can expose the character of the persons whose house he designs, to position Lily. When she appears in a place where she should not be, her presence there says something about her. Though this was not her design, many of the things Lily does are designed, and many that appear designing and manipulative are not. Ineluctably, Lily becomes ensnared in patterns not of her making that are not provisional enough.
***
To conform to a style, then, is to accept those rules of proportion which the artistic experience of centuries has established as the best, while within those limits allowing free scope to the individual requirements which must inevitably modify every house or room adapted to the use and convenience of its occupants. (Decoration, 15)
True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision. (Writing, 17)2
The distrust of technique and the fear of being unoriginal — both symptoms of a certain lack of creative abundance — are in truth leading to pure anarchy in fiction. (Writing, 15)
In The Decoration of Houses (1897) and The Writing of Fiction (1924), Wharton argues for conformity to style and tradition against originality for its own sake. The rhythm and logic of the past must be observed or at least taken into account and regarded, if not entirely followed. Wharton even claims that stream of consciousness and slice of life are the same idea; stream of consciousness is slice of life “relabeled” (Writing, 12). Her aesthetics and views on morality and convention form the underlying arguments in the novel and contain within them the seeds of conflict planted and harvested in Lily Bart.
Enshrined in Lily is a contest between new and old, tradition, innovation and the hazards of change. On the first page of the novel, Wharton efficiently marks her territory when Selden thinks to himself: “There was nothing new about Lily Bart, yet he could never see her without a faint movement of interest” (I, 1, 5). To him she was so “radiant” she was “more conspicuous than a ballroom” (I, 1, 5). (The scale is striking, so disproportionate.) But not bold enough or too principled to marry for money and live any way she chooses, she cannot strike out on her own and exist on her meager income, like Gerty Farish. She is not a new woman. Wharton does not allow her a wholly new manner, which the author disdains, but she also does not provide Lily with vision for a new life.
(Lily is more like a new woman manqué. It’s as if Wharton invented her to put on trial and test her principle of “conform[ing] to a style. [that] artistic experience of centuries has established as the best, while within those limits allowing free scope to the individual requirements.” How one holds to tradition and style and discovers within them “free scope” is at the crux of Wharton’s contradictory, ongoing argument with the modernists and the social order.)
Lily contains within her traces and pieces of the old order and longings for the new. Wharton drops Lily between the two worlds, on the frontier, where no place is home or safe. Habitually, Lily pays the price for not being able to realize a new way and for needing the largesse of others whom she despises or for whom she has contempt.
That cheap originality which finds expression in putting things to uses for which they were not intended is often confounded with individuality. Whereas the latter consists not in an attempt to be different from other people at the cost of comfort, but in the desire to be comfortable in one’s own way, even though it be the way of a monotonously large majority. It seems easier to most people to arrange a room like someone else’s than to analyze and express their own needs. (Decoration, 19–20)
Lily’s difference from the “monotonously large majority” hangs her on a cross constructed from an opposition between novelty and individuality. She feels superior and wants to discover and “express [her] own needs,” as Selden does. She must find a way to “use” herself, not as a “cheap experiment” but in the intended way. But there is no intended way, not for her.
***
Men, in these matters, are less exacting than women, because their demands, besides being simpler, are uncomplicated by the feminine tendency to want things because other people have them, rather than to have things because they are wanted. But it must never be forgotten that everyone is unconsciously tyrannized over by the wants of others.
. The unsatisfactory relations of some people with their rooms are often to be explained in this way. They have still in their blood the traditional uses to which these rooms were put in times quite different from the present. To go to the opposite extreme and discard things because they are old-fashioned is equally unreasonable. (Decoration, 19–20)
Desire is a strange brew, Wharton knew, concocted of the desires of others. Her psychological acumen suffuses The House of Mirth, in which Lily is “unconsciously tyrannized over by the wants of others.” Lily has “in her blood” the uses for which she was made but is unwilling to go to “the opposite extreme” and “discard things” because they are “old-fashioned.”
Once more the haunting sense of physical ugliness was intensified by her mental depression, so that each piece of the offending furniture seemed to thrust forth its most aggressive angle. (I, 9, 86)
Lily does want to get rid of ugly things. The effects of physical ugliness — disproportion — and mental depression intermingle in her. Their symmetry or dissymmetry serves Wharton’s notion of the interior as inextricable from the exterior. Lily’s internal conflicts are displayed in the outer world, where she is a beautiful but tormented trophy in its display case. Her inner struggles show themselves as much by what she does not do as by what she does.
It must be pure bliss to arrange the furniture just as one likes, and give all the horrors to the Ashman. If I could only do over my aunt’s drawing room I know I should be a better woman. (I, 1, 8)