The House of Mirth

Elements of Greek mythology are utilized to symbolize Selden’s romantic heroism and Lily’s debt and moral pollution. Both Selden and Lily have literary inclinations. Selden’s “reputed cultivation was generally regarded as a slight obstacle to easy intercourse,” but Lily “prided herself on her broad-minded recognition of literature” and “was attracted by this attribute” of his (68). Their imaginations naturally turn to mythological allusions. Selden views Lily “as though she were a captured dryad subdued to the conventions of the drawing-room” (13), a tree nymph whose woodland grace distinguishes her from artificial society. When Selden imagines rescuing Lily from the corrupt social world that tries to vulgarize her beauty, he pictures himself as Perseus, the Greek mythological hero. Selden envisions Lily as the lovely Andromeda, being sacrificed for her beauty chained to a rock in the ancient Greek myth.

After Lily realizes that the brutal Gus Trenor expects intimacy with her as payment for the money that he gave her and that people have gossiped about her, she recalls reading a translation of the ancient Greek drama, Eumenides. She identifies with the terror of the character Orestes who tries to flee from the mythological Furies, the winged female deities of vengeance who pursue people guilty of wrongdoing. Lily feels “the iron clang of their wings” (156) in her brain as she is “alone in a place of darkness and pollution” (156). Lily cannot bear to lie in her bed, viewing herself as a wrongdoer, thinking of horrors such as “the furies […] you know the noises of their wings—alone, at night, in the dark?” (173). When Lily tries to escape the Furies by calculating the exact amount of her debt to Gus and settling it, she is shocked by her aunt’s refusal to help, “the rush of the furies’ wings was in her ears” (182). With every door of escape closed, Lily feels trapped by a sense of shame and disgrace. As her life spirals downward, “the pursuing furies seem to take the shape of Bertha Dorset” (311), who provokes the social ostracism of Lily and spreads insinuations about her that end her employment with Mrs. Gormer.