Also: it used to be a lot less taboo to buy your friends. In fact, people were doing it all over the damn place, and they were proud of the fact.
I'm glad I finally read this. The novel is a tragedy to be sure, but manages to put the reader so completely in Lily Bart's mindset that you find yourself on the edge of your seat throughout, hoping every clever scheme and desperate attempt at making ends meet just might succeed, even though you know, ultimately, that they won't. Similarly, Lawrence Seldon, despite all his flaws and his literally fatal lack of good timing, is made just as much the hero in our eyes as in Lily's. In short, you know how this story is going to end from the very first page, but the language is gorgeous and the wit is often laugh out loud worthy, and the detailed portrait it paints of the turn of the century bourgeoisie still holds up as an equally intimate analysis of today's hip and wealthy. Wharton was the first woman to win a Pulitzer for literature for a reason.
Passages underlined as follows:
In the afternoon rush of Grand Central Station his eyes had been refreshed by the sight of Lily Bart. p1
Her simplest acts seemed the result of far-reaching intentions. p1
"How nice of you to come to my rescue!"
He responded joyfully that to do so was his mission in life. p2
Everything about her was at once vigorous and exquisite, at once strong and fine. He had a confused sense that she must have cost a great deal to make, that a great many dull and ugly people must, in some mysterious way, have been sacrificed to produce her. p3
"Other cities put on their best clothes in the summer, but New York seems to sit in its shirtsleeves." p4
She was so evidently the victim of the civilization which had produced her that the links of her bracelet seemed like manacles chaining her to her fate. p6
"But we're so different, you know: she likes being good, and I like being happy." p6
"It's stupid of you to make love to me, and it isn't like you to be stupid." p7
She paused before him with a smile which seemed at once designed to admit him to her familiarity and to remind him of the restrictions it imposed. p10
"A woman is asked out as much for her clothes as for herself." p10
Why must a girl pay so dearly for her least escape from routine? p14
It was the one subject which enabled him to forget himself, or allowed him, rather, to remember himself without constraint, because he was at home in it and could assert a superiority that there were few to dispute. p19
Most timidities have such secret compensations, and Miss Bart was discerning enough to know that the inner vanity is generally in proportion to the out self-deprecation. p20
She was like a disembodied spirit who took up a great deal of room. p23
Her whole being dilated in an atmosphere of luxury. p25
She had never been able to understand the laws of a universe which was so ready to leave her out of its calculations. p27
Lily was nineteen when circumstances caused her to revise her view of the universe. p30
"It's much safer to be fond of dangerous people." p45
That very afternoon they had seemed full of brilliant qualities; now she saw that they were merely dull in a loud way. Under the glitter of their opportunities she saw the poverty of their achievement. p57
She always entered the conversation with a handspring. p58
But her course was too purely reasonable not to contain the germs of rebellion. p58
Ned Silverton was probably smoking the cigarette of young despair in his bedroom. p60
With so much time to talk and no definite object to be led up to, she could taste the rare joys of mental vagrancy. p69
"Haven't I told you that your genius lies in converting impulses into intentions?" p69
"Names can alter the colour of beliefs." p73
"It seems to me," Mrs. Trenor feelingly concluded, "that most of her alimony is paid by other women's husbands!" p82
It is less mortifying to believe one's self unpopular than insignificant, and vanity prefers to assume that indifference is a latent form of unfriendliness. p128
She had the innocence of a schoolgirl who regards wickedness as a part of "history" and to whom it never occurs that the scandals she reads of in lesson-hours may be repeating themselves in the next street. p129
The civilized instinct finds a subtler pleasure in making use of its antagonist than in confounding him. p134
She was in disfavor with that portion of society which, while contributing least to its amusement, has assumed the right to decide what forms that amusement shall take. p136
All he asked was that the very rich should live up to their calling as stage managers and not spend their money in a dull way. p138
"The only way I can help you is by loving you." p144
"Ah, love me, love me--but don't tell me so!" p145
"Life's too short to spend it breaking in new people." p145
The scene in the Brys' conservatory had been like a part of her dreams; she had not expected to wake to such evidence of its reality. p146
The culminating moment of her triumph, the moment when she had read in his eyes that no philosophy was proof against her power. p147
She looked old; and when a girl looks old to herself, how does she look to other people? p189
And suddenly, as Seldon noted the fine shades of manner by which she harmonized herself with her surroundings, it flashed on him that to need such adroit handling, the situation must indeed be desperate. p201
How any one could come to such a damned hole as the Riviera--any one with a grain of imagination--with the whole Mediterranean to choose from. p201
Grotesque? Yes--and tragic--like most absurdities. p202
Moral complications existed for her only in the environment that had produced them... They lost their reality when they changed their background. p205
It was characteristic of her to feel that the only problems she could not solve were those with which she was familiar. p206
If he clung to her, it was not in order to be dragged up, but to feel some one floundering in the depths with him: he wanted her to suffer with him, not to help him suffer less. p213
Who but Seldon could thus miraculously combine the skill to save Bertha with the obligation of doing so? p215
"What is truth? Where a woman is concerned, it's the story that's easiest to believe." p237
"You asked me just now for the truth; well, the truth about any girl is that once she's talked about she's done for; and the more she explains her case the worse it looks. My good Gerty, you don't happen to have a cigarette about you?" p238
Little as she was addicted to solitude, there had come to be moments when it seemed a welcome escape from the empty noises of her life. p254
"I don't know two women less predestined to intimacy--from Bertha's standpoint, that is; for of course poor Mattie thinks it natural enough that she should be singled out; I've no doubt the rabbit always thinks it is fascinating the anaconda." p265
But the idealist subdued to vulgar necessities must employ vulgar minds to draw the inferences to which he cannot stoop. p266
It was easy enough to despise the world but decidedly difficult to find any other habitable region. p276
If she slipped, she recovered her footing, and it was only afterward that she was aware of having recovered each time on a slightly lower level. She had rejected Rosedale's offer without conscious effort; her whole being had risen against it; and she did not yet perceive that by the mere act of listening to him she had learned to live with ideas which would once have been intolerable to her. p277
Every step she took seemed in fact to carry her farther from the region where, once or twice, he and she had met for an illumined moment; and the recognition of this fact, when its first pang had been surmounted, produced in him a sense of negative relief. It was much simpler for him to judge Miss Bart by her habitual conduct than by the rare deviations from it which had thrown her so disturbingly in his way; and every act of hers which made the recurrence of such deviations mure unlikely confirmed the sense of relief with which he returned to the conventional view of her. p287
The situation between them was one which could have been cleared up only by a sudden explosion of feeling, and their whole training and habit of mind were against the chances of such an explosion. p294
However doubtful she might feel her situation to be, she would rather persist in darkness than owe her enlightenment to Seldon. p297
The smile with which she summed up her case was like a clear barrier raised against farther confidences; its brightness held him at such a distance that he had a sense of being almost out of hearing. p297
Since she had been brought up to be ornamental, she could hardly blame herself for failing to serve any practical purpose. p315
Call it blackmail and it becomes unthinkable; but explain that it injures no one and that the rights regained by it were unjustly forfeited, and he must be a formalist indeed who can find no plea in its defense. p318
Inherited tendencies had combined with early training to make her the highly specialized product she was: an organism as helpless out of its narrow range as the sea-anemone torn from the rock. p319
One of the surprises of her unoccupied state was the discovery that time, when it is left to itself and no definite demands are made on it, cannot be trusted to move at any recognized pace. p321
All her resentment of his fancied coldness was swept away in this overwhelming rush of recollection. Twice he had been ready to help her--to help her by loving her, as he had said--and if, the third time, he had seemed to fail her, whom but herself could she accuse? Well, that part of her life was over; she did not know why her thoughts still clung to it. But, the sudden longing to see him remained; it grew to hunger as she paused on the pavement opposite his door. The street was dark and empty, swept by the rain. She had a vision of his quiet room, of the bookshelves, and the fire on the hearth. She looked up and saw a light in his window; then she crossed the street and entered the house. p322
In her strange state of extra-lucidity, which gave her the sense of being already at the heart of the situation, it seemed incredible that any one should think it necessary to linger in the conventional outskirts of word-play and evasion. p324
"But I may not see you again for a long time, and I wanted to tell you that I have never forgotten the things you said to me at Bellomont and that sometimes--sometimes when I seemed farthest from remembering them--they have helped me, and kept me from mistakes, kept me from really becoming what many people have thought me." p326
"There is some one I must say goodbye to. Oh, not you--we are sure to see each other again--but the Lily Bart you knew. I have kept her with me all this time, but now we are going to part, and I have brought her back to you; I am going to leave her here. When I go out presently, she will not go with me. I shall like to think that she has stayed with you; and she'll be no trouble, she'll take up no room." She went toward him, and put out her hand, still smiling. "Will you let her stay with you?" She asked. p328
She could feel the countless hands of habit dragging her back into some fresh compromise with fate. p340
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