What was very interesting about this week's responses, was the diversity of the replies. From knowing ourselves a little bit not just from within the classroom but also outside (just a little), I would argue that these responses tell a lot about ourselves. Therefore, reading the responses was very interesting not just because of their approaches towards Marxist and Feminist criticism but also as a kind of reader response.

Hope I selected passages you all like.

Veronica:

Elizabeth Ammons suggests that in the end, society kills Lily, retribution for her failure to obey to its mandates; social malice surfaces every time Lily shows the slightest spark of independent thought or action (especially when she is closest to cultural conformity). At one point, Lily calls herself a “bad girl,” but her classification of badness comes from sinking to society’s level whereas Tyson notes that the culture’s definition of the “good girl/bad girl” binary “impl[ies] that if a woman does not accept her patriarchal gender role, then the only role left her is that of a monster” (89).

Sarah:

Finally, I thought Wharton engagingly illustrated Thorstein Veblen's point that “The criteria of a past performance of leisure therefore commonly take the form of 'immaterial' goods. Such immaterial evidences of past leisure are quasi-scholarly or quasi-artistic accomplishments...” throughout the novel (293). Wharton is always criticizing her characters for their dilettantism – emphasizing the “quasi” quality of their accomplishements. Ned Silverton, for instance “had meant to live on proof-reading and write an epic, and... now lived on his friends and had become critical of truffles” (here Wharton also, interestingly, valorizes “serious” writers) (56). And she lightly mocks Lily's own intellectual pretensions, recognizing them as “merchandise:” Lily “prided herself on her broad-minded recognition of literature and always carried an Omar Khayyam in her travelling bag” (66).

Keen:

Marx, in his work Capital, put forth a biting critique of the valuation system inherent in the discourse of mercantilism/capitalism through simply describing the way in which such a system fetishizes the product and elides the labor behind it, effectively rendering the common worker invisible and voiceless. Wharton also employs this method of keeping up the appearance of objectivity in order to embed an implied critique within her text, especially in Book I. The reader is firmly embedded in the consciousness of Lily Bart, an upper-class woman who, at least in the beginning, move through her society in an uncritical way, but yet when the reader looks through her eyes, the constructed ideologies that hold her firmly in place become painfully visible.

Peter:

Cornwall asserts his authority by relying on gender roles, which equate masculinity with reason and femininity with emotion. For Kristeva, however, there is no difference between the terms “sex” and “gender.” As Tyson notes, “Patriarchy defines and controls the way we related to sex (female) and gender (feminine) as if they were the same thing” (Tyson 103). According to Kristeva, the interrogation of Gloucester demonstrates the symbolic dimension of language in which, “words operate and meanings are attributed to them,” (Tyson 103). In this scene, Cornwall, representing the patriarchy, attributes emotional hysteria to Regan’s words, “Wast thou not charged at peril.”

Thorsten:

Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth portrays the leisure class, which is a very though place for women. The protagonist is Lily Bart, who is (already) 29 years and (thus), in need of a husband. The male characters in House of Mirth are all depicted rich; they are millionaires who made their money in either in real-estates or in the financial world. The only thing that is missing is the right woman to marry. However, those potential women do not need to embody particular characteristics. They simply have to be pretty, well-dressed, good company, and a good reputation. In other words, they have to be pleasing the eye and the spirit.

Dono:

The novel [The House of Mirth] does show how social class is a dominant factor operative in American society during Gilded Era (between 1876 and 1901, approximately, when the novel is set), and cynically laughs at the idea of American dream which promotes hard working, living frugally, and saving – as part of Protestant ethics – as a certain way to social upward mobility (remember that upper crust depicted in the novel did not do any of these to earning their luxurious ways of living), giving the novel, according to me, rightful privilege to be scrutinized with Marxist criticism, but it does not in a meaningful way give insight on how its female characters were positioned or juxtaposed vis-à-vis its male characters.

Johannes:

This society in which Lily Bart is born and bred is one in which women take on an ornamental function, however, an important one. Lily is constantly aware of the fact that her future in this society can only be secured by marriage; not out of love but out of economic necessity. As Charlotte Perkins Gilman argues, marriage is “economic beggary as well as false attitude from a sex point of view” (291). She interprets the economic sphere as almost exclusively masculine. The economic and the social sphere in The House of Mirth, however, mutually interact. Sim Rosedale has had economic success. In order to translate his economic potency into social respectability within the highest circles of New York’s upper society, he needs a wife, a woman as beautiful, elegant, and well trained in the ‘art’ of conspicuous waste and conspicuous leisure (Veblen’s terminology) as Lily Bart. In the novel, the mutual interaction of social and economic sphere leads to the increase of both. Only in combination can the acme (summit) of socio-economic power be achieved.