Commentary - The House of Mirth - Book II Ch 13 - 2018 PDF

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Commentaire de texte sur le livre The House of Mirth L3 LLCE Anglais...

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Book II, Chapter XIII, pp. 272-276 (“…laid her child in them”) An alert reader will notice in a matter of seconds that the passage I am about to explore is the opening of the penultimate chapter of The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, more specifically the episode in which Lily Bart, who has just left Lawrence Selden’s house, meets a hitherto unknown character named Nettie Struther, a few pages before her death. The same reader cannot fail to be surprised by Wharton’s decision to introduce a totally new character a few pages before the end of the novel. Why the author elected to play this narrative gambit, thereby violating one elementary law of fiction writing is the enigma that this commentary will try to solve. In order to achieve this aim, I will first start with really basic remarks and examine two possible ways of envisaging the passage’s construction. This will take me to the idea that this extract consists essentially of a rich network of contrasts put into spectacular relief by an equally impressive network of parallelisms. These first two parts will prepare the final stage of my analysis which will be devoted to the treatment of characters, and where I will try to lift the veil on the riddle of Nettie Crane-Struther.

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This excerpt consists of three distinct stages which are easy to isolate. The opening part covers the first forty lines of the text. Lily Bart is alone on the street (paragraph 1) and reaches Bryant Park where she decides to rest for a while (paragraph 2). Paragraph 3 combines a description of the atmosphere of the park at close of day and Lily’s feelings and meditation on her prospects for the night. Paragraph 4 (the final paragraph of this part) introduces the passers-by and depicts their attitude to the lonely figure sitting on the bench. This paragraph clearly functions as a transition that prepares the opening of the second part: everything is now ready for the encounter which is the central event of the extract. The second stage of the passage covers lines 41 to 106. It is the first part of the encounter between Lily and Nettie and it takes place in the park. Nettie is one of those passers-by who, the narrator writes, “slackened their pace to glance curiously at [Lily’s] lonely figure” (3839). She does not simply slow down, but stops, and recognises her erstwhile benefactor. But the situation has now changed and it is Nettie who offers her help and convinces Lily to come to her place.

2 The third and final part of the text, takes the reader from line 107 to the end (line 177). Lily and Nettie have reached Nettie’s place. This movement in space goes hand in hand with an implicit ellipsis between line 106 and line 107, the only moment in the passage when action is not seen in its continuity. The narrator insists on the warmth and the sense of comfort that emanates from the place, as opposed to the bleak atmosphere of the park. Nettie’s baby girl is introduced and, after feeding her, Nettie tells Lily about the important changes that have occurred in her life since the latter and Gertie Farish came to her rescue. The excerpt closes on the moment when Lily takes Nettie’s baby in her arms, one of the keys to these pages as will appear later. This rapid examination induces a few elementary remarks. While the second and third stage of the passage have roughly the same length (65 and 70 lines respectively), the opening part is somewhat shorter (40 lines), which clearly suggests that it functions as a long introduction before real action starts with Nettie’s appearance. Another clear difference between the first stage and the two others lies in the fact that it is exclusively narrative, while parts 2 and 3 combine narrative and dialogue. This confirms stage one’s introductory status and reinforces the notion that the passage’s substance really appears in parts 2 and 3. Introduction is the right term if I take only the passage into consideration, but if I contemplate the economy of the end of Book II, the first 40 lines are more of a transition, a short narrative pause between two climactic moments: the visit to Lawrence Selden which already belongs to the past, and the encounter with Nettie which about to take place. There is no question that this is a reasonable way of envisaging the overall structure of the extract. The transition from part one to part two is generated by the appearance of a new character while the shift from part two to part three is engendered by the change of places and the brief temporal gap between the scene in the park and the scene at Nettie’s place. Yet it is also possible to perceive the text’s construction along slightly different lines, having to do with the atmosphere of the passage and its evolution. If one envisages these four pages in terms of tone and moods, it is clear that the text does not consist of three, but of two big units corresponding to the alternating domination of dysphoric and euphoric notes. The first part (1-40) is marked by a euphoric start with the presence of such terms as “revival of light”, and “the upper sky” (2), to which respond, at the beginning of the second paragraph the phrases “buoyant ether” and “high moments of life” (4). But this light-hearted atmosphere quickly fades away, and dysphoric terms are suddenly omnipresent. The buoyant ether gradually “shrinks away” from Lily (5) who begins to feel the “dull” pavement (5) as her enthusiasm turns to a “sense of weariness” (6).

3 This is combined with an emphasis on the setting. It is characterized by its “penetrating dampness” (14-15, repeated later with “fearfully damp”, 80), which suggests that it is both wet and cold (as opposed to “the warmth of the fire” at Selden’s place, 13). The encroaching darkness is also a key feature of this scene. The text opens as the city enjoys a momentary revival of light, but this, too is ephemeral as the narrator rapidly lays stress on obscurity: “Night had now closed in” (33); “As complete darkness fell on the square” (34). Darkness is also present in the figurative sense, when Lily ponders on the “dark prospect” (22) of a return to her “cheerless room” (19), her likely consumption of chloral and the fear that the drug might prove less efficient emphasized by the repetition of the verb “to fail” (27). Death is also looming, conveyed by the overwhelming sense of weariness weighing on the heroine, and, for the rereader, by the repeated allusions to the bottle of chloral. The reader will note the subtle use of the verb “to pass out” (13) which, in this particular context (“the warmth of the fire had passed out of her veins”) does not have its usual meaning (to lose consciousness) but still carries the sinister connotation, especially as it appears in a sentence where the dwindling warmth of the fire is compared to blood dripping out of someone’s veins. Nettie Crane’s appearance heralds a complete change of tone. The systematically dysphoric depiction, marked by the inevitability of failure, and the promise of death, is replaced by a renewed sense of hope. This can first be found in the description of Nettie as a young woman whose voice is “half-familiar” (45), whose “common prettiness” is “redeemed by the strong and generous curve of the lips” (50-51), and who brightens “with the pleasure of recognition” (52-53) when she realizes that the woman sitting on the bench is none other than “Miss Bart”. The encounter seems to infuse new vigour into Lily who also remembers Nettie as the girl she helped rescue, and her exhaustion subsides for a moment: “A faint glow of returning strength seemed to pass into Lily” (70). This change in atmosphere is confirmed when the two women reach Nettie’s lodgings. The dampness and darkness of the park are replaced by the warmth and cosiness of the “almost miraculously clean” kitchen (109) where a fire shines “through the polished flanks of the iron stove” (110). The park was almost deserted, whereas the two women are welcomed by Nettie’s baby, which leads to the finale where Lily rises with a smile – which somehow responds to Nettie’s “beaming countenance” (124) – and takes the baby in her arms. The cold prospect of loneliness and the sense of doom are replaced by the warmth of a family atmosphere and a celebration of life. This does not to mean however that there are no dysphoric elements at all between line 39 and the end of the passage. In fact there are quite a few, notably when Nettie is described as “a shabby figure” (83) and when she recounts her illness and derailed love affair. But the big

4 difference lies in the fact that they are systematically counterbalanced by positive elements: something inauspicious is always the prelude to more fortunate developments. Let me take one example to show this. Nettie’s initial description is not particularly positive. She is “poorly-dressed” (47), seems to be rather the worse for wear (“Her face had the unwholesome refinement which ill-health and overwork may produce”, 48-49), and although she is pretty, her prettiness is “common” (49). But these negative elements are immediately “redeemed” by positive features: “its common prettiness was redeemed by the strong and generous curve of the lips” (50). Since these positive elements close the paragraph, they provide the final impression and carry the day. The strength and generosity which here apply to the curve of Nettie’s lips should obviously be taken more comprehensively: they define her character. Her generosity is borne out by her attitude to the stranger in the park. Note that she recognizes Lily only after she has stopped for a few seconds to consider the figure on the bench, which proves her compassionate nature. She did not stop because she had recognised someone she knew, but because she saw someone who seemed to be in trouble. Her strength is illustrated in the final stage of the passage, when she tells Lily about the rough patches she went through and how she managed to overcome them to become a happy wife and mother (“the strength of the victory shone forth from her”, 167), but it can already be perceived much earlier in the text, when Lily meditates on Nettie’s existence in a paragraph that carries obvious Darwinian undertones, and acknowledges Nettie as a fighter and a survivor: “Her eyes rested wonderingly on the thin shabby figure at her side. She had known Nettie Crane as one of the discouraged victims of overwork and anaemic parentage: one of the superfluous fragments of life destined to be swept prematurely into that social refuse-heap […]. But Nettie Struther’s frail envelope was now alive with hope and energy: whatever fate the future reserved for her, she would not be cast into the refuseheap without a struggle.” (83-90) This very sharp contrast between the globally dysphoric tone of the first four paragraphs and the rather more optimistic mood of the rest of the excerpt leads the reader, not only to realize that it can be envisaged as a binary structure, but also, more globally, to apprehend its composition as a series of patterns based on contrasts and parallelisms. This notion takes me to the next stage of my analysis.

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5 The first set of contrasts that the reader can easily observe has to do with the handling of space in the passage. If we consider its progression, we notice that it espouses Lily Bart’s own progress in space. We follow her as she is walking the streets, enters Bryant Park, and is finally taken to Nettie’s house. The text is therefore marked by a simple opposition between outdoors (from line 1 to 106) and indoors (107-177). This opposition is reinforced by the difference in atmosphere between the park, where everything is gloom and doom, and Nettie’s house that I have already mentioned (darkness/light, cold/warmth, loneliness/company). Another line of opposition that the text strongly suggests is that between home and “not home”. In the first part of the passage, Lily’s meditation essentially originates in one question (should she go home or not?) and her choice to adjourn to the park is not engendered only by her desire to rest for a while: it is also dilatory. Her reflection while sitting on the bench shows that she still has to make a decision as to her destination. The theme recurs later in the passage when Nettie’s offer to take her to her place (originally countered by Lily’s statement that she “must go home”, 82) is combined with the promise to see her home afterwards (105). If we consider it more globally, the treatment of space, marked by the heroine’s endless movement has a function which connects the passage to the rest of the novel through the motif of instability. For nothing is ever stable in Lily Bart’s world. Lily is always depicted as a terribly volatile character: no sooner has she elected a course of action than she follows another, usually taking her, physically, to another place, which accounts for her fluctuating fortunes throughout. In this respect, this extract, in which a chance encounter leads Lily to end up in a place she had not originally planned to go to, is reminiscent of the incipit of the novel where the reader first discovers her through Selden’s eyes at Grand Central Station. But comparing the opening episode and this passage (which is so close to its denouement) only shows how much Lily’s position has deteriorated. The promises of the initial pages have evaporated and the “pleasure-ground” (which might recall Bellomont in the opening chapters) is now “melancholy” and “almost deserted” (11) (bringing together the words “melancholy” and “pleasure” provides yet another sharp contrast). Lily’s adventures began with a missed train: as the reader reaches the penultimate chapter of the book, he knows that her story has indeed been, metaphorically, a succession of missed trains and that her prospects are now nil. The second line to examine in relation to contrasting patterns is temporal. An attentive reader will rapidly notice that this passage enjoys a pivotal status in the narrative in that it is closely connected both to the past of the story and to its future, and forms a bridge of sorts between them. The text is both markedly analeptic and heavily proleptic.

6 The links with the past are numerous and easy to identify. The beginning of the second paragraph and the mention that Lily “was still treading the buoyant ether which emanates from the high moments of life” (3-5) unambiguously alludes to the final moments of the previous chapter, Lily’s final visit to Selden and her decision to destroy Bertha Dorset’s letters. Yet the moment on which I would like to lay emphasis is the paragraph where she remembers her first encounter with Nettie: Yes: Lily was beginning to remember. The episode of Nettie Crane’s timely rescue from disease had been one of the most satisfying incidents of her connection with Gerty’s charitable work. She had furnished the girl with the means to go to a sanatorium in the mountains: it struck her now with a peculiar irony that the money she had used had been Gus Trenor’s. (58-63) The mention that the money she donated was Gus Trenor’s, recalls Trenor’s and Lily’s final meeting in Book I (Chapter XIII), where it becomes clear that Trenor, who was supposed to invest Lily’s money in the stock market, was actually investing his own and giving her his profits, which put her, literally, in his debt. But more importantly, these lines take the reader back to Book I, Chapter X, when Lily gives Gerty a substantial amount of money for her charity, later called the “Girls’ Club”: The object of the association was to provide comfortable lodgings, with a reading-room and other modest distractions, where young women of the class employed in down town offices might find a home when out of work, or in need of rest […]. The other-regarding sentiments had not been cultivated in Lily, and she was often bored by the relation of her friend’s philanthropic efforts, but today her quick dramatizing fancy seized on the contrast between her own situation and that represented by some of Gerty’s “cases”. These were young girls, like herself, some perhaps pretty, some not without a trace of her finer sensibilities. She pictured herself leading such a life as theirs […] and the vision made her shudder sympathetically. (I, X, 98-99) This description establishes a literal connection with this passage, through the use of the phrase “in need of rest”, which is reminiscent of the repetition of the word “rest” in the extract (which I will come back to later). It also creates a link between Lily and Gerty’s “cases” (“young girls like herself”) another key to the text, as I will try to show in the final part of this paper. These lines, taken from Book I, Chapter X, provide the first answer to the enigma of this passage. Why did Wharton decide to introduce a new character a few pages before the end of the novel? In fact she did not, really, because this character is not, strictly speaking, new. Wharton pulls an arresting trick here by forcing the reader to acknowledge that Nettie enjoys a paradoxical status: although she has never appeared before, she has nonetheless been introduced in Book I as one of these young women in need of work and a place to rest.

7 If the reader focuses his attention on Nettie, he will realize that she is also closely linked to the past in this passage. The speech in which she tells Lily what happened to her after she was rescued and sent to a sanatorium, and how she became a wife and a mother (147-166) is the longest analepsis in the passage. Interestingly, Nettie has not one but two surnames: Crane and Struther. These two identities, Lily’s maiden name and her name as a married woman, also separate the past from the present, as Nettie emphasizes when introducing herself to Lily: “My name’s Nettie Struther. It was Nettie Crane then…” (56). This distinction is also meant to indicate that Nettie Crane and Nettie Struther, although they are, strictly speaking, one and the same character, are poles apart, and this gap is perceived by Lily who sees the disparity between Nettie Crane, who looked doomed, and Nettie Struther who radiates with hope and energy. The passage is also largely proleptic with its many allusions to the future of the story. Sleep and the promise of death loom large in the text. It does not take much effort to see that Lily’s meditation on chloral and its “waning power” (32) foreshadows the end of the chapter and her fatal decision to increase the dose. Besides, the rereader cannot fail to draw a link between the use of the verb “to rest” at the beginning of the except (“she remembered that in Bryant Park there were seats where she might rest”, 9-10) and the fatal outcome of Lily’s reflexions on the sleeping drug, and will read it as a transparent allusion to Lily’s eternal rest. By the end of the chapter, Lily does indeed rest in peace1, and Bryant Park becomes the oblique promise of a more permanent resting place: a cemetery, and the “stray figure[s]” (36) and “passing shadows” (41-42) clear allusions to ghosts. The final lines of the passage, where Lily takes Nettie’s baby in her arms also provide the reader with a glimpse of the final stages of the chapter, when the heroine, as she is falling asleep (hence dying), imagines that she is holding the child in her arms: She stirred once, and turned to her side, and as she did so, she suddenly understood why she did not feel herself alone. It was odd – but Nettie Struther’s child was lying on her arm: she felt the pressure of its little head against her shoulder. She did not know how it had come there, but she felt no great surprise at the fact, only a gentle penetrating thrill of warmth and pleasure. She settled herself into an easier position, hollowing her arm to pillow the round downy head, and holding her breath lest a sound should disturb the sleeping child. (II, XIII, 283) Contrasts are also present in the handling of focalization. Careful reading shows that point of view changes several times in the course of the excerpt. The very brief opening paragraph presents the reader with the omniscient narrator’s point of view, but it is replaced as early as 1 My reader will no doubt be familiar with the formula which adorns many a tombstone: R. I. P. (Rest In Peace, or, in the Latin version, Requiescat In Pace)...