When Dr. Campbell asked us how we thought House of Mirth would end, I knew it would end in either a suicide or murder. Even removed from the context of this particular story, I knew it would end poorly simply due to the nature of all of the other stories we’ve read. Transcendental Wild Oats ended with the farming community failing, The Blithedale Romance ended with Zenobia’s suicide, Moby-Dick’s ending involved the death of most everyone, and McTeague had murder and eventual death in Death Valley. The only one that strayed was Behind a Mask. Jean Muir didn’t die (despite threats of suicide), but the lives of everyone around her were definitely worse off.
What’s interesting about this story is that it could have ended with a “happily ever after” ending. Lily could have married Selden. I figured that she would not, though, because that would be too Disney. It is no fun to analyze a book that is happy and jolly in the end. Good analysis comes from seeing people fall. (Or maybe I’m just warped?)
I didn’t know she would poison herself, though. At least not until later in the novel. For a while, I thought maybe Mr. Trenor might get a little too rapey (to use the parlance of our class). Then I thought maybe Bertha would kill her as a way to silence Lily, but then she just went the route of trying to destroy her, socially.
I first figured out that poisoning would be her death sentence in Book 2, Chapter 10 when she went to the pharmacist (or chemist, as the book called it) to use Mrs. Hatch’s prescription. (This is on pg 225 in the Norton Critical Edition.) The clerk said, “You don’t want to increase the dose, you know. . . [I]t’s a queer-acting drug. A drop or two more, and off you go--the doctors don’t know why.”
“Aha!” I shouted in my head. “This is how she goes!” Wouldn’t you know it, she did. Along with her corpse leaves behind two questions: 1) Did she intentionally overdose? 2) What singular word did she want to say to Selden that would clarify their relationship?
I think she committed suicide. Right after she measures out her medicine in 2:13, increasing the dose beyond her limits, she remembers what the pharmacy clerk had told her about the dangers of overdosing. Right afterwards appears the line, “She did not, in truth, consider the question very closely--the physical craving for sleep was her only sustained sensation.” Sure, this is ambiguous, but I see it as Lily not only being tired in the sense of lacking sleep, but being tired of the whole game of life. She was tired of trying to find a husband. She was tired of trying to find money. She was tired of trying to find her place in society.
As for the word, I think it was “love.” She loved Selden, but was too afraid of losing her place in society by being with him. In the end, she wouldn’t have to deal with that anymore. “She had been unhappy, and now she was happy--she had felt herself alone, and now the sense of loneliness had vanished.
Good points, Jeffrey. The dosage of the chloral is just one of many things that Lily doesn't want to consider too closely and that always come back to haunt her. "Love" is a good possibility for the word, too.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you completely, I think that even though Lily did not consciously acknowledge that she was committing suicide, the fact that she was aware an overdose was dangerous and took it anyway constitutes suicide. I don’t think that someone who was not considering suicide and had a strong desire to live would have been so reckless with such dangerous medicine. The fact that she remembers the pharmacists warning at this point only adds to the idea that she committed suicide. In addition she seems to be saying goodbye to Selden and setting her affairs in order at the end.
ReplyDeleteAs for the word she wanted to tell Selden, I agree that it was probably love. Admitting she loved him would have saved her, I just wish she could have thought of it sooner.