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Risk and Subversion in Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth
Author(s) -
Shinbrot Victoria
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
orbis litterarum
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.109
H-Index - 8
eISSN - 1600-0730
pISSN - 0105-7510
DOI - 10.1111/j.1600-0730.2011.01043.x
Subject(s) - subversion , indeterminacy (philosophy) , value (mathematics) , meaning (existential) , attributive , randomness , aesthetics , hero , philosophy , literature , sociology , epistemology , psychoanalysis , art , psychology , law , linguistics , politics , mathematics , political science , statistics
This essay argues that a strong undercurrent runs throughout The House of Mirth , which subtly combines the themes of risk‐taking, gambling, and aesthetic play and thereby exposes the randomness and indeterminacy that the predominant value systems of Lily’s universe attempt to disguise or negate. The presence of risk is felt as a variable whose attributive value or meaning differs widely depending on varying and often contradictory contexts from the economic to the aesthetic, the material to the spiritual, and the individual to the communal.