SOURCE: Restuccia, Frances L. “The Name of the Lily: Edith Wharton's Feminism(s).” Contemporary Literature 28, no. 2 (summer 1987): 223-38.

In the following essay, Restuccia argues that part of Wharton's feminist position in The House of Mirth resembles later “humanist feminism” in its emphasis on the positive effects of femininity.

“Lily … returned from her expedition with a sense of the powerlessness of beauty and charm against the unfeeling processes of the law.”

—Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth

“Writing, space of dispersion of desire, where Law is dismissed.”

—Roland Barthes, Image Music Text

“This is to call for, then, a decentered vision (theoria) but a centered action that will not result in a renewed invisibility.”

—Nancy K. Miller, “The Text's Heroine: A Feminist Critic and Her Fictions”

Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth is a feminist novel comprising—perhaps by definition—at least two feminisms.¹ The story may be read...