CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
1.1
Background of study
The House of Mirth is a novel published in 1905 and written by Edith Wharton.
Although it is a work of fiction but there are several real actual events, residents, and
issues in the early of nineteenth century that are used as background of the story and
they affected how the story was build.
The House of Mirth is a story well told, which can influence its readers to
emotionally feel the lives of the main character and can give us a rich experience of the
“old New York”. This novel portrays the situation of New York in the early of
nineteenth century and the behavior of people in that era. It has an interesting story,
which tells us about the struggle of young woman, Lily Bart, in the gilded age in
America to achieve her biggest dream in order to maintain her social status in the upper
class.
In the early of nineteenth century, America found itself with a new style
“moneyed class” (having a great deal of money). Blanchard (2001) wrote that America
during that time was in the Gilded Age era (between 1876 and 1901). In that time, the
rich got much richer, and the poor got much poorer. It was a time of great industrial
expansion in the United States and a time when the stock market was doing very well.
Great cities such as New York became worlds of extremes, where on one block lived
millionaires in mansions and on another block lived immigrant families in tenements.
Many people in that era were trying to get the upper-class social status. Upper
class society is a class in the society occupying the highest socioeconomic position.
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Lily Bart, the main character in this novel, is a victim of a big and unstoppable shift of
the changing world. She told herself to marry with someone who could feed her craving
for luxurious life. Nowadays, world is in the condition whereas some people are looking
and struggle for material things. Material things are everything that concerned with
physical matters that affecting financial life of someone.
It is even a phenomenon happens in the society, especially for upper-class
society. Sometimes, wealth, social status, and money (material things) become too much
for human being that they over take morality. It is even often considered that material
things are more important rather than self-happiness. The novel, in some ways, would be
able to open the eyes of the reader more widely to see the failure of one character to
manage her own wealth and status problems.
The author of this novel is Edith Wharton. She was a writer who focused on
writing fashion in New York, a city that she had lived since infancy, and it brought her
immediate success and recognition. As she wrote in her autobiography, A Backward
Glance (1934), her goal in The House of Mirth was to uncover the true nature of
society's power.
Wharton was born in New York on January 24 1862. She is known as an
American best author for her stories and novels. Most of her novels contain critics about
upper class society. Wharton herself was an upper class woman who got her education
form private tutors and governess at home. Wharton family was considered as a longestablished New York family. In writing her novel and short stories, Wharton combined
the idea that taken from the view of America’s privileged classes that followed by the
social and psychological insight. She met many literary and public figures of her era,
including Henry James and Theodore Roosevelt.
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In 1905, Wharton wrote The House of Mirth which deals with aspects of
behavior, language, customs, values, characteristic of a particular class of American
people in a specific historical context. This novel tells the stratified society in which had
been reared and its reaction to social change. The House of Mirth is Wharton’s first
important work of fiction. The novel had sold 140,000 copies.
Haloho (2011) conducted a research on http://repository.usu.ac.id “An analysis
of materialism as reflected in Sidney Sheldon The Stars Shine Down. This thesis is about
material analysis that occurred in the novel The Stars Shine Down written by Sidney
Sheldon. The thesis talks about the success of approaching material things make the
human become greedy and never satisfy with what they already got. It makes the basic
character of humanity in the human itself is gone time by time. The difference between
her thesis and this thesis is the purpose of this thesis is to reveal the cause of material
things oriented and the effects of it through the Marxism and Historical Materialism
approaches.
Most people in the world are born with the love of material things. Sometimes,
the love of material things brings some effects to someone who is too intense in pursuing
them. For example, when people love material things too much they would sacrifice
their self-happiness to get those material things, they will become greedy and will never
be satisfied with what they already got.
The novel The House of Mirth is trying to tell the readers that human’s needs
keep changing and develop gradually follow the changing of the world and society. This
novel tells about a woman who wants to maintain her social status. She has done many
things, because only material things that could make someone having a status in society.
Basically, material things are important for human, but it is not the most important thing
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because if the material things are gotten by sacrifice self-happiness, at the end it only
brings regret.
Studies on material things in literary analysis usually discussed about how people
are leaving the morality when they already success in material things aspect. It told
about the negative impact that occurred when people are in the upper class position and
oppression to the opposite class. For example, Haloho (2011), talks about the success of
approaching material things make the human become greedy and never satisfy with what
they already got. The other example is Gough (2008) in the thesis Morality and
Materialism: A Literary Analysis of Juvenal's Twelfth Satire, he discussed about how
greed destroys society by corrupting core values of friendship and religion. Furthermore,
the purpose of this thesis is different from the other thesis because it focuses on showing
the reader what causes that make someone pursuing the material things and what is the
impact to her.
1.2
Problem Formulation
The problem formulation that will be answered in this thesis revolves around the
struggle of the main character, Lily Bart, who lives in the In America's Gilded Age
(between 1876 and 1901), to survive in the upper-class social reputation. This thesis is
trying to answer the questions “ How domination of material things being potrayed in
the main character’s life?” and “How the impacts of material things domination to the
main character?”. In order to answer these questions, the writer analyzes the novel’s
intrinsic elements as well as Marxism and Historical Materialism theories that are
supported with Social class Theories.
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1.3
Scope and Limitation
The scope of the study is the novel The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton. The
limitation of this study is a character of Lily Bart. Lily Bart is described as a pretty,
attractive, good mannered, ambitious, and materialistic but behind her strength she has a
very fragile side. She is a very ambitious person in achieving her purpose of life. On the
other hand when everything doesn’t run like she expected before, she becomes fragile
and ends her life tragically. She becomes a morally weak woman.
1.4
Goal and Function
The goals of the study are to find out why Lily Bart only focuses to pursue
wealth and social status rather than her own happiness. Happiness in this context is to
show how hard Lily Bart fights against her own willingness to love Lawrence Selden
(her true love), in order to find another man who is richer. After that, another goal of this
thesis is to show the readers the causes that make material things dominate Lily’s life.
Besides that, it helps to answer what are the effects of centralize material things through
Lily’s life.
Money, social status, and outlook appearance are temporary. By this thesis, the
writer hopes people could have different point of view about wealth and giving moral
lesson to the reader that happiness not about being rich. There is nothing wrong about
being wealthy, but one should also consider happiness factor. Material things (money,
social status, outlook appearance have blinded Lily Bart until she ended up her life
tragically.
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This thesis is also made to help the future students to understand about the
Marxism theory in the gilded age of America better. Gilded Age refers to the era of rapid
economic and population growth in the United States during the post-Civil War and
post-Reconstruction eras of the late 19th century or sometime we called Golden age.
1.5
Research Methodology
This thesis uses Qualitative research method, which consists of library research
that gives more details of explanations and description. In collecting information, the
writer uses library research with the following activities. First, the writer conducted the
research on the novel by reading the novel several times to observe the reasons and
impacts of material things oriented in the main character personality. The details are
analyzed using Marxism and Historical Materialism theories. The medium of this thesis
is the novel “The House of Mirth” written by Edith Wharton. The story of this novel has
strong relation with the main issue which is going to analyze. It is about a woman having
material orientation (materialistic) and trying hard to marry rich guy to maintain her
social status.
Second, the writer searches and collects sources which supports the analysis of
this thesis. The sources are taken from text books, websites, senior thesis, articles and
journals. The book related to the literary analysis and the theories (Marxism and
Historical Materialism) are taken from Bina Nusantara University Library are used as
points of references.
After that, the writer starts analyzing the data based on the
Marxism and Historical Materialism from the sources. Previous study on “An analysis of
materialism as reflected in Sidney Sheldon The Stars Shine Down” written by Evy
Kristina Haloho and “Morality and Materialism: A Literary Analysis of Juvenal's
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Twelfth Satire” written by Spencer John Gough are also used. The last, the writer
composes her problem formulation using the theory.
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