The golden age of the late 19th century saw the rise of extravagant hats, hairstyles, and high society. Subsequently, the Gilded Age also saw an increasingly dangerous divide between rich and poor and stifling social restrictions against women, as stifling as their hourglass corsets. Lily Bart from Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth is tragically caught between two worlds: the pompous social elite and the immobile underclass. Lily teeters on the threshold of the sweet life she believes she deserves and teeters on the edge of the abyss of a life of “misery.” Because of her precarious position as a single, middle-aged woman with no means of supporting herself, Lily has several opportunities to save herself from an intolerable fate of discomfort and self-loathing. Yet her insurmountable pride and arrogance force her to align herself with a moral code incompatible with both the social expectations of the time and her own personal agenda. This acute indecision is the key to Lily's final demise. Ultimately, Lily's inevitable descent is a product of her inability to sacrifice her long-held pride or personal morality in exchange for a restored social standing during her downward spiral, whether in the form of a marriage to Lawrence Selden or revenge against Bertha Dorset. plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Lily's story begins with her social stature fairly intact, her living dream of a life beyond terrible inadequacies just a mere proposition away. Ten years before, the deaths of Lily's father and mother had been preceded by a complete dislike of a poor lifestyle and the promotion of Lily's beauty as a means of escaping that poverty. These rapid and monumental events in Lily's life quickly reshape her "view of the universe" and adapt it to a specific and extreme social niche. Wharton describes her thus: “[Mrs. Bart] was particularly careful to avoid his old friends and the scenes of his former success. Being poor seemed to him such an admission of failure that it amounted to shame; and she detected a note of condescension in the most friendly advances. Only one thought consoled her, and that was the contemplation of Lily's beauty” (26). Lily's mind is indeed shaped to the superficiality of the golden age, but she has neither the money nor the husband to live such a lifestyle. Essentially, Lily's only option is to use her only viable assets, her beauty and social skills, to acquire the opulent dream she was denied at nineteen. Lily vehemently pursues money and social advancement rather than the well-being of everyone around her, even to the detriment of her own contentment. This relentless affinity for a life of wealth and generosity pushes the boundaries of Lily's morality. As a result of her well-bred upbringing, Lily's moral sense is tainted and uneven, a contradictory mix of genuine scruples and an insatiable thirst for money, the key to her freedom. She is repeatedly forced to choose between luxury through deception and happiness through sacrifice. Lily, hopelessly trapped, bounces between the two as she falls from one rung to the next on the social ladder. Lily's most inviting prospect of escape was marriage to her beloved Selden, but her inability to tolerate a life that did not offer great opulence and wealth appealed to her. of Selden. Lily's resistance to her true feelings for Selden erodes and visibly breaks down as Lily's social situation deteriorates. However, the looming fear of dissatisfaction always causes Lily to rely on him.