The Irony of Love

Irony seems to almost shape the lives people lead. Life is ironic and it is amazing that we don’t learn from our mistakes no matter how frequently irony plays out in our day to day experience. The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton paints a lovely example of the irony of love and materialism. Or maybe it is infatuation and greed. Love is more poetic.

There is one passage in particular that stuck with me throughout the novel. Lily Bart is having dinner with several guests including Selden and Mister and Misses Trenor when she attempts to see things the way Lawrence Selden does. She reflects upon all the dinner guests through the eyes of Selden and realized that “they had symbolized what she was gaining, now they stood for what she was giving up. That very afternoon they had seemed full of brilliant qualities; now she saw that they were merely dull in a loud way. Under the glitter of their opportunities she saw the poverty of their achievement” (Wharton 52). Mrs. Bart was determined to achieve materialistic comfort in a loud way with lavish possessions. What she realized in this passage, as brought to light by Selden, is that she would be foregoing so much happiness to gain the illusion of achievement.

            Being obsessed with material gain is one thing, but love is another intensely ironic happenstance of life. Lily Bart is constantly running around between men like a chicken with her head cut off. She manages to bumble through several awkward and flirtatious relationships with men. She is torn between marrying a man for his wealth and marrying Selden due to her true feelings of infatuation. Her indecisiveness and vain desire for wealth are her own undoing. The courting process causes her to not only lose face and friends; it causes her to lose Selden’s trust and eventually the opportunity for love with Selden. Her death seals her fate for never attaining that love. It was often alluded to in the book that fate would take her away from her ambitions. It even took her away from ambitions she never realized she had. She had no idea she could ever marry for love, and by the time she comprehends this possibility it is too late. Her neglect of the opportunity and eventual recognition of its happiness is a fitting example of irony in the context of love.           We can only pity those who have had circumstance prohibit love while futilely crossing our fingers every day that that irony doesn’t take hold in our lives.