Getting Older...

     As I get closer to finishing The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton starts to show the reader that Lily is getting older.  Lily is becoming more tiresome, and I start to feel her both mentally and physically drained.  Wharton starts using negative diction throughout the end of the novel to portray this. Wharton says that "from increasing physical weariness. . .she was beginning to feel acutely the ugliness and discomfort of her surroundings" (Wharton, 233).  This is an example of some of the words and phrases that Wharton uses to help understand that Lily is getting older and weaker.  I start to feel for Lily in some ways because she was never raised to have to work for her money, and now she has to.  She is not use to the work and effort that it takes. I am glad to see that Lily is starting to realize what most people actually have to do in order to live.  Most people are not rich and well off.  I feel like she gets a sense of that when she is working and hears people talking about her old friends. Wharton's clever use of diction makes the mood a little more depressing toward the end of the novel.  Although there are some words throughout the novel that I do not quite understand, the context clues that she uses around them help to me get an idea of the meaning.