Status Updates From The House of Mirth

Hmmm Selden joined in the fun

How should she have distrusted her powers? Her beauty itself was not the mere ephemeral possession it might have been in the hands of inexperience: her skill in enhancing it, the care she took of it, the use she made of it, seemed to give it a kind of permanence. She felt she could trust it to carry her through to the end.

absolutely heartbreaking how reading this 1905 book as a woman in 2026 feels so deeply relatable. the knowledge that you always need to be done up and look your best to be taken seriously when for a man it’s enough to exist. the fear of rejecting a man too strongly so as to not ellicit his anger or violence. not that much has changed 💔

Lily was nineteen when circumstances caused her to revise
her view of the universe.
The previous year she had made a dazzling début fringed by a heavy thunder-cloud of bills. The light of the début still lingered on the horizon, but the cloud had thickened; and suddenly it broke. The suddenness added to the horror;

the light from the great central lantern overhead shed a brightness on the women's hair and struck sparks from their jewels as they moved.
There were moments when such scenes delighted Lily, when they gratified her sense of beauty and her craving for the external finish of life; there were others when they gave & sharper edge to the meagreness of her own opportunities.