Status Updates From House of Mirth

So far, it’s reminding me of why I loved my American Naturalists class in undergrad so much!! I remember reading The Age of Innocence and reading this book takes me back to that time/place in my life.

“and was it not possible that the material was fine, but that circumstance had fashioned it into a futile shape?” - Perfect.

It's rather clever of her to have made a specialty of devoting herself to dull people—the field is such a large one, and she has it practically to herself. She finds compensations, no doubt….

She had expected to find Lily headstrong, critical and "foreign"—for even Mrs. Peniston…, had the family dread of foreignness—but the girl showed a pliancy, which, to a more penetrating mind than her aunt's, might have been less reassuring than the open selfishness of youth. Misfortune had made Lily supple instead of hardening her, and a pliable substance is less easy to break than a stiff one.

A world in which such things could be seemed a miserable place to Lily Bart; but then she had never been able to understand the laws of a universe which was so ready to leave her out of its calculations.

No; she was not made for mean and shabby surroundings, for the squalid compromises of poverty. Her whole being dilated in an atmosphere of luxury; it was the background she required, the only climate she could breathe in. But the luxury of others was not what she wanted.

It seemed wonderful to him that any one should perform with such careless ease the difficult task of making tea in public in a lurching train. He would never have dared to order it for himself, lest he should attract the notice of his fellow-passengers; but, secure in the shelter of her conspicuousness, he sipped the inky draught with a delicious sense of exhilaration.

"How delicious to have a place like this all to one's self! What a miserable thing it is to be a woman." She leaned back in a luxury of discontent.

see could never be me because I have such a strong penchant for vengeance

Ok so am I supposed to think it’s scandalous in 1890 for heiresses to be playing bridge for money or not? Because either Mrs Peniston is an old fuddy duddy or Lily has gotten herself into a bad spot