I'll never let go, Jack. I promise.

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

Chapters 11 & 12

"The noble buoyancy of her attitude, its suggestion of soaring grace, revealed the touch of poetry in her beauty that Selden always felt in her presence, yet lose the sense of when he was not with her. Its expression was now so vivid that for the first time he seemed to see before him the real Lily Bart, divested of the trivialities of her little world, and catching for a moment a note of that eternal harmony of which her beauty was a part" (Wharton, page 109).

As the book has progressed into its many elements, one evident comparison I have found is of Lily and Selden's relationship to that of Jack and Rose's from the movie Titanic. In the same way, I have found myself to dislike Lily as much as I dislike Rose. Both of these women were careless in their ways. I am sure Rose did not mean it intentionally but every time I watch the movie, I am angered in which the movie plays out. My dad and I have the same issue with the movie that there was plenty of room on the door Rose used to float on for both her and Jack. There was no reason for Jack to have to die. In the same way, Lily has now viable reason for leaving Selden out in the cold. He has clearly told her by this point that he will do anything for her. I foresee that a similar ending will come for both Selden and Lily as she will leave him in the cold with no reason of action. I feel sorry for Selden as he is in love with a woman who does not see his love. 

In terms of the style of writing of Wharton, I have noticed that she tends to use large descriptions before a scene that can foreshadow the events of a scene. Earlier in the book when Selden and Lily went on their pleasant walk together, a long descriptive portion set up the walk to be a pleasant and uplifting event for the novel. Likewise, Wharton used description again to set up Selden and Lily's time together in chapter twelve: "Selden and Lily stood still, accepting the unreality of the scene as a part of their own dream-like sensations. It would not have surprised them to feel a summer breeze on their faces, or to see the lights among the boughs reduplicated in the arch of a starry sky" (Wharton, page 111). In another writing element, Wharton uses drawn out analogies to describe an instance: "But society, amused for a while at playing Cinderella, soon wearied of the hearthside role, and welcomed the Fairy Godmother in the shape of any magician powerful enough to turn the shrunken pumpkin back again into the golden coach" (Wharton, page 98). In this analogy, Wharton was able to describe the Wall Street crisis of the time involving Rosedale in a way where more people could understand.