As Book 2 develops in Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth, I am really confused. I guess I just don't understand these cruises that all of these people are going on. Selden left with the Dorsets and Lily ends up going on one as well. It just appeared to me as such a random turn of events in this plot.
Was Selden running away from Lily? And if he was, why was he? I thought Selden was supposed to be meeting Lily for a get together at some point at the end of Book 1. As this book begins, the reader can already tell that Selden still has feelings for Lily Bart when Wharton says, "Now he suddenly felt the latent ache, and realised that after all he had not come off unhurt" (Wharton, pg150). This means that Selden had thought he was over Lily, but now these feeling that were asleep in his mind were woken up by just the mere mentioning of her name. My guess would be that a bad mouthing of Lily had steered his surface vision of her, but it was not enough to change the feelings he had deep down in his heart.
What also struck me as odd, was Mr. Dorset completely let all of his emotions go in front of Lily while they were alone together (again Lily is allowing herself to get put into the middle of all of these odious situations). Mr. Dorset confided in Lily in all of the terrors in his marriage. I never realized how close those two were that he would beg of Lily's help for a divorce.
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