What is the “word?” We first see this “word” appear after Lily and Selden’s intense conversation in the library, where Selden was “groping for the word to break the spell” (p. 350) but can’t seem to find it. At first, this unknown “word” did not stood out to be anything particular, but as we progress to the end of the novel, this “word” reoccurs. Wharton never specifies what the “word” is, but its appearance in various contexts in the novel does allow readers’ to come to their own interpretations. Wharton may not have intended for the “word” to be a single word. Perhaps it could be a set of ideas or a phrase. The morning when Selden sets out eagerly to propose marriage to Lily, “he had found the word he meant to say to her, and it could not
