Lily Bart's Role In New York Society

New York society, organized in terms of “old money”, “new money”, and “no money” is described as superficial, because the only accepted value is that of power of wealth. Lily Bart is an excellent character for bringing out both the emptiness of the society and the damage the lack of moral values causes to its members. She identifies with the money values of the society and is willing to work hard to acquire a secure place in it, but she is also aware that it is often ugly in its showy superficiality and that it is casually cruel for the sake of self-protection. The male members of this kind of society are reduced to just money producers, while the female members seem to prostitute themselves for money and status. The husbands are presented as a group of tired, boring men, whose role is to provide. Lily Bart remembers her father as a tired man, who spent all his time trying to make enough money to keep the family inside the right social circle. When he no longer served his role as provider, Lily’s mother dropped him emotionally and he died soon afterwards. Even Gus Trenor is one of the tired providers. He …show more content…
Selden is a free man all the time, because he searches for a freedom which is based on innate, interior resources, while Lily oscillates between the feeling of freedom and the feeling of captivity because she relies on exterior sources, on her financial status, which she is not able to maintain in balance. From time to time she is scrupulous about her feelings. At some point in the novel, when Lily is staying at the Bellomont, she even asks herself whether the maid who helps tidy the Bellomont is better off than she, because the maid is not enslaved to debt, clothing and gambling like she is. The freedom-versus-captivity motif comes up frequently in later chapters, particularly when Lily faces the problem of how to pay off her debt to Gus