'The tragic love story reveals the destructive effects of wealth and social hypocrisy on Lily Bart; a ravishing beauty. Impoverished but well-born; Lily realizes a secure future depends on her acquiring a wealthy husband. Her downfall begins with a romantic indiscretion; intensifies with an accumulation of gambling debts; and climaxes in a maelstrom of social disasters.More a tale of social exclusion than of failed love; The House of Mirth reveals Wharton's compelling gifts as a storyteller and her clear-eyed observations of the savagery beneath the well-bred surface of high society.'