Lily Bart is incorrigible. Time after time a way out of her problems is promptly offered to her but a strange combination of vanity, self-respect, and pride continuously pushes her to instead refuse the many implicit and explicit offers of marriage which would instantaneously solve her predicament. She wants life on her terms, and without any of her own money and with expensive tastes, this simply ends up catastrophically removing her of her once renowned place in 1905 New York high society. The prose is often illuminatory, it is of course wordy but well-written, and the scenes of romantic intrigue that unfold are impenetrable in their interior machinations. Almost everyone ends up hating her, the other women, I mean, because she possesses the 'rarity' of good looks and social grace that props up women of such descriptions in most if not every human social setting. If she existed in real life, I hope I could manage what Selden does in this book, hook her not with money or charm but with disarming intelligence. Never mind the ending, Wharton simply hates happiness in her endings. Also of course she hates falsity with a passion.