Edith Wharton
Chapters XIII & XIV, pages 252-268
...268 pages, and it ends like this...
I honestly don't know how to feel about this. Part of me wants to be happy for the the difference that Lily made in the life of Nettie Struther and the peace that Lily now experiences as her life started to turn around. Yet, I feel like the ending could have been SO much happier. Selden with his marriage proposal and Lily with the reassurement that she could once again rise to the social status with which she was so familiar.
I have so many questions left unanswered.
What was this "word" to be shared between Lily and Selden?
Was the baby that Lily felt in her arms a foreshadowing of the life she could have with Selden?
Why had the two not professed their love beforehand?
I guess Wharton leaves these open for the reader to decipher. But at least she does give us some comfort in one of her favorite motifs throughout the story: the weather. On the morning of Lily's death, the weather was described as "mild and bright, with a promise of summer in the air" and the sun shone "joyously down Lily's street...and struck prismatic glories from the panes of her darkened window," (Wharton, 263). So maybe Lily was happy after all, and her world was at last at peace. Who knows. I guess that is why this novel is considered a great of American literature.
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