Getting into the house of mirth

Abstract

The text presents an analysis of the novel The House of Mirth, by the American writer Edith Wharton, focusing not only on the issue of gender, which has predominated among critics of the novel, but also on the way the writer elaborates a critique of the precepts of the period through the use of words that refer to business and commerce, thus mirroring the world view of the American society of the nineteenth-century.