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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from House of Mirth by Edith Wharton: odd sense of being behind the social tapestry, on the side where
the threads were knotted and the loose ends hung. For a moment
she found a certain amusement in the show, and in her own share
of it: the situation had an ease and unconventionality distinctly
refreshing after her experience of the irony of conventions. But
these flashes of amusement were but brief reactions from the long
disgust of her days. Compared with the vast gilded void of Mrs.
Hatch's existence, the life of Lily's former friends seemed
packed with ordered activities. Even the most irresponsible
pretty woman of her acquaintance had her inherited obligations,
her conventional benevolences, her share in the working of the
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