“Lily Bart and Masquerade Inscribed in the Female Mode”

Quotation

“Lily sees (that is, understands) the many dimensions of Gryce’s quandary: she knows that she herself is the object of his gaze, and she knows that action of any kind will diminish the potency of her ‘femininity’ at this moment. In these ‘visual’ transactions throughout the novel, the narrator often plays a crucial role—explicating Lily’s thought process and revealing it to the reader in ways that make it inescapably clear the extent to which Lily can ‘see’ all of the implications of her situation. In this regard, it is important to realize that this narrator must necessarily be ‘gendered’ female: that is one of the narrator’s central functions in The House of Mirth is to direct the reader’s attention to two things that women MUST know—and that they KEEP SECRET－HIDDEN－FROM THE TYRANNY OF THE MALE GAZE.” (275-76)