In Chapter 14, the last and closing chapter of The House of Mirth, the narration is once again in Selden’s point of view, like in the opening pages of book one and two. However, instead of looking at Miss Bart alive in the midst of the society and viewing her as society dictates, he is viewing her with more truth and emotion. Before, when the reader entered his mind at the beginnings of book one and two, his gaze was objectifying, analytical, and misogynistic, with him being composed or trying to be composed around Lily; but in the last chapter we see more raw and explicit emotions from him and his grappling with the truth. When he looks at Lily’s check book, the receipts, and, finally, the check to Trenor, it is almost as if he has lost all of that composure he has shown before, sinking into the chair next to the desk. It is said his “troubled vision cleared” and he is able to thinking about the truth and solve the mystery of the rumors that surrounded Lily and Trenor. It is in these final moments, “this fleeting victory over themselves”, that Lily is free of the societal shackles and rumors that had ruined her life and Selden is free to acknowledge the truth.

In the closing scene, there is a mixture of naturalist and modernist elements: should she had lived, Lily may have been far too poor to really be a part of society, but she nonetheless managed to keep her morality in a society that demanded she play a certain part and be immoral, and she also played that part to a certain extent. She is an anomaly, being neither the Stranger nor Other, though she becomes somewhat othered with her fall from grace because of Mrs. Dorset and not using the letters, but her burning the letters becomes her redemption as goes against what naturalism and society deems to what she should do and how she could have saved herself. She saves herself in a different way, and Selden is bearing witness to that; his emotions that the reader sees in the end, his wanting to confirm his love for Lily, and his trying to understand the truth of the rumors surrounding Lily really cements his position as the Stranger even though he claims to “had loved her” and has more emotions shown this time. There will always be some degree of objectiveness in his analysis of society and Lily, even when mourning in “this moment of love” he is thinking about the stakes of their could-have-been relationship and what the future may have held for them.

(note: sorry if this is hard to understand… I’m not the best at translating thoughts onto words on a page!)