The reader is told that Lily feels “an affinity to all the subtler manifestations of wealth” even as Wharton presents a foreshadowing of Lily’s eventual banishment from society. Judy’s request for Lily’s secretarial assistance heightens Lily’s feeling of dependence and servitude.
Changing perceptions in high society are made evident when the narrator recounts Judy’s remark that there is “a divorce and a case of appendicitis in every family one knows.” This comment is in reference to Carry, a twice-divorced woman who borrows money from Judy’s husband, Gus Trenor. The arrangement between Carry and Trenor, while merely suspected by Judy, foreshadows a similar arrangement that will exist between Lily and Trenor.
Judy compares Lily to Bertha, and concludes that Bertha is the “nastier” of the two, which she imagines will result in Bertha’s “always getting what she wants in the long run.” Likewise, the narrator lampoons Carry’s embracing of such causes and interests as municipal reform, socialism, and the Christian Scientist religion as indicators of the dilettantism of the upper classes.
The courtship of Stepney and Gwen parallels Lily’s designs on Gryce. Lily believes that Stepney’s lot is easier; all he has to do is remain quiet and he will be able to marry into the wealthy Van Osburgh family, whereas she must “calculate and contrive, and retreat and advance, as if I were going through an intricate dance, where one misstep would throw me hopelessly out of time.”
Wharton reveals an underlying hypocrisy in Lily’s character. As an outsider, she recognizes the shortcomings of the rituals of the wealthy. But as she resolves to marry Gryce, she becomes more accepting, “a stealing allegiance to their standards, an acceptance of their limitations, a disbelief in the things they did not believe in, a contemptuous pity for the people who were not able to live as they lived.”
