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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 27 August 2018 and 6 December 2018. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Maev223599!.
Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 11:04, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
In reference to the article: Lily doesn't tell her aunt about her gambling debts out of "reverence for honesty". She makes up that story because she needs the money to pay back Trenor. "If her aunt turned such a stony ear to the fiction of the gambling debts, in what spirit would she receive the terrible avowal of the truth?"
Plenty of advice here - but bear in mind that this article is primarily about a novel, the Film adaptations if they is going to head in the direction of a fuller treatment should really have their own articles. :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page)/(Desk) 11:01, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
I'm pretty new to Wikipedia so I don't want to go about deleting stuff I shouldn't, but this article is so full of high school analysis of the characters--isn't this a bit inappropriate? Shouldn't a brief and impersonal overview of the characters be enough rather than in-depth and opinionated analyses? I'm not sure the article really needs parts like, "Aside from personality and appearance, Lawrence really isn't much of a catch." OK Chickadee (talk) 22:27, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
-- OK Chickadee, that was the exact sentence I was going to point out! (Plus I really think a careful reader would have mixed
feelings about Lawrence, not just disdain for him.) And I agree with all that the article is far too long and too
much like a book report. Plus there's nothing on Wharton, where the novel fits into her career, etc, and barely anything about
what critics have said about it. Hopefully one of us will find the time to fix this thing up soon.
--Robynebyrde (talk) 05:04, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
I have added detail to the plot so that it will not seem like a book report which it still does. Are there any objections to the changes in the character descriptions I have made so far?
I have integrated what critics have said about different aspects of the novel through citations and a series of notes that also bear citations. Boccherini1942 (talk) 08:16, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
This is one of my favorite Wharton novels, and I'm glad to see it getting more attention on Wikipedia. Would providing a more detailed synopsis of each chapter or each of the two books in the novel be appropriate or allowed? For example:
Ch. 1. The novel begins on a hot Monday afternoon in early September, 1900, in New York City. Grand Central Station is crowded with travelers and commuters. Lawrence Selden spots his friend Lily Bart in the crowd and wonders why someone in her position is not still vacationing in the country. Other travellers linger to look at the radiant Lily. The two have known each other for 11 years, and Lily is now 29. Lily is in transit from Tuxedo to visit the Trenors at their estate in Bellomont.
The two friends stroll out of the station and head northward on Madison Avenue. As they are in Selden's neighborhood, he invites her up to his apartment at The Benedick. It is somewhat risky for Lily to be seen entering a man's apartment, but she characteristically gives the indiscretion no thought for the moment. There, over tea and cake, Lily longs for the freedom men have compared to the constraints suffered by marriageable women like herself. Since her parents' death, Lily lives in the city with her wealthy paternal aunt, Mrs. Peniston, and her unmarried cousin, Grace Stepney. In this conversation, Lily is preoccupied with her marriage prospects, and in a somewhat flirtatious way states that Selden would not be interested in marrying her, and that is the reason why he does not visit her at her aunt's. He replies that perhaps it is because she does not want to marry him that he doesn't feel induced to visit. Lily replies that she already has enough suitors, and what she wants is a friend in Selden. She continues that people are saying that she ought to marry. Selden replies, "Isn't marriage your vocation? Isn't it what you're all brought up for?" Lily runs through her recent marriage prospect: a man named Dillworth, who was discouraged from pursuing Lily by his mother and moved to India.
While she smokes in Selden's apartment, Lily peruses his library and asks pointed questions about Americana, rare books on America such as one of her suitors collects. Selden knows she is seeking information about Percy Gryce, a wealthy single man who stood to inherit the well-known Gryce collection of Americana. After further discussing the requirement for women like Lily to marry, she leaves him for her train to the Trenor's.
On the way downstairs, she finds a charwoman scrubbing the staircase. The woman (Mrs. Haffen, who appears again in Bk. 1, Ch. 9), notices her and assumes she is the woman having an affair with Selden. Lily brushes past her, and as she reaches the sidewalk encounters an acquaintance, Mr. Simon Rosedale, who asks what she was doing visiting The Benedick. She tells him she was visiting her dressmaker. He informs her that he owns the building and didn't know there were any dressmakers renting from him. She refuses his offer to accompany her to the station and quickly hails a hansom to take her to the train.
Is this too much detail? Would it be better to break it into two parts to match the novel?
Thanks
Boccherini1942 (talk) 08:20, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
The 'Plot' section of the article has a lot of character description (Lily Bart, Lawrence Selden, and Simon Rosedale). Moreover the description contain events occurring near the end of the book, which disrupts the flow of the section.
I suggest merging the information with the 'Other characters' section, and streamlining those paragraphs. With the addition of Lily to the 'Other characters' section it could simply become the 'Characters' section. I'll implement this if there aren't any objections. Objections? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sklifnir (talk • contribs) 21:24, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
1. Yes, too much language in the Plot. Will transfer completion of Plot to Sandbox. Detail so far compensates for multiple factual errors in what appeared when I started. In what is left unedited in the Plot there remain errors in what the novel "says" and that causes misinterpretation.
First step: get the facts straight through a close reading Second step: abstract the essential flow of events. Third step: synthesize a very complex plot with "expert" differences in "how to read" the novel.
2. I have read the Wikipedia article on what constitutes OR and still not sure of what constitutes OR in my edits.
For example, my edit in the Title Section:
(a)"At the time the novel takes place, Old New York high society was peopled by the extraordinarily wealthy who were conditioned by the economic and social changes the Gilded Age (1870–1900) wrought."
Comment: This is not my interpretation and is mentioned by three sources so I did not think it needed a reference and I didn't consider it OR.
(b)"Mrs. Wharton's birth around the time of the Civil War predates that period by a little less than a decade."
Comment: It is a well known fact that Mrs. Wharton was born in 1862 and should need no reference. It should not be considered OR.
(c)"As a member of the privileged Old New York society,[e] she was eminently qualified to describe it authentically."
I have provided a footnote [e] with an explanation and reference to Carol J. Singley, one of the preeminent authorities on Edith Wharton's work in general, and The House of Mirth in particular. So I did not consider this sentence to be OR. Singley does comment in her introduction to her edited book, Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth: A Case Book, on Wharton's authenticity to write about N.Y. high society at that time.
Would appreciate your judgment, as a guide, on these examples.
3. Sources: Thank you for your offer to help on the sources. I have added substantially to the list of sources and know who the recognized scholars are. What I am not sure of are decisions on the categorization of critical essays that "read" the novel with varying theoretical perspectives. I consider those to be secondary sources. (?) Will go to WP:Teahouse.
4.Re: complex writing style- Contributions so far need to be copy edited to eliminate wordiness. Is that what you mean by "complex writing style"?
Or, should the level of discourse be changed? Example: Newspaper articles are pitched about at the fourth-grade level. My contributions are probably (unnecessary words notwithstanding) at the first-year college level. At what level should the level of discourse be pitched?
And/or is the vocabulary too "sophisticated" e.g., use of french terms (linked to definition) used in the source literature?
Thanks for the examples of articles to read. Boccherini1942 (talk) 19:10, 1 June 2016 (UTC)