Love and Friendship Theme Analysis

In twentieth-century New York’s high society, Lily Bart belongs to a social world in which friendships are constantly limited by self-interest. In the same way that people use her for social advancement, Lily uses her so-called “friends” to enhance her own prestige and financial resources. However, as Lily becomes better acquainted with people such as Gerty Farish and Lawrence Selden, who do not belong to the same circle as her, she realizes that the friendships she has experienced in the upper crust are superficial and dissatisfying. By contrast, the affection Lily receives from Gerty and Lawrence has not only brought her unconditional support, but has also contributed to shaping her character, inspiring her to become a better, more honest person. Over time, Lily concludes that, as high society corrupts relationships, the only way to build sincere, intimate relationships is to escape hierarchies of power. This also involves making herself vulnerable—not only to receiving the support and care she needs in her most desperate moments, but also to becoming the honest person she has always known she could be.

In the competitive, potentially vicious world of high society, friendship is limited to ties of power and money, as people use each other to achieve greater social prestige. Lily, who is committed to remaining part of this social sphere, thus seems bound to live a life deprived of sincere affection. Following the example of her peers, Lily organizes her friends according to a “utilitarian classification” based on who is more or less likely to support her in the advent of trouble. However, the difficulty of taking into account other people’s own thirst for power makes such relationships fraught with instability and danger. For example, when Lily asks Gus Trenor to invest her money on the stock market for her, she manipulates him by making him think that they share a special friendship. In turn, though, Gus believes that helping Lily financially will allow him to ask for sexual favors from her—an assumption that later puts Lily in a dangerous position, as she has to preserve her reputation and her honor against Gus’s advances. The two characters’ beliefs that they can use each other for their own self-interest reveals that such friendships are nothing more than a form of transaction, aimed at asserting power.

Lily’s descent into poverty forces her to re-examine her life and her relationships, as she realizes that true friendship can only exist outside of relations of power. After Bertha Dorset spreads slanderous lies about Lily, the divorcée Carry Fisher is the only person who initially shows Lily affection. Over the course of months, she helps Lily befriend the wealthy Sam and Mattie Gormer, and finds her a job with Mrs. Hatch, a rich woman in need of a social secretary, and, later, with Mme. Regina, a hat-maker. However, when Mrs. Hatch is involved in a scandal, Carry fears becoming connected to that scandal and cuts ties with Lily, indicating that her own reputation is more important than her devotion to her friend.

It is only once Lily becomes better acquainted with Gerty Farish, who is not part of high society, that she discovers what true friendship involves. Gerty, who has no reputation to defend, places little value on Lily’s social or financial status. In delicate social and financial situations, Lily realizes that the only person she can turn to is Gerty, since her high-society friends would not be willing to help her without receiving anything in return.

As Lily’s increasing financial troubles force her to give up on her previous friendships, she realizes that true friendship and love not only helps people in life, but also serves to define who one is or can become. Through love, Lily finally gets in touch with her true self.

The only people who have always trusted in Lily’s goodness are Gerty Farish and Lawrence Selden. These two characters believe that beneath all of Lily’s social artifice lies “the real Lily,” who is capable of noble sentiments and of honoring values greater than materialism. However, for most of the novel, it remains ambiguous whether or not this “real Lily” actually exists, since Lily herself often ignores her true feelings in her quest for money and power. By the end of the novel, though, she admits to Lawrence, who has always loved her and with whom she too is in love, that she has kept “the Lily Bart you knew” with her throughout her life, adding that the knowledge of Lawrence’s love “has always helped me.” Lily thus admits that Lawrence’s affection has not only given her comfort in difficult times, but has also impacted her character, reminding her that she could be more than a self-interested member of high society.

Lily’s views about the impact of love on one’s sense of self coalesce when she meets Nettie Struther, a woman who Lily once helped through Gerty’s charity. Seeing the way Nettie has fought against poverty with the support of her husband, Lily becomes convinced that “it had taken two to build the nest; the man’s faith as well as the woman’s courage. […] Her husband’s faith in her had made her renewal possible.” Applying this thought to herself, Lily becomes aware that she, too, could hope to thrive through Lawrence’s love. Lily concludes that true love elevates human beings, magnifying their goodness and allowing them to connect with each other in a way that makes both sides stronger.

Therefore, it is only once Lily escapes the suffocating world of high society that she understands that her worth as a human being is based as much on her own actions as on the quality of her relationships with other people. Lily becomes convinced that love can reveal to vulnerable human beings what their true potential is—and perhaps, over time, help them realize it. Against an ideology of individuality, the novel thus shows that people’s capacity to connect with each other on an intimate level reveals their deepest, noblest humanity.