The House Of Mirth

After watching a movie with your children or students, we encourage parents and teachers to look for education opportunities to teach with movies. Here are a few discussion topics that can help with lesson plans or teaching in the home.

From the opening conversation of this film between Lily and Lawrence, it becomes obvious that the necessity of employment is a great social stigma. Why do you think they felt this way? What did they do with their time instead of working?

In society today, having enough money to retire from labour is still seen as the ultimate goal. Do you think that working is a negative thing? What would you occupy your time with if you didn’t have to hold down a job?

As Lily’s marriage prospects diminish, she has difficulty adjusting to life in the working class. Why were most of Lily’s friends unable to understand the desperation of her situation?

Having few marketable skills, she later tells Lawrence that she is a useless person. Was that true? What other kinds of employment might she have tried to explore? How did Lily’s perceived uselessness effect her vision of her future life? How do you feel about her solution to her problems?