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IN OCTOBER 1906, a dramatization of Edith Wharton’s novel The House of Mirth opened in New York at the Savoy Theater. It was not a success, even though the novel had been very well-received the year before. The ending of The House of Mirth is melancholy: the beautiful heroine dies alone in a dreary New York boarding house, either by suicide or an accidental overdose of chloral, after a painful decline in her social and financial position and her marriage prospects. Like Fanny Price or Elizabeth Bennet, she has refused to marry a man she cannot love; unlike Elinor Dashwood, who marries Edward Ferrars on a small clerical income, Wharton’s heroine does not think she could ever be comfortable married to the man she does love, because he does not have enough money to support the life of luxury she craves. Edith Wharton later reflected on the judgment of her friend William Dean Howells, who, she said, commented to her after the performance that “[w] hat the American public always wants is a tragedy with a happy ending” (Lewis 172).
Sixteen years later, Wharton published a novel called The Glimpses of the Moon, which bears many similarities to The House of Mirth, except that the hero and heroine do marry, determined to live happily ever after even without money. In The House of Mirth, Lily Bart is unable to speak the right word to Lawrence Selden to make everything right between them (363); in The Glimpses of the Moon, Nick and Susy Lansing eventually find the right word—for them, it is “togetherness” (285). This later novel, which continues to suffer from a low critical estimation, was made into a film in 1923, with dialogue by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The novel and the film version of The Glimpses of the Moon were both commercially successful, and this time around, the film also received “glowing reviews” (Lewis 444). Clearly, adding a happy ending and a happy marriage to a dark and disturbing tale of financial pressures, ethical dilemmas, and class tensions is more likely to please the public.
William Dean Howells was not the first, of course, to remark on a preference for happy endings, nor is this preference limited to American audiences....