Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth: Why did Lily Bart have no emotional connection with the first man in her life, her father? What was the trauma?

This novel is the story of Lily Bart’s self-sabotaged attempts to make a connection with some man and get married. As discussed in the last post, she was sabotaged by her alternate personalities: she had multiple personality. And that suggests a traumatic childhood, but the reader is not told what had happened.

“It was a relief to Lily when her father died” (Book I, Chapter III). Why? Superficially, it was because he had declared financial ruin and the family was in turmoil. But the reader is given to understand that Lily had never had a good emotional connection with her father. Why was that?

We are told that “Lily seldom saw her father by daylight. All day he was ‘down town’; and in winter it was long after nightfall when she heard his fagged step on the stairs and his hand on the school-room door. He would kiss her in silence, and ask one or two questions of the nurse or governess…In summer, when he joined them for a Sunday at Newport or Southampton, he was even more effaced and silent than in winter…Generally, however, Mrs. Bart and Lily went to Europe for the summer, and…for the most part he was never mentioned or thought of…”

Now, when her father opened the school-room door, why didn’t Lily’s behavior show that she was glad to see him? Why didn’t she throw her arms around his neck and kiss him? And why did her mother take Lily away from her father at every opportunity, where they would never mention or think of him?

Had Lily been abused by her father? Had Lily’s mother been abused in her own childhood, and was she raising Lily accordingly? Had Lily’s father been traumatized in his childhood, making him incapable of emotional attachments? Had Lily been abused or traumatized by someone or something other than her parents? All the reader can infer from Lily’s multiple personality is that something traumatic had happened.

Judging from Edith Wharton’s creative process, quoted in my April 25, 2015 post, she may not have realized that Lily had multiple personality, and may not have known what the trauma was, either.