SAT Reading & Writing Practice Set - The House of Mirth (Adapted)
Lily Bart had been trained, almost from childhood, to move through New York drawing rooms as if they
were the only stage on which life could properly be lived. At nearly twenty-nine, she still possessed the
beauty and social skill that had once made people predict a brilliant marriage for her, but the promised
triumph had somehow failed to materialize. Her parents’ fortunes had dwindled and then vanished; her
mother had died clinging to the conviction that Lily must, at all costs, secure a rich husband, and Lily
had learned to treat that ambition as a duty as well as a desire. Yet in Lawrence Selden’s bachelor
rooms, reached by a side street and watched over only by a charwoman who disapproved in silence,
Lily sometimes breathed as if for the first time. Selden’s talk of a “republic of the spirit,” in which people
might live by their own standards instead of by the social ledger of invitations and obligations, stirred in
her a response that was half hunger and half resentment. She liked to imagine that she might enter such
a republic one day, but she also knew that unpaid bills and fading dresses had their own laws, and that
her beauty—her one unquestioned asset—grew more costly to maintain the longer she delayed turning
it into security. (Wharton, 1905)
It was this double awareness that made her accept Gus Trenor’s offers of “help” with her investments
without looking too closely at the nature of the bargain. Trenor, the husband of her rich friend Judy,
assured Lily that he could make her small capital “work” for her, and for a time the cheques he handed
her seemed like the effortless winnings that the world owed to charm properly displayed. When he later
revealed, in an ugly scene at his empty country house, that he expected payment not in gratitude but in
something nearer to possession, Lily’s repulsion was mixed with a cold recognition of how thoroughly
she had been compromised. The money he had advanced her was not the fruit of investments at all but
of his own pocket, and gossip already murmured about the hours she had spent under his roof. Lily
escaped that particular trap without yielding to Trenor’s demands, yet the episode left her with debts
she felt honour-bound to repay and a reputation newly vulnerable to every whisper. In that state she
accepted Bertha and George Dorset’s invitation to join their Mediterranean cruise, hoping that distance
and sea air might somehow wash her account clean. (Wharton, 1905)
The voyage instead supplied the scandal that finished her in the eyes of the people whose good opinion
she had most relied on. Bertha Dorset, herself embarked on an affair with the young Ned Silverton,
needed a distraction for her husband’s suspicious eye and found it in Lily, whose presence at George’s
side could be made to look like a flirtation. When George confronted Bertha in a stormy scene, she
turned on Lily, hinting that Miss Bart’s intimacy with both Trenor and Dorset exceeded the bounds of
innocence, and insisting that Lily leave the yacht at once. The same set that had once coveted Lily for
their dinner tables now chose to believe Bertha’s version, partly because it spared them the discomfort
of questioning the morals of a married woman of their own rank. Back in New York, invitations fell away;
Lily, who had always moved on the bright edge of other people’s hospitality, found herself lodging in
small hotels and taking what work she could find, first as a sort of social secretary and then as a
milliner’s assistant. In a dingy boarding-house room, the consciousness of how thin the partition was
between splendour and dinginess pressed on her as heavily as the accounts she still owed. (Wharton,
1905)
All the while, she carried in a locked box a packet of letters that offered what almost everyone around
her would have called a way back. Years earlier, a charwoman who cleaned Selden’s rooms had sold
Lily some torn love-letters written to him by Bertha Dorset; they proved that Bertha’s affair with Selden
had begun long before the Mediterranean episode in which Bertha had sacrificed Lily to save herself.
, Sim Rosedale, a wealthy outsider eager to secure social position by marrying Lily, made it plain that if
she would use the letters to force Bertha to restore her to favour, he would take the risk of making her
his wife. On an evening when her prospects seemed narrowest and the ten-thousand-dollar legacy from
her aunt had just given her the means to repay Trenor at last, Lily walked to Selden’s flat with the letters
in her pocket. She thanked him for having believed in her “better self” even when he turned away, and
while his back was turned she fed the papers, one by one, to the fire, watching the ash fold in on the
secrets that might have rescued her. Later, alone in her bleak room, she took an extra dose of the chloral
that had become her only reliable escape from sleeplessness and calculation. By morning she lay very
still, her debts balanced, the letters destroyed, and her chance of any worldly recovery extinguished;
what remained, in Selden’s recollection, was the image of a woman who had at last acted according to
the “republic” she had once only half believed in, though the cost of that allegiance had been her life.
(Wharton, 1905)
(Adapted from the novel The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton)
QUESTIONS 1–8: MAIN IDEA, BIG PICTURE
1. The passage as a whole primarily emphasizes
A. how Lily’s talent for investment makes her financially independent.
B. how Lily’s attempts to survive in New York high society lead her into moral compromises and
social ruin, and how her final refusal to save herself through blackmail marks a costly assertion
of principle.
C. how Bertha Dorset and Gus Trenor reform their behavior.
D. how Lawrence Selden abandons New York for Europe.
2. Across the four paragraphs, Lily is portrayed chiefly as
A. a purely calculating opportunist who always chooses profit over conscience.
B. a woman caught between her training to marry money and a latent desire for moral and
emotional freedom, who too late acts on that desire at her own expense.
C. an heiress indifferent to social opinion.
D. a passive figure with no desire to shape her fate.
3. The first paragraph’s account of Lily’s visits to Selden’s rooms mainly serves to
A. show that she wishes to become a lawyer.
B. contrast the crowded, rule-bound world of drawing rooms with the alternative Selden
imagines, and to suggest Lily’s partial attraction to that alternative despite her dependence on
wealth and status.
C. prove that Lily has no interest in marriage.
D. indicate that Selden disapproves of Lily’s social ambitions.
4. Taken together, the second and third paragraphs primarily highlight
A. the ease with which Lily moves between rich households.
B. how Lily’s reliance on the patronage of wealthier friends leaves her vulnerable to both
Trenor’s financial “help” and Bertha Dorset’s willingness to sacrifice her reputation.
C. that Lily is secretly engaged to Ned Silverton.
D. that Lily’s aunt quickly pays off all her debts.
Lily Bart had been trained, almost from childhood, to move through New York drawing rooms as if they
were the only stage on which life could properly be lived. At nearly twenty-nine, she still possessed the
beauty and social skill that had once made people predict a brilliant marriage for her, but the promised
triumph had somehow failed to materialize. Her parents’ fortunes had dwindled and then vanished; her
mother had died clinging to the conviction that Lily must, at all costs, secure a rich husband, and Lily
had learned to treat that ambition as a duty as well as a desire. Yet in Lawrence Selden’s bachelor
rooms, reached by a side street and watched over only by a charwoman who disapproved in silence,
Lily sometimes breathed as if for the first time. Selden’s talk of a “republic of the spirit,” in which people
might live by their own standards instead of by the social ledger of invitations and obligations, stirred in
her a response that was half hunger and half resentment. She liked to imagine that she might enter such
a republic one day, but she also knew that unpaid bills and fading dresses had their own laws, and that
her beauty—her one unquestioned asset—grew more costly to maintain the longer she delayed turning
it into security. (Wharton, 1905)
It was this double awareness that made her accept Gus Trenor’s offers of “help” with her investments
without looking too closely at the nature of the bargain. Trenor, the husband of her rich friend Judy,
assured Lily that he could make her small capital “work” for her, and for a time the cheques he handed
her seemed like the effortless winnings that the world owed to charm properly displayed. When he later
revealed, in an ugly scene at his empty country house, that he expected payment not in gratitude but in
something nearer to possession, Lily’s repulsion was mixed with a cold recognition of how thoroughly
she had been compromised. The money he had advanced her was not the fruit of investments at all but
of his own pocket, and gossip already murmured about the hours she had spent under his roof. Lily
escaped that particular trap without yielding to Trenor’s demands, yet the episode left her with debts
she felt honour-bound to repay and a reputation newly vulnerable to every whisper. In that state she
accepted Bertha and George Dorset’s invitation to join their Mediterranean cruise, hoping that distance
and sea air might somehow wash her account clean. (Wharton, 1905)
The voyage instead supplied the scandal that finished her in the eyes of the people whose good opinion
she had most relied on. Bertha Dorset, herself embarked on an affair with the young Ned Silverton,
needed a distraction for her husband’s suspicious eye and found it in Lily, whose presence at George’s
side could be made to look like a flirtation. When George confronted Bertha in a stormy scene, she
turned on Lily, hinting that Miss Bart’s intimacy with both Trenor and Dorset exceeded the bounds of
innocence, and insisting that Lily leave the yacht at once. The same set that had once coveted Lily for
their dinner tables now chose to believe Bertha’s version, partly because it spared them the discomfort
of questioning the morals of a married woman of their own rank. Back in New York, invitations fell away;
Lily, who had always moved on the bright edge of other people’s hospitality, found herself lodging in
small hotels and taking what work she could find, first as a sort of social secretary and then as a
milliner’s assistant. In a dingy boarding-house room, the consciousness of how thin the partition was
between splendour and dinginess pressed on her as heavily as the accounts she still owed. (Wharton,
1905)
All the while, she carried in a locked box a packet of letters that offered what almost everyone around
her would have called a way back. Years earlier, a charwoman who cleaned Selden’s rooms had sold
Lily some torn love-letters written to him by Bertha Dorset; they proved that Bertha’s affair with Selden
had begun long before the Mediterranean episode in which Bertha had sacrificed Lily to save herself.
, Sim Rosedale, a wealthy outsider eager to secure social position by marrying Lily, made it plain that if
she would use the letters to force Bertha to restore her to favour, he would take the risk of making her
his wife. On an evening when her prospects seemed narrowest and the ten-thousand-dollar legacy from
her aunt had just given her the means to repay Trenor at last, Lily walked to Selden’s flat with the letters
in her pocket. She thanked him for having believed in her “better self” even when he turned away, and
while his back was turned she fed the papers, one by one, to the fire, watching the ash fold in on the
secrets that might have rescued her. Later, alone in her bleak room, she took an extra dose of the chloral
that had become her only reliable escape from sleeplessness and calculation. By morning she lay very
still, her debts balanced, the letters destroyed, and her chance of any worldly recovery extinguished;
what remained, in Selden’s recollection, was the image of a woman who had at last acted according to
the “republic” she had once only half believed in, though the cost of that allegiance had been her life.
(Wharton, 1905)
(Adapted from the novel The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton)
QUESTIONS 1–8: MAIN IDEA, BIG PICTURE
1. The passage as a whole primarily emphasizes
A. how Lily’s talent for investment makes her financially independent.
B. how Lily’s attempts to survive in New York high society lead her into moral compromises and
social ruin, and how her final refusal to save herself through blackmail marks a costly assertion
of principle.
C. how Bertha Dorset and Gus Trenor reform their behavior.
D. how Lawrence Selden abandons New York for Europe.
2. Across the four paragraphs, Lily is portrayed chiefly as
A. a purely calculating opportunist who always chooses profit over conscience.
B. a woman caught between her training to marry money and a latent desire for moral and
emotional freedom, who too late acts on that desire at her own expense.
C. an heiress indifferent to social opinion.
D. a passive figure with no desire to shape her fate.
3. The first paragraph’s account of Lily’s visits to Selden’s rooms mainly serves to
A. show that she wishes to become a lawyer.
B. contrast the crowded, rule-bound world of drawing rooms with the alternative Selden
imagines, and to suggest Lily’s partial attraction to that alternative despite her dependence on
wealth and status.
C. prove that Lily has no interest in marriage.
D. indicate that Selden disapproves of Lily’s social ambitions.
4. Taken together, the second and third paragraphs primarily highlight
A. the ease with which Lily moves between rich households.
B. how Lily’s reliance on the patronage of wealthier friends leaves her vulnerable to both
Trenor’s financial “help” and Bertha Dorset’s willingness to sacrifice her reputation.
C. that Lily is secretly engaged to Ned Silverton.
D. that Lily’s aunt quickly pays off all her debts.
