13. Analogies and Such

The House of Mirth
Edith Wharton

"It was, however, only figuratively that the discrimination of Mrs. Hatch's world could be described as dim: in actual fact, Lily found herself seated in a blaze of electric light, impartially projected from various ornamental excrescences on a vast concavity of pink damask and gilding, from which she rose like Venus from her shell" (Wharton, 222).
Wharton does a stellar job of exuding pictures from the text of her plot. She describes Mrs. Hatch with such vivid color, sense and touch. Wharton perfectly combines an allusion and an analogy for Mrs. Hatch.
Later on Lily is listening into the gossip of the "working-girls' mind", "On and on it flowed, a current of meaningless sound, on which, startlingly enough, a familiar name now and them floated to the surface" (Wharton, 232). She compares the rush of the voices to the rush of a river, it flowed as a current, names floated to the surface.

Wharton also uses personification, metaphors, and similes to appeal to imagery. One particular simile, Seldon was faced with the temptation of reading a letter to Trenor, "Temptation leapt on him like the stab of a knife" (Wharton, 266).

Pieces like these are thrown across the pages of the novel, and the audience can be mystified by the analogies used to make apparent the content on the page so that we can imagine the scenario at it is.