Seriously?

    Wharton has Lily whine and complain about her desires for a worry-free life of luxury all throughout The House of Mirth.  Then, she literally grows so tired of her life that the thoughts of being so exhausted keep her up at night, and in the end, she overdoses (I choose to believe it wasn't a suicide, but she was being careless with her life) and dies.  My first reaction was: are you kidding me? All of that, for nothing.  But, was it really for nothing.  In dying, Lily got everything she needed.  Her debts were paid to Trenor.  She was on friendly terms with Mr. Rosedale.  She began to make a life for herself independent of everyone and everything else.  Selden finally open displays his love for Miss Bart.  Although she was technically dead at this point, he had no knowledge of her death until he had made the decision to go to her apartment that morning.  The most depressing point of this novel is even when all her wishes were granted (with the exception of Selden), she was still unhappy with life.  Was Selden's love the only thing that truly mattered to her? Or did trying to live the elite way of life exhaust her to death like it did her mother? Was she know at peace as her appearance through Selden's eyes suggested?  "They had never been at peace together, they two; and now he felt himself drawn downward into the strange mysterious depths of her tranquility" (Wharton, 265).