Edith Wharton
This section of the novel was a little boring until the Tableau vivants, which I thought was really cool. I did not really understand what was going on at first [I hadn't looked up the term yet]. When Wharton initially described the idea, I thought that the women were actually going to dress up as the people in the paintings and put on a real live-painting show. So naturally, I thought of Gilmore Girls, one of my favorite T.V. shows. In episode 4.7, the town has a Festival of Living Pictures which has people dress up for the paintings and stand in the correct poses for like 30 seconds each. This looks really fun, as did Mrs. Fisher's in The House of Mirth. However, Mrs. Fisher's Tableau vivants is different from Stars Hollow's because it contains actual paintings of the women posing in the famous portraits. Modern Family also did something like this in episode 3.23 where Alex had her family take part in a famous Rockwell painting for her school. Again, not exactly like Mrs. Fisher's, but still pretty cool.
Although the Tableau vivants was really neat, my favorite part of this section was the very last bit of chapter 12 where Selden took Lily outside to the back patio with him and told her that he loved her. "'The only way I can help you is by loving you.'" Although she rejected him (again), they still kissed, possibly for the first time. It is obvious from the description of her feelings that she loves him too, but she still cannot ignore society's wishes of her, which is starting to get annoying.
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