Edith Wharton Heroine Literature's Earliest Drug OD Victim

Lily Bart, the main character of Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth, faced many human antagonists throughout the novel, but it was a chemical antagonist that killed her. The drug that caused her death, called Orangeine, claimed the lives of many real people in the first decade of the 20^th century.

The beautiful Miss Bart was among the most popular single women in New York's upper society at the outset of the novel. She lacked, however, the financial means to maintain the clothing and other expenses required by that lifestyle, especially since the deaths of her parents. Also, she had declined several opportunities for marriage and, at age 29, wondered if another proposal would ever be offered to her.

She tried several strategies to improve her financial situation, both of which prove disastrous for her. First she tried to profit by winning at bridge, only to grow deep in debt because of her addiction to the game. Then she appealed to the husband of her friend, whom she entrusted to raise money for her through the stock market. Instead, the husband paid her out of his own pocket, expecting sex in return.

The lack of money and increasing debt caused Lily Bart's slide to continue, until she was finally forced out of the set of upper society. She had to work for minimum wage at a millinery, but the hat-making tasks she was assigned proved very difficult for her. She began suffering from headaches resulting in insomnia. Seeing the physical evidence of Lily's suffering, a co-worker provided her with a prescription for Orangeine. Lily apprehensively entered a pharmacy to get the prescribed dosage, and thereon began her fatal addiction.

"Over the counter she caught the eye of the clerk, and slipped the prescription into his hand," Wharton wrote. "The mere touch of the packet thrilled her nerves with the delicious promise of a night of sleep" (pp. 308-9).

Lily, like many drug abusers, began to increase the dosage. Within weeks she lost her job due to the effects of the Orangeine. "Miss Bart's attendance had of late been so irregular '" she had so often been unwell, and had done so little work when she came" (p.319).

Jobless and friendless, Lily's sole relief from depression was the drug. Wharton provides a very real description of the sufferings of her heroine and any other drug addict: "The thought of the bottle of choral was the only spot of light in the dark prospect; she could feel its lulling influence stealing over her already."

Eventually the drug caused Lily to never awaken from her sleep. Again Wharton's stark but vivid description seems too real: "She raised herself in bed and swallowed the contents of the glass. She lay very still, waiting with a sensuous pleasure for the first effects of the soporific. She knew in advance what form they would take '" the gradual cessation of the inner throb, the soft approach of passiveness, as though an invisible hand made magic passes over her in the darkness" (p.346). The next morning a doctor attributed her death to an accidental overdose, showing little surprised about that cause of death.

Really, few doctors at the time of the novel's publication (1905) would have been surprised by the young woman's overdose. In 1902 Orangeine was the reported cause of death for 1.34 per thousand in New York City alone, according to The Great American Fraud by Samuel Hopkins Adams. This "headache" drug, as it was referred to during Wharton's time, contains mostly acetanilide, which "thins the blood, depresses the heart, and finally undermines the whole system."

Wharton would have had several cases to use for her research for her scene of the death of Lily Bart. Dr. J. L. Miller of Chicago described one such death in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1902. According to his report, Mrs, Frances Robson had taken a box of six Orangeine powders within eight hours for insomnia. He warned her against taking any more of it, but after being called to the house three days later he found her dead. The coroner reported the cause of death was from the effect of an overdose of Orangeine powders.

Another case at the time concerned an 18 year old Philadelphia girl, who had purchased a box of Orangeine powders to cure a headache. She took two powders, and she died three hours later.

Wharton's classic novel is a stirring account of the struggles of a financially-dependent single woman trying to maintain her popular status among upper class society in New York. The author sprinkles her tragedy with occasional humor, but any light tone justifiably disappears when she addresses the fatal drug addiction of her main character.

Sources:

The House of Mirth, International Collectors Library, Garden City, New York

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