Q: Who killed Lily Bart?

A: Lily Bart.

Of course, that's never really been in doubt. But a new letter by Edith Wharton has reopened a controversy about whether her drug overdose at the end of The House of Mirth was an accident or deliberate.

I'll admit it's been a while since I read The House of Mirth, but I think it was always my feeling that Lily took her own life. There is her despair, and her careful ordering of all her belongings, the settling of all accounts. On the other hand, the language of the book is ambiguous, perhaps even slanting toward the accidental. The relevant passage is:

She had long since raised the dose to its highest limit, but tonight she felt she must increase it. She knew she took a slight risk in doing so -- she remembered the chemist's warning. If sleep came at all, it might be a sleep without waking. But after all that was but one chance in a hundred: the action of the drug was incalculable, and the addition of a few drops to the regular dose would probably do no more than procure for her the rest she so desperately needed....

Now comes the evidence of a letter in Wharton's own hand, which seems to lean toward the deliberate. Of course, you can always argue the author changed her mind when the time came to kill Lily. As Wharton wrote to a physician acquaintance, "A friend of mine has made up her mind to commit suicide & has asked me to find out ... the most painless & least unpleasant method of effacing herself." She then reveals that she is actually asking on behalf of her protagonist:

I have heroine to get rid of, and want some points on the best way of disposing of her. ... What soporific, or nerve-calming drug, would a nervous and worried young lady in the smart set be likely to take to, & what would be its effects if deliberately taken with the intent to kill herself? I mean, how would she feel and look toward the end?

The letter seems to point pretty clearly toward suicide. However, as illuminating as this might be for an ambivalent passage, I do believe that the passage, and the book as a whole, can support both interpretations. And I have little patience with authors who go about making claims for their fictional characters outside the text. Once an author relinquishes control over a story, it becomes the property of its readers.