“The heart of the wise is in the house of weeping, and the heart of the foolish is in the house of fun,” warned the biblical Ecclesiastes. So for the young beauty Lily Bart, New York at the turn of the century symbolizes not only the Golden Age, but the golden cage. Only a profitable marriage will help her regain the high position lost by the Bart family as a result of her father's bankruptcy - but over and over again Lily misses a profitable chance, consumed either by the demon of self-destruction, or by the expectation of great love. And not without reason she was compared with another victim of high society - Anna Karenina.
