The House of Mirth / Edith Wharton / Ch.1

The start of the book with the first page it becomes confusing who is talking.  I had to reread the first two pages twice to figure it out. This confusion I figured out came from the fact that the narrator is speaking from a third person omniscient point of view. With this point of view confused me before I could get used to the characters in the start of the story. This confusion was do to the fact that the author imputed the thoughts and words of both the characters almost right from the start. These words were intermingled without clear distinction of which thoughts and words went to which character. 

Selden seams to be a Foil character to Miss Bart.  I got this impression from her asking him to be a true friend to her. He seams to talk freely with her but still opposed to her position.  He also seams to oppose her goals in life.  “Ah, I see you are a friend after all, and that is one of the disagreeable things I was asking for” (Wharton 6).  That sentence is the main one which makes me believe Selden is a foil character to Miss Bart.