Like many a tragic hero (or indeed post-classical ones - The Mayor of Casterbridge and Billy Budd are two who have just come to mind...) Lily Bart is a fine creature, but with that 'fatal flaw' that you can see from the outset is going to be her undoing. I like very much a passage near the beginning, where Selden mentally compares Lily to a fine bit of porcelain: 'he had a confused sense that she must have cost a great deal to make, that a great many dull and ugly people must in some way have been sacrificed to produce her. He was aware that qualities distinguishing her from the herd of her sex were chiefly external: as though a fine glaze of beauty and fastidiousness had been applied to common clay. Yet the analogy left him unsatisfied, for a coarse texture will not take a high finish; and was it not possible that the material was fine, but that circumstance had fashioned it into a futile shape?'

Of course, the narrative drive depends on Selden being a bit of a drip, as well as Lily being a flawed vessel . Their final encounters n his study, and on her deathbed, still had me sniffing into my handkerchief every time I read them though!