payment page
Thither I soon went; the uncalculating vanity of my parents furnished me with an outfit, and annual establishment, which would enable me to indulge at will in the luxury already so dear to my heart—to vie in profuseness of expenditure with the haughtiest heirs of the wealthiest earldoms in Great Britain.
Here the narrator describes the lavish wealth his parents bestow upon him to set him up at Oxford. The narrator’s seemingly boundless financial resources place him in the same society of actual nobility. The narrator’s love of decadence and indulgence, which his parents encourage with their wealth, encourages him to pursue debauchery and cruelty. Additionally, his ability to buy his way into polite society means that people treat him in accordance with how they perceive him to be rather than how he actually behaves.
The cloak which I had worn was of a rare description of fur; how rare, how extravagantly costly, I shall not venture to say. Its fashion, too, was of my own fantastic invention; for I was fastidious, to a degree of absurd coxcombry, in matters of this frivolous nature.
After Wilson reveals the narrator’s scheme to cheat Glendinning, the party’s host retrieves what he believes is the narrator’s cloak, but which is in fact Wilson’s identical garment. The absurd luxury of this cloak mirrors how the narrator uses his wealth to project trustworthiness and excuse his bad behavior as youthful indiscretion. His ability to purchase custom garments makes him more outwardly impressive, allowing him to continue his pretense of being a singularly exceptional person.
