The Age of Innocence

Ernie:  First let me say that this is not the type of novel that I usually read.  No one got shot and nothing exploded.  The Age of innocence is primarily a novel about people’s feelings.

The main theme is the struggle between one man’s duty and his desire.  Newland Archer is engaged to May Welland, an acceptable woman of his society.  As he is planning his perfect life, all of society is thrown off-balance with the sudden return of May’s cousin, Countess Olenska.  Fleeing an abusive marriage, she seeks shelter among family and “friends.”  Newland races to become her champion for all the right reasons but, of course, in the process, falls madly in love with the prodigal.

Does he have her return to her husband (as society wishes), stay and start a new life (as she wishes) or just chuck everything (he wishes) and run off with her to some foreign land?  As he struggles with his feelings and his obligations we learn the complicated code of living in 1870’s New York Society.  Everyone seems to care for the poor misfortunate girl but it’s awfully inconvenient for her to just return to her family like that.  “His mother, with less than her usual sensitiveness to atmosphere, still insisted: ‘I’ve always thought that people like the Countess Olenska, who have lived in aristocratic societies, ought to help us to keep up our social distinctions, instead of ignoring them.’”

Our protagonist is attempting to escape his life as much as he is embracing it.  Let me also say that he is an idiot.  “He did not mind being flippant about New York, but disliked to hear any one else take the same tone.”  There are many lessons to learn from his experiences and most are lost on him.  But that’s why there’s a story.

The supporting characters are well-defined and each add their own unique dimension to the story.  May especially is fascinating as the woman who seemingly just goes along with life without a care but shows more backbone than many of the men in her life.  I found myself drawn into their lives and actually wondered what would happen from chapter to chapter.  There were many surprises along the way and their stories did not feel predictable.

In 1862, Edith Wharton was born into New York society and so The Age of Innocence is written with an insider’s point of view.  It reads like part satire and part documentary and focuses not so much on class struggle as struggle within the upper class.

The Age of Innocence was awarded the 1920 Pulitzer Prize for Literature and was a popular book with critics and the public.  Despite this, Edith Wharton’s own society frowned on her writing.  She gives a nod to this attitude writing, “… and that, mortifyingly and incomprehensibly, was in the dim depths where the Blenkers prevailed, and ‘people who wrote’ celebrated their untidy rites.” 

I recommend you read this book. 

 Sandra:  I have read a couple of books by Edith Wharton (Ethan Frome and The House of Mirth) and I liked both of them.  The Age of Innocence made both lists we used to compile our reading list (58 on Modern Library and 42 on Radcliffe’s Rival list) and would seem to be the greatest of her books according to the critics.  While it was good, I liked the other two books better.   I believe this may be due to the fact that Innocence is told from a mostly male perspective. And he is a doozy of a male. 

 The story is set in the late 1800’s and is all about New York society.  If you’re female and sometimes are troubled by the role of women in society today you might want to pick this book up and get all nostalgic for the way things used to be.  If only we had all been born 100+ years earlier, how thrilling that would have been!  Hopefully you would have been born into the right family with the right connections and your family would find a nice suitable family for you to marry into.  Then you could spend your days buying clothes and planning dinner parties and making sure you didn’t associate with any common people.  Also, all your opinions and thoughts would be preordained for you by your husband so you wouldn’t have to trouble yourself with actually having to think or feel for yourself.  Doesn’t that sound swell? 

I think I digress.  The main protoganist of the story is Newland Archer who is newly engaged as the novel starts.  He is all excited at the prospect of the “manly privilege” he will have in molding his fiancee's pure mind.  Also,  “Nothing about his betrothed pleased him more than her resolute determination to carry to its utmost limit that ritual of ignoring the ‘unpleasant’ in which they had both been brought up.”   I can just feel the passion! 

If this doesn’t give you goose bumps, within mere moments another woman captivates him in another way.  She actually has a mind of her own apparently and this is wild stuff for him.  Turns out he might prefer someone he can actually connect with on an equal level.  But her being married and voluntarily separated from her husband her life is basically over.  Right.  And Archer being a stand-up dude must do what society dictates which is to marry the girl he is engaged to and have a swell life.  Not that he doesn’t struggle with doing his duty.  Pretty early in the book he makes this tremendous statement  “’Women ought to be free—as free as we are,’ he declared, making a discovery of which he was too irritated to measure the terrific consequences…” but then can’t really figure out a way  to reconcile this thought to the way he and the people around him must live their lives.  It is pretty sad that these people go about doing things they don’t want to do, with people they don’t want to do them with, in places they don’t want to be and not doing the things they would like to do and certainly not even talking about what those things might be.  Sounds fabulous!  It is a good read and much of it seems accurate and rings very true.  Mores the pity.