AGE OF INNOCENCE

by Edith Wharton

Paperback, 1993

Status

Available

Publication

Scribner (1993), Edition: Mti, 384 pages

Description

An elegant portrait of desire and betrayal in Old New York. In the highest circle of New York social life during the 1870's, Newland Archer, a young lawyer, prepares to marry the docile May Welland. Before their engagement is announced, he meets May's cousin, the mysterious, nonconformist Countess Ellen Olenska, who has returned to New York after a long absence. Archer's world is always changing.

Media reviews

A larger life and more tolerant views: That’s the greatest promise the novel holds out to us, and it’s as necessary now as it was when Edith Wharton put it into words.

User reviews

LibraryThing member Nickelini
I loved this book. It had the atmosphere of a Henry James novel mixed with the social critique of Jane Austen. It makes me want to run out and read Wharton's oeuvre (and I have a goodly number in my TBR, so that won't be a problem).

Life of New York's idle rich in the 1870s, written by one of their
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own after WWI, when she has put that society in perspective. Young Newland Archer is engaged to marry the perfectly perfect--but boring--May Welland, when her cousin Ellen returns in semi-disgrace from Europe. Newland finds himself smitten, and oh, what to do? None of the characters are particularly likeable--but they sure live in an interesting world. Old New York is a foreign world to me, and I loved this peek behind it's heavy mahogany doors and layers of velvet drapery.

Recommended for: The language and psychology isn't as tortuous as Henry James, and it's not quite as sharp as Jane Austen (and also not British), but if you like those authors, you'll like this too. It also reminded me a little of Anna Karenina, except much shorter. Age of Innocence won the Pulitzer in 1921, so I'm not the only one to love it.
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LibraryThing member lit_chick
Brilliantly written, The Age of Innocence captures at once the polished outward charm and the inner, well-oiled machinations of 1870s New York City society. Protagonist Newland Archer is a young, affluent lawyer living an elegant life within the familiar, rigid social strictures of his class. He is
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engaged to May, daughter of the prominent Wellands and granddaughter to powerful matriarch, Mrs. Manson Mingott. May is wide-eyed, adoring, naïve, and impeccably trained by tradition. When the beautiful Ellen Olenska, cousin to May and also granddaughter to Mrs. Manson Mingott, returns to New York, having left the brutish Polish Count she married some years earlier, society is affronted. Welland, however, finds himself attracted to the Countess’s forward-thinking free spirit; on this basis he befriends her, but eventually he falls in love with her. His association with Ellen leads him to question the traditions, moral codes, and “elaborate futility” of the “rich and idle and ornamental” society in which he lives. The deliberate and meticulous precision that has thus far defined his existence begins to grate irrevocably:

“The young man, as he followed his wife into the hall, was conscious of a certain reversal of mood. There was something about the luxury of the Welland house and the density of the Welland atmosphere, so charged with minute observances and exactions, that always stole into his system like a narcotic. The heavy carpets, the watchful servants, the perpetually reminding tick of disciplined clocks, the perpetually renewed stack of cards and invitations on the hall table, the whole chain of tyrannical trifles binding one hour to the next, and each member of the household to all the others, made any less systematized and affluent existence seem unreal and precarious. But now it was the Welland house, and the life he was expected to lead in it, that had become unreal and irrelevant, and the brief scene on the shore, when he had stood irresolute, halfway down the bank, was as close to him as the blood in his vein.” (Ch 21)

Wharton’s prose is exquisite; I can’t remember when I’ve read such a gorgeous book. The Age of Innocence has become a favourite. Highly recommended!
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LibraryThing member klarusu
This is a masterful work by Wharton, set in the upper echelons of New York society in the 1870s. It deals with the lives of Newland Archer, his young bride May and her cousin, the Countess Ellen Olenska, against a backdrop of the shallow and exclusive high society that constrained them at the time,
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surrounded by a wealth of characters who define the world they live in.

It is impossible to read this book with anything other than modern eyes. From a female perspective in the 21st century, Newland comes across throughout as weak and patronising with his desire to tenaciously cling to the ideal of a "woman's innoncence" and his position as the worldly man who can educate them. May, his young wife, appears both irritating and frustrating. She is manipulative via her innocent assumptions and unbending will on matters of social conformation. By rights, the reader's sympathy should lie with her, but instead one finds that it is Newland Archer for whom you are rooting, willing him to break free. To a modern reader, Countess Olenska is the character with whom sympathy lies. Her independent mind and spirit fights against constraint by the society that she has returned to as a refuge. It is not until Newland forces her to be aware of it, that she adapts her behaviour at all. Ironic that it should be the case when the rest of the story unfolds.

I loved this book when I read it a decade ago and on this re-read I was waiting to understand why I had remembered it as such a classic. As I reached the final third, I realised that this is where it shines. The subtext behind the actions of Newland, May and Ellen and the words unspoken carry such weight that it is suffused with tension and sensuality. Throughout there is the idea that to this society, women were almost sacrificial in the face of scandal. The ultimate irony is that despite Newland's consideration of himself as worldly, his need to educate May, in fact he is as innocent as she in his desire to "get away" with Ellen "into a world where ..... categories do not exist". It is Ellen that is realistic. The idea that May had "spent her poetry and romance on their short courting" whilst Newland remains blameless in his eyes and cannot see that he is as responsible and changed as she. The culmination of the farewell meal for Ellen when Archer finally loses his innocence, his moment of realisation of what has been thought of him by society, what has been observed and supposed, is as painful a description of disillusionment as any I have read. Throughout this book there are moments when you dislike May intensely as she seems controlling and manipulative (irrationally, as she is the victim and has done nothing wrong). However, there are moments, such as after the leaving party for Ellen, when she deserves, and Wharton moves us to give her, sympathy.

The book is finally resolved by a poignant and brilliant ending where Newland is shown for what he really is: a man as devoted to convention in his way as any other of his time, a man who cherishes his ideals more than the reality of life when it comes to the final reckoning.

A brilliant and restrained book, a real classic!
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LibraryThing member Limelite
In this novel of society and manners, Edith Wharton has sculpted a masterpiece of late 19th C. New York City mores so good that Jane Austen must step aside.

Ultimately, within the rich comforts of the smug Social Register set there is no indulgence for an independently operating female, especially a
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"foreign" one, even if she's family.

Newland Archer, engaged then married to the embodiment of NYC perfection in young women, May Wellend, is the starch stiff representative of the best young man NYC can produce until Ellen Olenska, his bride's cousin and herself a woman married but separated from her European husband, arrives.

What ensues is a sustained waltz of suppressed emotions within and between Newland and Ellen that are buried under the weight of their conventionality, in his case; moral compunctions, in hers; and the manipulative pressures of their kin and friends determined to maintain the glass smooth surface of appearances against their ambitions to upset the status quo. Everyone's efforts to protect others from the truth and probably harm, to preserve their individual and collective innocence, devolves ironically into an age of conspiracy.

Faithful in his body to his wife, Newland divorces himself from her emotionally and spends his "real" life sequestered among his books and memories inside his library. Faithful to her principles, Ellen eventually divorces herself from Newland's presence when she returns to Europe, unable to sustain an existence among those who initially embrace her then subtly push her out of the "tribe." "The Age of Innocence" is a novel about marriage and society that tells us they both are devoted to traditions bent on restricting individuality and killing love.

The action is entirely domestic, consisting of meetings in homes, at dinner parties, balls, operas, and stolen moments in carriages and aboard steamers. It is largely internal action that raises tension when the pair break small societal rules, yet are never quite able to sever the restraints that tie them to earlier commitments. The tension spirals upward only to collapse on itself as Newland is incapable of decision and Ellen is disinclined to make him choose.

Wharton's novel is atmospheric, period perfect, and damning in the most polite and socially acceptable way. Put it on your Must Read List.
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LibraryThing member snat
Part of why I love The Age of Innocence so much is for the very reason my students hate it--the subtlety of action in a society constrained by its own ridiculous rules and mores. In Old New York, conformity is key and the upper-crust go about a life of ritual that has no substance or meaning. Both
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men and women are victims in this world as both are denied economic, intellectual, or creative outlets. All the world's a stage in Wharton's New York and everyone wears a mask of society's creation. Such is the norm until Newland Archer.

Symbolically, Newland represents an America on the cusp of modernization, the awkward period of transition between the Victorian era and World War I. At first a devout member of New York aristocracy, Newland is awakened as one from a trance with the arrival of Countess Ellen Olenska. Ellen decides to separate from her abusive husband, Count Olenski, and is rumored to have escaped the Count by having an affair with his secretary--a scandalous circumstance that brings her back home to her native New York. Vibrant, intellectual, and free-spirited when compared with the dowdy and restrained women he's known, Ellen's predicament is a revelation to Newland. As he himself has just ended an affair with a married woman and seen the ease with which society forgave his indiscretion when contrasted with Ellen, Newland begins to acknowledge the inequality amongst the sexes. However, there's a serious roadblock to Newland ever being with the captivating Ellen: Ellen is the cousin of May Welland, Newland's fiancee.

Wharton writes with cutting wit about the hypocritical and ludicrous customs of blue blood society and cunningly plots events to work against Newland, the archer whose target is a "new land" in which he and Ellen can be together. The pity is that, ultimately, May proves to be the more cunning huntress who cleverly hunts and traps her quarry in the labyrinth of society.
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LibraryThing member PensiveCat
This story takes us into late 19th Century New York, where the upper class families are set in their ways and quite protective of them. Newland Archer is a young man among this group, all ready to marry, when the arrival of his fiancee's cousin throws his perspectives into disarray. Ellen Olenska
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thinks she is escaping from her past and her unhappy marriage into an understanding family and forward-thinking society, but she finds this is far from reality. The story centers on these two, though from the (changing) point of view of Archer.

Wharton's descriptions are well done; I had an easy time visualizing each situation, and I could even hear the conversations - even the stifled ones. Certain characterizations were really funny - Catherine Mingott cut a really legendary figure. Newland is almost an idealist, but comes out like a deflated balloon after a while. The story is romantic without really being passionate. I ended up enjoying the story as well as how it turned out, though not feeling at the edge of the seat as I'd thought I'd be by the end. I could see rereading this one, as it's fun to be taken into the glamorous yet constipated society that I could never be a part of.
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LibraryThing member jwhenderson
The Age of Innocence is the twelfth novel published by Edith Wharton, winning for her the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for Literature. The story is set in upper-class New York City in the 1870s. It centers on the impending marriage of an upper-class couple, Newland Archer and May Welland. And the
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introduction of a woman, Ellen Olenska, plagued by scandal whose presence threatens their happiness. Though the novel questions the assumptions and morals of 1870s' New York society, it never devolves into an outright condemnation of the institution. In fact, Wharton considered this novel an "apology" for her earlier, more brutal and critical novel, The House of Mirth. Wharton's attention to the mores of the upper class includes details based on her own experience. But her insights into the psychology of the characters, expecially Newland and Ellen were what I found most interesting. The regrets of an aging man for what might have been have seldom been limned as well as in Miss Wharton's story. The novel was lauded for its accurate portrayal of how the 19th-century East Coast American upper class lived, and this, combined with the social tragedy, earned Wharton a Pulitzer Prize — the first Pulitzer awarded to a woman. Edith Wharton was 58 years old at publication; she lived in that world, and saw it change dramatically by the end of World War I. The title may be read as an ironic comment on the polished outward manners of New York society, when compared to its inward machinations. This is the best of her novels in my estimation, although the bittersweet The House of Mirth is my personal favorite.
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LibraryThing member kambrogi
At first sight, this 1920 Pulitzer Prize winner appears to be a comedy of manners or a satire of New York’s upper crust circa 1870. Wrong. Then perhaps a sort of Jane Austen narrative – a thoughtful drama about people in a small social circle finding their way to true happiness with the mates
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best suited to them? Nope. The story is darker, simpler and more believable.

We first meet our protagonist, young Newland Archer, on the night of his betrothal, admiring his fiancée across a crowded opera house. He strikes us as a rather silly young man, so earnest is he in his effort to appear “correct” in the eyes of his peers, his betters and their betters, all equally silly in our eyes as they pose and prance and take one another’s upturned noses very seriously. But very soon the author abandons the attempt to poke fun at these people, and draws us into Newland’s fascination with his old childhood friend, the Countess Ellen Olenska, who has recently separated from her husband the Count. She is also at the opera that night, dressed inappropriately and steeped in scandal as a result of her failed marriage.

Ellen – raised abroad and married there -- is everything that the very American Newland, and his innocent young fiancée May, are not: strangely foreign, creative, flamboyant, intellectual, passionate, but also loyal, sensitive and ultimately ethical. Worst of all, she is apparently oblivious to the constricting rules that society expects her to observe, and in the most endearing way she goes about trying to live her life honestly. Newland is both drawn to her and terrified of her, comfortable with May and repelled by May. Thus he will find his way through a conflicted life, and the reader is likely to find his personal struggle and the life he leads not terribly unlike his or her own. This novel is at its core timeless. Society will always demand that we act one way when in fact we might prefer to act another way entirely, and there will always be choices and regrets on the path we choose among those options.
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LibraryThing member kaionvin
I remember being annoyed at Newland Archer the first time I read The Age of Innocence, five or so years ago. How cowardly I thought him. How indecisive. How weak. ‘Just make up your goddamn mind,’ I thought. Girlish May or bohemian Ellen? Just pick one woman and stick with it!

What I’m
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describing is a classic love triangle immemorial, and The Age of Innocence is truly an old-fashioned romance story. In fact, a story so old-fashioned even in Wharton’s time that she set it in the 1870s. It’s also the kind of story my brother is always bemoaning I like all the time, where nothing much happens in terms of external action, only people meeting and speaking up the silence of not saying what they’re really thinking, and eventually actually manage to say what they think—at which point the gulf between their thoughts and reality becomes the next looming silence. Basically, it’s what he’d call “boring” (and in lesser hands, I’d dismiss as “rich people problems”).

He’s wrong, at least in this case. We might know how this old rag of a love triangle plays out—how it always plays out—but what elevates the formula is the well-observed detail Edith Wharton suffuses into every step of the way.

Wharton clearly knows the high-society New York she’s describing, down to every single dinner menu (and doesn’t she not shy from showing it!). But more importantly, she knows every gesture it yields in the upholding of its every specific more and dishes it out with insights frequently satiric and even subtlely funny. And its ultimate hypocrisy, which she dishes out frequently chilling or even heart-breaking. See here after Newland proposes eloping to May:
"Newland! You’re so original!” she exulted.

His heart sank, for he saw that he was saying all the things that young men in the same situation were expected to say, and that she was making the answers that instinct and tradition taught her to make—even to the point of calling him original.


Her attention to detail extends to the characters as well, including the many supporting characters whose idiosyncrasies (Sillerton Jackson’s rumor-mongering, Catherine Mingott’s stinginess with serving food, Lawrence Leffert’s fake moral outrage) lend that biggest of Wharton characters, “Society”, a richer presence than merely being a monstrous looming antagonist. But most profoundly, Wharton turns her eye to the two fascinating cousins at the heart of it, May Welland and Countess Ellen Olenska, whose complexities are only glimpsed at (and often misunderstood) by the Newland, hampered he is by his feelings and his pride.

All this characterization is so important because behind the veil of gentility, The Age of Innocence is at its heart, an intense battle of wills between the main characters. There’s none of that flashy ‘external action’ here—not silly misunderstandings or missed letters or last-minute chases that seem so endemic to romances. But you can’t mistake that for ‘boring’ because when the characters clash it’s with the force of society fighting itself, in so much that Wharton’s characters are individuals, yes, but also so much where they come from (and how they come from it). And though at time I think Wharton leans too heavily on the constrast between stodgy New York and artistic Europe as her theory of everything, the result is a novel constructed out of remarkable unity between character, theme, and plot. Everything that happens is so much out of what the characters do and everything that the characters do is so much out of who they are and everything who they are is where they come from…

(And that ending!) So now, I can feel exasperated with Newland; I can feel sad at his losses and happy at his gains. But I can’t pity him because pity, pity is dismissal, pity is putting something in the past—and the world of The Age of Innocence, so specifically rendered in its pages, is not.
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LibraryThing member Joycepa
Pulitzer Prize winner for 1921.

The early Pulitzer Prize winners were concerned with documenting and commenting on the effects that rapid social and technological changes had on “society”, whether that of a Midwestern town evolving into a large industrial city or of “old” New York. The most
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sharply observant, critical, and personal is The Age of Innocence, in which Wharton describes a set of mores governing behavior for the wealthiest families so stultifying that even reading it 85 years later produces claustrophobia and a sense of being unable to breathe.

The protagonist of the book, Newland Archer, is one of the more conscious of his set. At the beginning of the book, as a young man in the early 1870’s, Archer is quite taken up with his own class and wholeheartedly subscribes to “form”, that unwritten code of what is allowed and far more important, NOT allowed in Old New York society. He realizes that these constitute constraints on his actions but accepts them as de rigueur and necessary to the survival of his way of life.

However, he meets an alien who has suddenly appeared in the midst of this hierarchical, rigid society—the beautiful Countess Olenska, a member of one of the most prominent families whom Archer knew as a child, who married a Polish count, and moved to Europe. After an unspecified number of years, she has left her husband and moved back to New York under mysterious and even scandalous circumstances. Being a member of a distinguished family and somehow “foreign”, the Countess Olenska’s behavior baffles society; they alternately rally around and shy away from her depending on which by-law of the social code she has most recently “transgressed”—usually unwittingly.

Archer, engaged and then married to May Welland, one of the most beautiful as well as most unimaginative and uncreative daughters of an Old New York family, falls under the Countess’ spell. She evokes within him a vaguely intuited, dormant but not yet fully suppressed streak of independence and rebellion, a dread of living out the rest of his life in the sterile, iron-clad environment of High Society.

The story centers around Archer’s feeble and ineffectual attempts to transcend the rules and mores of his class and strike out for a life in which he can grow. In one of the more telling quotes:

“His whole future seemed suddenly to be unrolled before him; and passing down its endless emptiness he saw the dwindling figure of a man to whom nothing was ever going to happen.”

At each critical moment, in which he seems poised to break out, Fate, in the person of May, presents him with a choice between personal freedom and a shot at happiness and duty. Duty, in the form of his refusal to grasp at his own happiness at the expense of others’ pain—and May—win each time. Archer spends the rest of his life conforming to the code of behavior expected of a man of his class; the Countess Olenska moves to Paris. The scenes are underwritten, but in the most chilling prose.

The end of the book is poignant, even heart-rending.

The prose style is quite sharp, even unforgiving, as Wharton, at times in great detail, presents a way of life that worships Form and correct behavior; it is clear that she despises this life. It is a life that is inconceivable to us today, but through near-perfect writing, she makes it real for us, a staggering achievement.

Highly recommended.
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LibraryThing member AMQS
"Newland! Do shut the window. You’ll catch your death.”
He pulled the sash down and turned back. “Catch my death!” he echoed; and he felt like adding: “But I’ve caught it already. I am dead—I’ve been dead for months and months.”


Edith Wharton is a masterful writer, wielding a pen
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she sharpens to a scalpel-sharp point on 1870s New York society. The book is framed by performances of the opera Faust. At the first, Newland Archer is happily and somewhat smugly anticipating his marriage to the young, innocent May Welland, whose every thought and opinion he is looking forward to shaping, if not outright providing. He is somewhat scandalized when May's family hosts the Countess Ellen Olenska in their box -- this cousin is separated from her husband, a Polish count, and is seeking refuge in New York.

The countess's European sensibilities and unconventionality make her an uncomfortable puzzle for her family: she treats a servant familiarly, visits and befriends social climbers and outcasts, and does not care to live in the "right" neighborhoods. Newland is attracted like a moth. As Newland falls in love with the countess, he comes to perceive the smallness and rigidity of their New York world, and is powerless in the face of it. Ellen is determined to preserve her independence, to live life as she chooses, and as Newland realizes this, he understands that his future with May is one of convention, propriety, and suffocation. May in her turn is smooth and pleasant on the surface, and deftly manipulative underneath. Near the book's end, Newland attends another performance of Faust, reflecting how he has utterly changed, yet sentenced to a life of stifling sameness. This book made me deeply uncomfortable -- it is pervasively sad, and utterly fascinating.
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LibraryThing member Dorritt
An unblinking examination of characters forced to choose between propriety and love, and a time when people still had to choose between the two. What I liked about the novel is that it makes you question both - is propriety worth the price you pay for it? Is love? What constitutes "happiness" - is
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it passion, or contentment? Can personal happiness ever be achieved if its cost is the happiness of others about whom you care?

Wharton does an excellent job of depicting ~1880s New York society, a construct so brittle that the mere expression of individuality, ambition or temperament threatens to shatter it. Then she creates two fairly empathetic characters, the "restless young man" Newland Archer and the simultaneously worldly/naive Ellen Olenska, sets them against the system and explores - with a brutal honesty that allows for no hope of literary intervention (fate, coincidence or anachronism) - the hypocrisy forced upon them ... and, to be fair, the hypocrisy they force upon themselves.

Had Jane Austen undertaken this tale, she might have told it with more humor but with less honesty. What both authors share, however, is an ability to satirize the often arbitrary, often absurd constraits of "propriety" while simultaneously acknowledging their force and enduring power.
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LibraryThing member MarkYoung
This is literature. Just the skill and style of the writing is enough to keep you page turning. But there is also insight into human nature, wit, and irony. What strikes me above all, in this story about the New York upper classes, is that this group of people, with vast wealth and resources, live
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incredibly limited lifes, restricted by their narrow minds and social codes.
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LibraryThing member keylawk
A fin de siecle Novel written by Dame Wharton just before the end of WWI. The "Age" is limned by an expert on a New York society not yet overrun by the noveau riche thugs like the Vanderbilts, Kennedys, Kochs and Drumpfs. In this pre-war Golden Age, a young bachelor lawyer, Newland Archer, is
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preparing to marry May Welland, a virginal debutante Wharton describes as beautiful, and "who knows nothing but expects everything". Then Newland meets May's cousin Ellen, the relatively exotic "Countess Olinska" returned from Europe.

Newland's feelings are masterfully described, often by implication. The conventional values of high society in Victorian New York are exposed in the illusion drawn about "choice" when feelings are involved. We follow the lives of this triangle toward death and the infirmities of old age. Even after outliving the dear mother of his children, Newland remains intensely caught up in passions--desire, longing, envy, betrayal.

Winner of the first Pulitzer awarded to a female author, in 1921, This work highlights Wharton's themes of duty and desire, convention and betrayal. Drawn with elegant and tasteful expression, her subjects were privileged Society people. Ironically, they seem to "dread scandal more than disease" although the only real scandal is Ellen's desire for a divorce, after an unhappy marriage to a European Count. Here, Wharton exposes the complexity of marriage, which both empowers and cripples its partners. Wharton interrogates the subordination of women who are possessions of males. The character of Ellen, contrasted with the charm, innocence and convention of May, both of whom embody and split the love of Newland, light up the New York social milieu with the naked threat of scandal. Newland himself, in the anguish of loving, seems to gain insight into the Society's disparate treatment of women.

Newland Archer chooses to marry the conventional May, and the marriage produces surprisingly devoted children, until May predeceases Newland. His son, Dallas, plays an unlikely and even bizarre role as both withholder and expositor at the end of the story. Newland is left struggling with decisions he knows were already made by a life defined by Society. We are all but waiting for that "signal" from the window of convention.
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LibraryThing member LisaMorr
Written by Edith Wharton and published in 1920, this book is written from the point of view of a man, Newland Archer, (which I wasn't expecting) and takes place in 1870's New York. It is about the social mores of the time - what you can and can't do within the social structure.

Newland wanted the
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Countess Olenska, even though he publically disparaged her. You could FEEL how much he wanted her in this book.

Can't say a lot about this classic without saying too much, I suppose. I found the ending to be excruciatingly sad, although everyone lived relatively happily ever after.

I found it very interesting that just within Newland's life, radical changes had occurred within the social structure, such that his own son would be marrying someone who would've been inconceivable in Newland's earlier days.

Something I thought was very interesting throughout the book is that Newland would imagine an entire conversation with his fiance, and then take action on this imaginary conversation as if it actually occurred.

I think that there was only one innocent person in the whole book, and that was the Countess herself, who didn't seem to be pretending to be someone else, like everyone else was.

More than a month after finishing reading this book, and it still resonates with me, which I think is a sign of a great book. This book invoked feelings of frustration, longing and sadness. So, 5 stars!
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LibraryThing member Jthierer
Spoiler Alert!

When Ellen Olenska returns to New York to escape her husband, she shakes up Newland Archer's carefully ordered world and challenges his assumptions about what his life could and should be like. As the two carry on an affair mostly of the heart, consummated only by a few stolen kisses,
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the ramifications of his actions are felt throughout the tiny community of New York society. My favorite thing about this novel was the ending. As I read along, I was expecting some dramatic, tragic ending for Newland and Ellen. Instead, she returns to Europe and he stays with his pregnant wife. As time passes the supposedly all-consuming love fades and the two are content, if not blissful, in their separate lives. This seemed to me much more realistic than the tragic fates that await other unfaithful lovers in many novels. It wasn't a happily-ever-after story, but it was, in a strange way, a happy ending.
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LibraryThing member edwinbcn
For more than 20 years Henry James suggested to Edith Wharton to write about the social circles she grew up in. DO NEW YORK, he told her. When finally she did, she produced The age of innocence, about, in American upper-class parlance "Old New York", the upper crust oldest and wealthiest families
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or the "Old Money" families in New York, the Rockefellers of the 19th century.

The age of innocence is about the moral values of these Old Families. The moral dilemma in this novel is the same as that in James's The portrait of a lady, published 30 years earlier, but Wharton's style is much lighter, and the treatment of this theme much more frivolous.

Countess Olenska is a still young American woman, who left the US to get married to a Polish Count. Unhappy in her marriage she shows up in New York, in an attempt to return her family in America. There she meets Newland Archer, who is engaged to get married with her cousin May Welland.

Written from the point of view of Newland, Countess Olenska is the young, exotic new belle on the block, making his newly-wed wife May look dull. It isn't until the very last part of the book that the conservative, conventional morals of Old New York, the family and all their friends become clear. A married woman should stay with her husband, no matter what.

The age of innocence is much drawn out and rather unfocussed, with its main theme not becoming fully clear until the end. It would probably have been much more forceful if it was a novella, of less than half its number of pages.
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LibraryThing member KLmesoftly
I started to compare this to Pride & Prejudice or The Great Gatsby, two other beautifully-written, classic novels that riff on the trivial concerns wealthy members of high society treat with such gravity - but neither of those novels commit to that aspect quite in the way that The Age of Innocence
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does! Things happen in those novels, while in The Age of Innocence all of the real significance is in what actions are not taken, and what things are left uncommunicated and unknown - the unspoken understandings with (and misunderstandings/Newland's constant underestimation of) Newland's wife, May; Newland's attraction to Ellen Olenska, based primarily on what he doesn't know about her, and how her attitudes and reception reflect on his own life; societal mores and the wordless way they are communicated, described as beautiful in the book's opening pages but compared to a prison as the novel closes...there's so much going on here, but it's all in the blank spaces between the actual actions taking place on the page. It's a very delicate structure to maintain, and I kept waiting to become impatient with or jaded by it, but Wharton really does carry it off!
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LibraryThing member JBD1
Another of those classics I probably waited too long to read, and spent mostly wanting to dope-slap many of the characters. But the "old New York" world-building is excellent.
LibraryThing member Helenliz
I listened to this on CD, and the narrator, David Horrowitz, had just the right kind of refined, elegant, voice to set off the rather elegant text. Set in New York Society, it is difficult to work out to whom the title is referring - there are a number of characters that could be considered
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"innocent". Ellen Olenska seems innocent in the ways of Society - incurring her family's displeasure and censure, but with no-one to understand her plight, nor to guide her on what to do. She seems out of her depth, but has a moral core, in that she refuses Newland. Newland goes through quite a shift in the book, starting as moulded by his upbringing, but seemingly unsatisfied with how his marriage to May is going to turn out - hence the attraction to Ellen, but he's not given opportunity to do anything about it - no matter that the rest of his society thinks he has. May strikes me as a typical young society woman - bred not to have a brain in her head and tought to believe she shouldn;t think - although i do sense, particularly in the epilogue that she maybe wasn't quite as naive as she appeared.
The tale is beautifully told, with lots of sly glances at the ills and illogicality of society. You do think that Newland is going to set the world afire, but he kind of backs off and it becomes clear he hasn't, but it seems his offspring might.
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LibraryThing member Rocky_Wing
a very quick and mostly light read. the main tension occurs between the outer desires of society and the inner desires of man. what should archer do? give in to his passionate love? or allow the social norms to dictate his course? which is the more important? we are even forced to decide between
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love and duty, passion and family. the moral: if you let society shape you, the irony is that it will change with the next generation and you will be forced to follow the course set out for you. but the real question that i find myself asking after this book, should we find our direction in either of these things? was archer facing a losing battle because both answers are bad answers? to follow society for following society's sake does sound foolish. yet to "follow one's heart" is a terrible way to live also. there must remain a higher plane.
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LibraryThing member GretchenCraig
Having read Ethan Frome, I knew The Age of Innocence could not end happily ever after. Yet I kept hoping. Archer is a young man of the New York City aristocracy about 1870. He is engaged to a lovely young woman whom he hopes to lead into a more authentic, genuine self than the "lovely girl" who is
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exactly what everyone expects her to be. He wants less conformity, more self-awareness and reflection, and he believes it is his fair task as husband to teach her to be the woman should could be. Then he meets her cousin. She's already self-aware and reflective and non-conformist. In a very proper, hands-off way, they fall in love, but he is himself tightly bound by society's expectations and by honor; the cousin values the very constraints he chafes under. So they forfeit their own happiness to ensure the fiancee's reputation and happiness. Every now and then, Wharton teases us with hope that the lovers might find a way to be together after all, but no. Maybe I've been reading too many romances lately to have wanted the happy ending so much. But this ending is exactly right for this book. It's just that Thoreau's line about living in "quiet desperation" applies to Archer, and it just plain hurts to live that with him through these pages. In a way, I have to add, Archer does find satisfaction in his life in spite of, maybe even because of, his unrequited love.
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LibraryThing member jmoncton
If you feel like picking up a classic, this is a great one. Set at the beginning of the 19th century, the book paints a vivid portrait of life in high society New York - the strict rules of how to behave, who to mingle with, and even who to marry. The hero, Nuland Archer, is all set to marry
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beautiful May Welland when he meets her cousin, Ellen Olenska who has scandalized New York society by leaving her disastrous marriage to a European count. What a great tragic love story! I had two different audio versions of this book, one narrated by Dick Hill and the other narrated by Alyssa Bresnahan. Although I loved Dick Hill's narration of Huckleberry Finn, after listening to the first cd, I switched over to Alyssa Bresnahan's version. Her portrayal of the high society New York women was perfect!
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LibraryThing member stillatim

My recurrent problem with these books - that I can't see why anyone would fall in love with a Countess Olenska when they're already in love with May - makes it difficult for me to really love this one. I guess that's kind of the point. May hasn't done anything wrong, and hence Newland leads a happy
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life with her, it's just not the peak-of-the-mountain romantic craziness that we all seem to crave. On the other hand, I think 'The Reef' was better, and my wife assures me that 'House of Mirth' is better than both of them. It's interesting to read this so soon after Elizabeth Bowen's 'Heat of the Day,' to see how the type of thing Wharton did (close social observation of impossible situations) was better served by more modernist techniques. Anyone who likes Wharton, particularly her more Jamesian moments, should go check out Bowen's novels.
The reason I like this less than Bowen and James, I think, aside from my attraction to the cute girls next door rather than the stormy seductresses, is that Wharton's irony is a little too obvious. I get the feeling that she doesn't really know why any of her characters do what they do. That's not a technical failing. She isn't just making it up, I'm sure that New York society really was as she describes it in the 1870's. But she sympathises too little with that society, in this novel at least, to be fair. On the upside, that means she's much funnier.
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LibraryThing member sparemethecensor
I avoided Wharton's work for years because I hated Ethan Frome when I read it in high school, and now I realize I made a grave mistake. The Age of Innocence is wonderful. I can't remember the last time I was so captivated by a novel of manners. This is like an anthropologist's treatise on 1870s New
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York City high society, and it is revelatory both about its time period and our assigned roles now. I found the views on the roles of women particularly relevant and engaging. Highly recommended.
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Language

Original language

English

Original publication date

1920

Physical description

4.25 x 1 inches

ISBN

002026478X / 9780020264781

Local notes

fiction

Other editions

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