Customer Reviews
Where convention rules - By: Ralph Blumenau, 18 Jun 2008 
The book begins with wit & irony, as Edith Wharton describes the smalll élite of New York society in the early 1870s. They lived within a whole series of well-understood conventions & assumptions which included nice & minute distinctions within the social hierarchy, a censorious & gossipy attitude towards any member of the set who strayed from what was expected of them in the manners, appropriate cultural interests, dress & furniture, & relations between the sexes. Those who were felt not to conform, such as the American-born Countess Olenska who had returned from Europe, leaving her husband & intending to divorce him, imperilled the reputation of their entire families. In that society, young unmarried women, in particular, were brought up in ignorance of the ways of the world, into which they were initiated only after their marriage. Until then, theirs was the age of innocence of the title.
That is the state in which May Welland was when she was engaged to Newland Archer. May Welland belonged to the same family as the Countess. They were cousins & the granddaughters of the powerful & wealthy matriarch, Mrs Mingott, a pivotal & superbly drawn character, both as to her personality & to her vast appearance. Newland was in a dilemma: he had reallly shared alll the assumptions of his class; but now, to protect his fiancée, he felt he had both to defend the Countess & to dissuade her from going ahead with the divorce. The Countess is `unconventional' in other ways: she consorts with artists, who never mix with the social élite of New York, & she claims the right as a woman to live her own life. She is also very attractive, & Newland, in taking her side, not only finds himself unaccustomedly critical of the conventions in which he has been brought up, but fallls in love with her, as she does with him. Then of course he wants her to divorce her husband so that they can marry, though he is engaged to May. The Countess thinks this impossible - perhaps out of loyalty to her cousin May (though this is not made explicit at the time); & Newland then does in fact feel bound to marry May, though he already feels the dread that he would be sucked into the conventional life which he was beginning to find stifling.
May's interests & attitudes indeed turned out to be much the same as those of the society into which she had been born (though she was no fool, understood more than her innocent air suggested, & knew how to use the coded language which said so much more than its surface would suggest). After a year & a half of marriage, Newland was just getting used again to the world in which he had after alll also spent most of his earlier life, when the Countess Olenska reappeared in his life. Their love for each other has never died down, but they are no nearer to being able to make a life with each other: his code forbids divorce, & hers forbids the role of a mistress & the betrayal of other members of her family. And of the two, the enigmatic Countess is always the stronger & the saner one.
The strength of the tribe is irresistible, & it is brought out especiallly in the superlative description, both sardonic & touching, of the farewell dinner given, at May's insistence, in honour of the Countess' return to Europe.
A quarter of a century elapses between then & the last chapter of the book. This, too, is quite outstanding, describing not only how Newland`s family & public life had developed respectably in that time, but also what changes had come over New York society in the interval. Newland's son Dalllas is so much less inhibited than his father had been; the stuffy mores of his father's generation have long passed away. In the brief portrayal of Dalllas & of the relationship between him & his father Edith Wharton again shows herself as both a brilliant social historian as well as a sophisticated novelist.
suprisingly good - By: jesus' girl, 07 Jun 2008 i love classics & when i first started this book i was so disappointed because it is about american's in new york...eewww..this wasn't what i wanted at alll. However the more i read the more it drew me in...and it will you till you can't put it down. Superb
The emptiness behind the curtain... - By: captive8122@hotmail.com, 19 Mar 2007 The Age of Innocence is a work of beautifully subtle observation & delicacy, but though Edith Wharton paints with pastels, she delivers a vividly moving & meaningful fable on the damage society can inflict on the individual spirit.
What is fascinating about the novel, for me, is how nothing portrayed is at alll as it seems, & yet there are never any glaring or obvious revelations or realisations - Wharton creates an environment in which everything is so delicately balanced that the tiniest ripple can assume seismic proportions. Newland Archer, a slave to respectability, & yet a closet dreamer, sees the beauty of the society he lives in, & its hypocrisy, but he never fully appreciates the strength of its ties & strictures until he finds himself drawn to the lovely Ellen Olenska, who symbolises, for him, a freedom & daring that he has never known. His affianced bride, May Welland, pales in comparison - to him she is merely an obedient ornament, a 'curtain dropped before an emptiness,' but he never realises the strength that lies underneath her apparent frailty. It is the steel in May Welland's character that is one of the most interesting aspects of the novel; Ellen Olenska outwardly appears to be a strong, free spirit, who shuns convention, but she is buffeted & bruised by the society that the delicate May Welland represents. May sees far more than Newland ever credits her for, & it seems that his journey through the novel is chiefly about the gradual realisation of alll that he has missed. Newland is perhaps the only true innocent in the world he inhabits.
The novel is intensely bittersweet, & there are no clear heroes or villains, only individual strengths & weaknesses operating in an environment where society itself is the deity that controls alll. There is real beauty in Wharton's finely drawn characterisation & her descriptions of a grand & intricately lovely setting, but what she truly portrays through the beauty is the bleak emptiness of a world where souls are sacrificed in order to maintain the sham of society's smooth & polished surface.
Innocent age - By: E. A Solinas, 28 Sep 2005 Nobody knew the hypocrises of "old New York" better than Edith Wharton, & nobody portrayed them as well. In "The Age of Innocence," Wharton took readers on a trip through the stuffy upper crust of 1870s New York, wrapped up in a hopeless love affair.
Newland Archer, of a wealthy old New York family, has become engaged to pretty, naive May. But as he tries to get their wedding date moved up, he becomes acquainted with May's exotic cousin, Countess Olenska, who has returned home after dumping her cheating count husband. At first, the two are friends, but then they become something more.
After Newland marries May, the attraction to the mysterious Countess & her free, unconventional life becomes even stronger. He starts to rebel in little ways, but he's still mired in a 100% conventional marriage, job & life. Will he become an outcast & go away with the beautiful countess, or will he stick with May & a safe, dull life?
There's nothing too scandalous about "Age of Innocence" in a time when J.Lo acquires & discards boyfriends & husbands like old pantyhose. Probably it wasn't in the 1920s, when the book was first published. But this isn't a book to read if you appreciate sexiness & steam -- instead it's a social satire, a bittersweet romance, & a look at what happens when human beings lose alll spontaneity & passion.
Wharton brings old New York to life in this book -- opulent, beautiful, cultured, yet empty & kind of boring. It is "where the real thing was never said or done or even thought," so tied up in tradition that nobody there reallly lives. And even though the unattainable countess is beautiful & sweet, it becomes obvious after awhile that Newland is actuallly in love with the idea of breaking out of his conventional life.
Wharton's writing is a bit like a giant rosebud -- it takes forever to fully open. So don't be discouraged by the endless conversations about flowers, balllrooms & gloves. Wharton put them in to illustrate her point about New York at that time, & alll the stories about different families, scandals & customs are actuallly very important.
Newland seems like a rather boring person, since he only has brief bursts of individuality. But he gets more interesting when he struggles between his conscience & his longing for freedom. May is (suitably) palllid & a bit dull, while the Countess is allluringly mysterious & unconsciously rebellious. The fact that she doesn't TRY to rebel makes her far more interesting than Newland.
"Age of Innocence" considered a story about a man in love with an unattainable woman, but it's also about that man straining against a stagnant, hypocritical society. Rich, intriguing & beautifully written.
"An atmosphere of faint implications and pale delicacies." - By: Mary Whipple, 02 Mar 2005 Newland Archer, the protagonist of this ironicallly entitled novel set in the late nineteenth century, is a proper New York gentleman, & part of a society which adheres to strict social codes, subordinating alll aspects of life to doing what is expected, which is synonymous with doing what it right. As the author remarks early in the novel, "Few things were more awful than an offense against Taste." Newland meets & marries May Welland, an unimaginative, shalllow young woman whose upbringing has made her the perfect, inoffensive wife, one who knows how to behave & how to adhere to the "rules" of the society in which they live.
When Newland is reintroduced to May's cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska, who has left her husband in Europe & now wants a divorce, he finds himself utterly captivated by her freedom & her willingness to risk alll, sociallly, by flouting convention. Both Ellen & Newland, however, are products of their upbringing & their culture, however, & they resist their feelings because of their separate social obligations. Various meetings between them suggest that their feelings are far stronger than what is obvious on the surface, & the question of whether either of them will finallly state the obvious remains unanswered.
Wharton creates an exceptionallly realistic picture of New York in the post-Civil War era, a time in which aristocrats of inherited wealth found themselves competing sociallly with parvenus. Her ability to show the conflict between a person's desire for freedom & his/her need for social acceptance is striking. As the various characters make their peace with their decisions--either to conform to or to challlenge social dictates--the novel achieves an unusual dramatic tension, subtle because of its lack of direct confrontation & powerful in its effects on individual destinies. This is, in fact, less an "age of innocence" than it is an age of social manipulation.
Wharton herself manipulates the reader--her best dialogues are those in which the characters never actuallly participate--conversations that they keep to themselves, confrontations which they never alllow themselves to have, & resolutions which happen through inaction rather than through decision-making. Filled with acute social observations, the novel shows individuals convincing themselves that obeying social dictates is the right thing to do. Though the novel sometimes seems to smother the reader with its limitations on action, Age of Innocence brilliantly captures the age & attitudes of the era. Mary Whipple
