The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton ~ my review

After reading Edith Wharton’s novel, The Age of Innocence, I find myself wondering which part of the story might have inspired the book’s title. Was it Newland Archer’s romantic ideas? Was it May Welland’s bright, pure optimism? Was it troubled Countess Ellen Olenska’s hope of escape to New York? Was it how the young man’s emotional affair sneaked up on him? When Newland became torn between May and Ellen, certainly few characters in the Archer and Welland families’ orbits were unaware of the unspoken love triangle. Was the age of innocence the fact that they didn’t speak of it? Was it Newland’s hoping his fiancée May would not have the kind of “innocence that seals the mind against imagination” [page 125] only to learn that his wife May was a strong, shrewd husband-keeping strategist?

 

The introduction to my copy of The Age of Innocence suggests the reader is the innocent being lured by humorous jabs at New York’s wealthy class into the darker drama of duty and disappointment. Or was it the glittering Belle Époque era of New York high society itself? Everything was prescribed by custom and therefore predictable and anodyne. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, people were still innocently unaware of incipient wartime atrocities. I don’t know Wharton’s inspiration for her title, but because The Age of Innocence won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for fiction by an American author writing about American society, I would guess perhaps some of these overarching societal themes.

 

Wharton’s writing contains such clever delights as “… an unalterable and unquestionable law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences.” [page 6] I was quite entertained by Wharton’s poking fun at the absurd rigidity of moneyed New Yorkers’ customs.

 

[PARTIAL SPOILER ALERT] Getting to know Ellen, who had lived in Europe, opened Newland’s eyes to his sheeplike following of New York customs and he longed to be free of the constraints of set opera nights and predictable parties and strict rules of attire. As Newland’s options narrowed, I felt sad to see his dream dying. He chose the known over the unknown, the expected over the dream. In so doing, he disappointed himself instead of disappointing his family. Yet—his traditional life was serene and productive. The Age of Innocence ends a quarter-century later, when Newland is middle-aged. I won’t say how he feels at that point.

 

Perhaps the universality of this tale lies in the youthful dreams we entertain as twenty-somethings: I’ll be different from this society! I’ll break free! Then our ideals get absorbed by reality, ending our age of innocence.