The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton

THE WRITER

Edith Newbold Jones was born to a wealthy family in New York City on January 24, 1862, and soon learned the manners and traditions of society life that would characterize her fiction. Because her family lived in Europe for much of her childhood, she was educated abroad and privately. She enjoyed travel and reading from a young age, and while her parents supported these interests, they disapproved of her ambitions to become an author. Her lifelong love of books, foreign places, and nature would figure into her successful career as a writer. Biographers depict her as a lively, congenial woman who made friends easily. This may account for her friendships with such notable men as author Henry James and Theodore Roosevelt.

In 1885, she married Edward (Teddy) Robbins Wharton, a banker who was thirteen years her senior and who shared none of her artistic or intellectual interests. The marriage was unhappy and Wharton was treated for depression. She eventually settled permanently in Paris., started a passionate and intellectually fulfilling affair with Morton Fullerton, a friend of Henry James and divorced her husband. She moved in artistic and literary circles where French writers mixed with American expats and where women played a major role.

During World War 1 Wharton was passionately dedicated the Allied cause, working with refugees and establishing projects to offer employment to women. She also wrote reports for US publications and urged her government to join the war effort.

Wharton returned to the United States just once ro receive the Pulizer Prize for Fiction which she had been awarded for The Age of Innocence. She died in France in 1937,

THE AGE OF INNOCENCE

The book opens as members of old New York society gather at the opera. The young lawyer Newland Archer rests his gaze on his fiancée, May Welland. He considers her innocence and how he will educate and enlighten her, so that she can become his ideal woman.

May´s cousin, Ellen, however is a far more complicated woman - the object of scandal after leaving her husband amid rumours that she had an affair with his secretary. The family scheme to ensure that Ellen is accepted into society, but also elect Newland to persuade her to return to her husband.

Newland undertakes the support of Ellen for May´s sake but soon comes to sympathise with her decision to leave her husband. He begins to question some of his assumptions about life and love. His response to his attraction towards her is to try to bring forward his wedding. However by the time he realizes that he is in love with Ellen and no longer wants to marry May it is too late.

The novel is brilliantly paced and full of ironic twists of fortune as Archer and Ellen long for and avoid each other´s love. Ellen threatens to return to her husband if Archer leaves May and he loves her too much to let that happen.. She eventually agrees to a tryst with him before returning to Europe but then leaves without a word. May tells Archer that she is expecting his child - and he realises that she has told Ellen – so he resigns himself to his fate.

After years of a functional, reasonably content marriage, lacking in intense feelings and intellectual companionship, May dies and Archer goes to Europe with his son. As his son goes to introduce himself to Ellen, Archer waits below - realising that he is ultimately unable to face the reality of the Ellen of his dreams and memories.

QUESTIONS TO THINNK ABOUT WHILE READING

Is May as innocent as she seems? Or is she rather clever? How does Wharton show us the characters´ real feelings under their social roles?

How does the ovel keep its tension long after we know how the central characters feel about each other?

How differently would the novel have read had it been written from Ellen´s perspective?

What does the ending suggest about romantic love? Did the characters choose wisely?