The Age of Innocence (Modern Library Classics) (original 1920; edition 1999)

I finally got around to reading this classic and wished I had done it sooner as it is a marvelous book! (Probably why it won a Pullitzer). Newell Archer is born into one of NYC's recognized upper crust families, and is in love with May Wellland who is an appropriate match in terms of family, beauty, disposition, athletism and manners. Her meets her coousin Countess Olenska, and sees an alternative to the predictable closed society he is part of - however he does not act on this and helps her understand the repercussions of divorce and being bohemian at the turn of the century. Quickly he becomes dissatisfied with his own life, and craves to be with her. Countess Olenska prevents this and a type of "Human Bondage" love unfolds. The Newell Archers stay together and have children and advance in the NYC evolutionary society - as we learn in the end, and Archer chooses to leave his attration to Ellen Olenska as a fantasy. ( )

My grand daughter read this book in her high school class last year. I realized that I had never read it. As I read it and thoroughly enjoyed it, I wondered at girls of today trying to understand the constraints of society way back when. ( )

Big characters lashing emotions big and small left and right while at the same time trying to keep very agreeable with the norms of a society busy with busying itself with... itself, mostly. Freedom and individual views are not the norm and are frowned upon, and "innocence" is more or less well-played, but certainly not what is really going on. The futility of the attempts to do as one really pleases teaches the misbehaving ones a lot about the society around them, and about themselves. Wharton plays her characters back and forth, especially the two main ones, until we do not fully understand their motivation. Are their emotions real and what are they? Their actions and reactions are not always easy to comprehend, but still they remain real, and very human-like: failing, lying and cheating. Strong forces and "values" of the society play with characters at will. No one is safe and no one seems to be able to trust his next of kin or friend. The end of innocence happens on many levels and Wharton is particularly skillful in playing with meanings, tones, ironies to show us just how lowly the society has fallen (or has always been). ( )

Too depressing! ( )

Originally Posted @ Novel Reveries
This book was really educating in the use of wit, observation, and overt description of personalities and environment to convey the tone of the victorian age of society. Edith Wharton's writing style is elaborate, yet the overall comprehension flows beautifully as the world is seen through Newland Archer's eyes. Newland must deal with the customs of New York society, as disgusted as he may feel towards some of them, and watches as "a haunting horror of doing the same thing every day at the same hour besieged his brain." (40) It is because of these monotonous "innocent" customs that he feels a deep love towards Ellen Olenski, as it is in her nature to sort of go against the grain and flout from the victorian age New York society. The ending was, to me, unexpected and was quite a disappointment as it left me hanging with the uncertainty of Newland Archer's fate and happiness. In all, the book was beautifully written and told in a matter that called for a reevaluation and the reformation of how we act and think in our society.

Quotes:
"'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." (20)

"What could he and she really know of each other, since it was his duty, as a "decent" fellow, to conceal his past from her, and hers, as a marriageable girl, to have no past to conceal. What if, for some one of the subtler reasons that would tell with both of them, they should tire of each other, misunderstand or irritate each other?" (21)

"'We can't behave like people in novels, though, can we?'
'Why not--why not--why not?'" (39)

"Ah, no, he did not want May to have that kind of innocence, the innocence that seals the mind against imagination and the heart against experience!" (68)

"There was no use in trying to emancipate a wife who had not the dimmest notion that she was not free..." (90)

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