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The Age of Innocence Barnes Noble Classics Edith Wharton Maureen Howard 9781593081430 Books

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The Age of Innocence Barnes Noble Classics Edith Wharton Maureen Howard 9781593081430 Books

THE AGE OF INNOCENCE

Although this is a love story on many levels, The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton, is, also, a documentary of a culture- in this case, the elite rich society of New York in 19th century America- who buries its own dreams and deepest desires behind the greater need to be accepted and approved by one’s own ‘reference group.’ The book hinges on the words people are “chained to separate destinies,” and proceeds to illustrate how this is true of rich and poor alike.

This star-crossed love story centers on a love triangle. Rebelling against a long-time, smothering tradition, a young, idealistic man, Newland
Archer, marries his loving and sweet-natured-but, boring and traditional- wife, May, under pressure from friends and family. The complication comes when he falls head over heels in love with his wife’s cousin, the Countess Ellen Olinska, who has recently come home. To the disapproval and shock of her family and New York society she has deserted her husband, a rich, albeit unsavory French Count.

The Countess is a beautiful Bohemian ‘outcast’ central to the story because she dares to have the courage to reject that which is destructive to her true nature, making her misunderstood by her family and friends. However, her integrity, compassion, and joie de vivre make her a sympathetic and irresistible character to all who know her, especially the men, who fall under the spell of her charms and are depicted as being in a much better positon to flout the chains of society in contrast to the women of the time.

Archer loves the Countess Olenska because she possesses the attributes he most wants himself, and she is a metaphor for freedom of choice in that she defies the expectations of her sex and the confines of society in exchange for being true to her own ideas of integrity and proper behavior.

A heart-wrenching story of unrequited love, it depicts the forces that band together to bring the protagonists to heel and keep them chained to separate destinies. Their personal desires are squelched by family and friends in the name of dutiful honor and expectations amidst the rigid judgment and hypocrisy of their unyielding, self-righteous social class.

Edith Wharton was a master at evoking the social mores and confines of the society she grew up in, and is often a society that she seems to condemn for its snobbery and hypocrisy.

Even though the book depicts New York’s upper crust of the 19th century, it is ‘everyman’s story,’ because it’s a reminder to us all that, although we can exist in a world to which we may not want to belong, our choice to remain there may come at the steep and personal price of dream walking through life. This story is so beautifully written and is evocative of human nature which demands that men and women put duty, honor, and pride above all else regardless of individual liberty and personal happiness.

In the concluding pages, the reader has an epiphany that one comes to terms with the sweet fragileness of our memories by consciously choosing to reject choices that may expose and destroy perceived perfection in order to maintain the dream of what might have been. So, it is with Archer. He, at last, accepts that he gave up something dear to him for the greater good. And, as he moves into mid-life, fate helps him to accept that it may have been the right decision, after all.

The Age of Innocence is a story that will resonate with anyone who suffers and pines over the one that got away in the blush of youthful love. It remains a story for the ages and serves as reminder that we cannot always direct the course of love, because love takes many forms, and often wounds us. But, a life lived fully requires understanding and accepting love’s many manifestations.


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The Age of Innocence Barnes Noble Classics Edith Wharton Maureen Howard 9781593081430 Books Reviews

I'm not sure where to start with this book. I enjoyed it, but there were times when it was annoying that the characters did nothing to change their circumstances even though they were unhappy, but, I guess, that is really the point of the novel. We have a set of characters bound by the restrictions of the society they live in. It wasn't really all it was cracked up to be. Everyone was afraid to be themselves and afraid to be cast out of the elite society for the smallest misstep. The story centers around the lives of Newland Archer, May Welland, and Ellen Olensky. Archer is engaged to a nice girl, May, who is viewed as the perfect woman when he meets Ellen. She is a married woman who was so badly mistreated by her husband that she fled and wants to get a divorce, quite the scandalous idea at the time. Archer is drawn to Ellen because she is so different and nothing like what society tells him he should want. Archer was by far my favorite character. He's a book loving man, who is ahead of his times in his way of thinking about the perfect woman should be, but stuck in a way of life that he can't see a way out of. The last chapter was my favorite. It tells of Archer's life 30 years later. He had a happy life, but it was missing the one thing that would have made it a great life. The two star crossed lovers who were destined to never find there way to each other. I have to admit, I teared up when I read what Archer's son, Dallas, told his father what his mother said before she died, "She said she knew we were safe with you, and always would be, because once, when she asked you to, you'd given up the thing you most wanted." (The Word Cloud Classic edition is a beautiful edition and they are so nice to read.)
This is without a doubt dear Mrs. Wharton's masterpiece, a captivating tale about a man whose sense of duty and fear of challenging the status quo keeps him in a state of perpetual staleness and regret. While very little transpires through the course of the novel, it is for a good reason. Archer, the protagonist, is a stuffy New York lawyer, who is entranced by his mysterious wife's cousin Olenska, a married countess who has spent a great deal of her life in Europe. The story is about their relationship or what it could have been, had he been more willing to challenge the status quo and follow his real desires. He lives in a world surrounded by the moralistic and the prudish, a world which by the end of the novel vanishes into a distant memory, and all he is left with is his regret. In the sense, the story could be viewed as a tragedy, but not the same kind of tragedy as Ethan Frome, who had so much less in life to look forward to! Archer's world is essentially limitless and is only held back by his own failure to think outside the Victorian box.

While little goes on in Archer's life, we are left to wonder about his true love Madame Olenska. Wharton leaves it to the reader to decide what they think about Olenska. She is not unattainable as Daisy Buchanan is in The Great Gatsby; she shares feelings for him and is eager to separate from her husband. Still, her relationship with Archer never comes to fruition, even after Archer's wife passes away. Her world is too rich and Archer, in his narrowness, can never wrap his head around it.

There are also a host of interesting characters that surround them, from the first Mrs. Manson Mingott to the conniving Beaufort, and , however limited their roles, they lend a great deal of insight to the "age of innocence," which serves as the setting. It is an age of hypocrisy and narrow-mindedness, which is quickly superseded by the generation of Archer's son Dallas, who dispels all the mystique behind Archer's lack of action. Dallas represents the dream which Archer could not attain. By the end of the novel, it is too late for him and his only hope is for his son to live this dream for him.

The novel is full of rich detail and is well worth reading, even though the plot is at times rather slow. Without doubt, it belongs in any list of the greatest novels of the 20th century!
THE AGE OF INNOCENCE

Although this is a love story on many levels, The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton, is, also, a documentary of a culture- in this case, the elite rich society of New York in 19th century America- who buries its own dreams and deepest desires behind the greater need to be accepted and approved by one’s own ‘reference group.’ The book hinges on the words people are “chained to separate destinies,” and proceeds to illustrate how this is true of rich and poor alike.

This star-crossed love story centers on a love triangle. Rebelling against a long-time, smothering tradition, a young, idealistic man, Newland
Archer, marries his loving and sweet-natured-but, boring and traditional- wife, May, under pressure from friends and family. The complication comes when he falls head over heels in love with his wife’s cousin, the Countess Ellen Olinska, who has recently come home. To the disapproval and shock of her family and New York society she has deserted her husband, a rich, albeit unsavory French Count.

The Countess is a beautiful Bohemian ‘outcast’ central to the story because she dares to have the courage to reject that which is destructive to her true nature, making her misunderstood by her family and friends. However, her integrity, compassion, and joie de vivre make her a sympathetic and irresistible character to all who know her, especially the men, who fall under the spell of her charms and are depicted as being in a much better positon to flout the chains of society in contrast to the women of the time.

Archer loves the Countess Olenska because she possesses the attributes he most wants himself, and she is a metaphor for freedom of choice in that she defies the expectations of her sex and the confines of society in exchange for being true to her own ideas of integrity and proper behavior.

A heart-wrenching story of unrequited love, it depicts the forces that band together to bring the protagonists to heel and keep them chained to separate destinies. Their personal desires are squelched by family and friends in the name of dutiful honor and expectations amidst the rigid judgment and hypocrisy of their unyielding, self-righteous social class.

Edith Wharton was a master at evoking the social mores and confines of the society she grew up in, and is often a society that she seems to condemn for its snobbery and hypocrisy.

Even though the book depicts New York’s upper crust of the 19th century, it is ‘everyman’s story,’ because it’s a reminder to us all that, although we can exist in a world to which we may not want to belong, our choice to remain there may come at the steep and personal price of dream walking through life. This story is so beautifully written and is evocative of human nature which demands that men and women put duty, honor, and pride above all else regardless of individual liberty and personal happiness.

In the concluding pages, the reader has an epiphany that one comes to terms with the sweet fragileness of our memories by consciously choosing to reject choices that may expose and destroy perceived perfection in order to maintain the dream of what might have been. So, it is with Archer. He, at last, accepts that he gave up something dear to him for the greater good. And, as he moves into mid-life, fate helps him to accept that it may have been the right decision, after all.

The Age of Innocence is a story that will resonate with anyone who suffers and pines over the one that got away in the blush of youthful love. It remains a story for the ages and serves as reminder that we cannot always direct the course of love, because love takes many forms, and often wounds us. But, a life lived fully requires understanding and accepting love’s many manifestations.