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A review by daja57
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
3.0
This novel was written in 1920 but is set in New York in the 1870s in the upper echelons of society (described as "rich and idle and ornamental"; Ch 11). It is a world of balls and opera evenings, a world of a tight-knit group of rich families, and a world where respectability is everything. Men are allowed to break the rules with impunity providing that the affair is hidden and the scandal is suppressed.
The hero, Newland Archer, has had his fling, an affair with a married lady. Now he is engaged to May, a girl whom he assumes is not only virginal but utterly innocent. But on the night that their engagement is announced he meets May's cousin, the Countess Ellen Olenska, who married a Polish nobleman, was mistreated, and fled the marriage. She faces ostracism from the NY social circle because she refuses to go back to her husband. Newland, who harbours vague notions of gender equality, falls in love with Ellen. Will he flout convention and run off with her? Or will he knuckle down to do his duty to his fiancee and his family?
I find it difficult to understand why this novel enabled Wharton to become the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (although the three judges actually awarded the prize to Sinclair Lewis for Main Street but were overturned by the supervising board). Perhaps at the time it was written, The Age of Innocence was a ground-breaking book but I found it little more than a rather conventional romance. There are implied criticisms of the hypocrisy embodied in the double standards allowing men to have (discreet) mistresses and expecting women to be pure, but at the end of the day the book explores the dilemma of the male protagonist and the feelings of and consequences for his would-be paramour are only glimpsed from her reactions to him. It would be interesting to have the book rewritten from Ellen's point of view.
It's and easy read and quite fun. It's well-paced, with major turning points at the 50% and 75% mark; although it rather surprisingly skipped about thirty years to provide a sort of epilogue in the last few chapters. There are some astute observations in it but few of the characters progress beyond the caricature stage. The period is rather clunkily set by referring to the latest novels, poems and artists, and mentioned recent inventions such as the telephone "this new dodge for talking along a wire" (Ch 15) and the "fascinating new game of lawn tennis" (Ch 20)
But fundamentally it's a love vs duty romance.
The hero, Newland Archer, has had his fling, an affair with a married lady. Now he is engaged to May, a girl whom he assumes is not only virginal but utterly innocent. But on the night that their engagement is announced he meets May's cousin, the Countess Ellen Olenska, who married a Polish nobleman, was mistreated, and fled the marriage. She faces ostracism from the NY social circle because she refuses to go back to her husband. Newland, who harbours vague notions of gender equality, falls in love with Ellen. Will he flout convention and run off with her? Or will he knuckle down to do his duty to his fiancee and his family?
I find it difficult to understand why this novel enabled Wharton to become the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (although the three judges actually awarded the prize to Sinclair Lewis for Main Street but were overturned by the supervising board). Perhaps at the time it was written, The Age of Innocence was a ground-breaking book but I found it little more than a rather conventional romance. There are implied criticisms of the hypocrisy embodied in the double standards allowing men to have (discreet) mistresses and expecting women to be pure, but at the end of the day the book explores the dilemma of the male protagonist and the feelings of and consequences for his would-be paramour are only glimpsed from her reactions to him. It would be interesting to have the book rewritten from Ellen's point of view.
It's and easy read and quite fun. It's well-paced, with major turning points at the 50% and 75% mark; although it rather surprisingly skipped about thirty years to provide a sort of epilogue in the last few chapters. There are some astute observations in it but few of the characters progress beyond the caricature stage. The period is rather clunkily set by referring to the latest novels, poems and artists, and mentioned recent inventions such as the telephone "this new dodge for talking along a wire" (Ch 15) and the "fascinating new game of lawn tennis" (Ch 20)
But fundamentally it's a love vs duty romance.