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A review by aegagrus
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
4.5
Newland Archer bridles at social convention, but can only muster impotent resistance; he is clear-eyed but feckless. Ellen Olenska uses her outsider status shrewdly, never quite letting on how much or how little she understands New York's genteel society, but is ultimately imprisoned in her gambit. Newland and Ellen are fascinating characters in their own rights, and their frustrated relationship is at the core of The Age of Innocence. Their interactions with and feelings towards one another are endlessly compelling.
Wharton deserves further praise for her memorable secondary characters -- the mischievous elderly Catherine Mingott is a particular gem -- and the sophisticated emotional note on which her story ends -- calm, elegiac, bittersweet. Readers today will also be intrigued by the degree to which the New York gentry she depicts are still living in the shadow of Europe, sometimes imitating and sometimes drawing a contrast, but always conscious of their society's immaturity -- innocence -- relative to old world aristocracies.
May Welland was, to me, the one significant character to whom Wharton could have been more generous. She serves well as a conceptual foil, through which Wharton is able to depict some of the subtle but powerful ways traditional New York society managed to reproduce itself. One almost feels, however, that she exists as a functional element for storytelling and point-making, more than as a fully realized human character. It is worth noting, though, that our understanding of May is filtered through Archer's, to which some of these deficiencies can be attributed.
Wharton deserves further praise for her memorable secondary characters -- the mischievous elderly Catherine Mingott is a particular gem -- and the sophisticated emotional note on which her story ends -- calm, elegiac, bittersweet. Readers today will also be intrigued by the degree to which the New York gentry she depicts are still living in the shadow of Europe, sometimes imitating and sometimes drawing a contrast, but always conscious of their society's immaturity -- innocence -- relative to old world aristocracies.
May Welland was, to me, the one significant character to whom Wharton could have been more generous. She serves well as a conceptual foil, through which Wharton is able to depict some of the subtle but powerful ways traditional New York society managed to reproduce itself. One almost feels, however, that she exists as a functional element for storytelling and point-making, more than as a fully realized human character. It is worth noting, though, that our understanding of May is filtered through Archer's, to which some of these deficiencies can be attributed.