Age of Innocence (Wordsworth Classics)

I have a friend who has recently discovered the novels of Edith Wharton; this very pretty copy of The Age of Innocence will be a perfect little birthday gift for her. (I do wish it had been better packed for shipping; two corners are bumped and creased.)

If I could, I would rate this book a 3.75. It provides a single line plot whereas my preference is for novels which are a little more complex.Unexpectedly, the focus was on the culture of wealthy NYC society around the 1870's.It was worth reading, but it felt really slow.

Definitely worth reading the novel, but the cover shown was not the one shown. It’s a very cheesy photo, instead of matching the more tasteful cover on the House of Mirth edition I purchased at the same time. Will probably donate this book since the cover is so awful.

This was a book club selection & when I first started reading it, I didn't like it & found it boring.After I got into it, I was intrigued by the characters, the plot and the rich descriptions of New Yorksociety in that time period. An excellent read!

Excellent.

I decided to read The Age of Innocence after reading Anderson Cooper’s book about his Vanderbilt ancestors. Edith Wharton gives us a fascinating look at the attitudes and lifestyles of upper crust New Yorkers of that time period. The book started a bit slowly, but became quite a page turner by the end. The characters are interesting and it’s fascinating and to see their machinations slowly revealed.The public domain kindle version I downloaded is no longer available, so this review applies to the work itself, not this particular edition.

Warning: contain spoilers!A good novel is not just a story which entertains, helps you pass the time and leaves you with no trace of intellectual imprints except of the momentary pleasure which is likely to pass. Rather a good novel is an analysis, observation or a view of a certain aspect of humanity through the fictitious characters, their life and encounters created by the pen of the writer. In this sense, the Age of Innocence is a good novel. It works very hard to tell of the society, its morality supported by the conventions and traditions, through the characters whose behaviour and thinking were moulded in that environment.Through our modern 21st century eyes, the ending may be shocking - the true love did not win but conform to the demand and expectation of the social norm. The objective was not to disturb the calm waters. In the introduction to this version, it is quoted that 'Archer's and Ellen's 'particular tragedy' is their 'sacrifice' to May Welland, who is 'virtuous because she is incapable of temptation, competent because she is incapable of any deep perturbation....' (p.viii). I suspect that most people today will share that view - it's a 'sacrifice' of true love for what is proper and the norm. But when we read on in the book, the outcome was an active choice of Ellen and a passive one of Newland. It is fascinating to pick up her reasoning why she exerted so much restraint on her emotions and in so doing, also restrained Newland's. Here is what Ellen said to Newland: 'But from the beginning, I felt that there was no one as kind as you; no one who gave me reasons that I understood for doing what at first seemed so hard and - unnecessary. The very good people didn't convince me; I felt they'd never been tempted. But you knew; you understood; you had felt the world outside tugging at one with all its golden hands - and yet you hated the things it asks of one; you hated happiness bought by disloyalty and cruelty and indifference. That was what I'd never known before - and it's better than anything I've known.' (p.110) When Newland mentioned his 'right', she responded, 'Ah, you've taught me what an ugly word that is.' (p.111) Ellen made her choice because she saw how her wider family operated and interacted, something that she had never observed from a close quarter until then because she was brought up in Europe. She had found something 'better than anything I've known'. That sounds a perfectly good reason to me to rein in the force that was going to destroy the harmony. To her, it wasn't just a duty but something 'better'. I think this is a very good antidote to our individualism, self-centredness, and love-above-all mentality. There are things better than love. There are other means to bring about happiness than love. There are other human virtues that are as worthy of praise as love. Ellen's choice is not that shocking if we step aside of our self-centredness.Thereafter, her decisions and choice were her effort in keeping that balance, which she submitted Newland to it even against his wish: 'It was the perfect balance she had held between their loyalty to others and their honesty to themselves that had so stirred and yet tranquilised him; a balance not artfully calculated, as her tears and her falterings showed, but resulting naturally from her unabashed sincerity.' (p.155) 'She would go (back to her husband) only if she felt herself becoming a temptation to Archer, a temptation to fall away from the standard they had both set up. Her choice would be to stay near him as long as he did not ask her to come nearer; and it depended on himself to keep her just there, safe but secluded.' p.155.Of course, the delicate balance could not be sustained as the temptation was too big. They nearly blew it if not for May Welland, who feeling under threat, intervened and foiled their plan by awakening Ellen's conscience. In the end she had to leave, back to Europe but not back to her husband. Even then Newland was prepared to chase after her if not for the family responsibility brought on by the expanded family.The ending probably is not a tragedy - perhaps Ellen found love thereafter, the book does not say anything about Ellen. Newland's life on the other hand has fulfilled all expectations and Ellen came to symbolise what he had missed in life. That's all right, isn't it? No one can have everything in life. I think the decision, albeit agonising, is the right one, because it is a mirage of modern time to believe that two people can be truly happy just on their love for one another if many loved ones are hurt by their getting together. How can you be truly happy if you know that you have wronged someone deeply?The book surprises me in that New York was depicted as more stifling than Europe, where Ellen could be free. Europe in my mind also had a lot etiquette and social expectations and ranks. New York, or America in general, was freer in my perception. I may be wrong, but I wonder if this is because people live far away from home and extended family and therefore naturally will be freer to be themselves and do what they want.One of the main focuses of the book is the tug between social expectations, duty and decency on the one hand, and one's own private desires on the other. As Wilberforce has dissected for us in his Practical View of Christianity, it is a fatal error to detach morality from its foundation. I believe that this conflict will go on forever if we do not have higher reason beyond ourselves and society for morality. Morality cannot survive on its own without its anchor. If it is detached from its foundation, it will only be chipped away gradually over time by the force of our private desires, as we have indeed seen in our 21st century society.The author writes well, full of description and satires of the social norms of her day. It is engaging and keeps us thinking. I think Book I is better than Book II, as the latter doesn't grip our attention as fully as the former. An enjoyable and worthwhile read overall.

Acutely observed in its slightly clinical descriptions of the upper-class inhabitants, their attitudes (among which anti-semitism is prominent) and their surroundings in New York 1870. But also, in contrast, in its vivid and sympathetic examination of the protagonist's intense inner life, in particular a romantic obsession. It becomes increasingly clear that he prefers his treasured dreams to realities, and maybe these dreams make it difficult for him to see people as they actually are. But I did find the last part of the novel, where these aspects come to the fore, very moving and the ending convincing. I think I would probably have done the same thing myself.Beautifully written. The prose is unfailingly elegant, if slightly complex. Some vivid imagery (for example the image of a river incessantly running which comes towards the end).Just a few words about the introduction written by English academic: I found this singularly unilluminating in terms of helping me to form a view about the merits of the novel. There, to be fair, is an apparently thorough examination of the literary criticism, but it is as though the critical literature is of much greater interest than the work of literature it purports to be examining. I wonder if this is in facr typical of academic literary criticism.

I came to Edith Wharton's "The Age of Innocence" via a reading of another novel, of her's, namely Ethan Frome. Ethan Frome enticed me to read other novels by Wharton because in about 120 pages the novella threw up some interesting and pertinent themes such as the human being's capacity to revolt against the strictures of their social mores whilst at the same time being able to accept the limits to which they can stretch that revolt and come to some form of compromise that allows them to maintain some degree of individuality without overly upsetting the norms of their social milieu. On a much broader and more in-depth scale, The Age of innocence explores such themes.The novel is broadly set in New York at about the end of the First World War. Wharton's characters are wealthy, upper middle class and striving to maintain the social mores that define their social milieu. Her characters organise exclusive social gatherings, attend the opera and gossip about the behaviour and fortune of each other. The two protagonists that potentially disrupt and shake up the attitude and behaviour of this group are Newland Archer and Ellen Olenska. Ellen, a member of the Welland family, has lived in Europe in an unhappy marriage to one count Olenska. She returns to New York apparently to escape the count's depravity and ultimately obtain a divorce. Ellen represents the outsider who perhaps unwittingly disrupts the cosy social life of her family and their friends. Newland Archer, a young lawyer engaged to May Welland, a cousin of Ellen Olenska, is given the task of persuading Ellen not to seek a divorce from her husband. A divorce would undermine the family's standing in their social context. Newland and Ellen basically fall in love leaving Newland torn between abandoning his engagement to May with all the consequences that would follow and eloping with Ellen. He stands by May and marries her. It is the subsequent tension between sticking to social norms or disrupting them and thereby engendering a new way of behaviour and doing things that Wharton brilliantly explores.If one were to place Wharton's novel into a genre, if only to grasps her approach and what she does, then it could be argued that it has its roots in nineteenth century psychological realism. The novel is a fine example of that approach. As I read it, I was reminded of George Eliot's Middlemarch. Wharton's long sentences with their sub-clauses reveal nuances in her character's thoughts which in turn present us with fully rounded characters. Her tone is sardonic and to some extent cynical of the social world into which she takes the reader.Having said the above in praise of the novel, I must admit that I had two major gripes with it. The first is that I had no sympathy for Wharton's well-to-do characters. And secondly the social world into which Wharton takes the reader is anathema to me. These are two very subjective criticisms that say a lot about my position and values rather than any necessary inherent fault with the novel. Nonetheless, I simply found this world of snobbery and opera attendance, not for any appreciation of the opera but simply as a result of one's social position, dull and a little tedious to read about.The novels of Edith Wharton are a fairly new discovery for me. I like the themes she explores and her characters are well drawn. Pushing a hundred years since Wharton wrote, the two novels I have read are still relevant today and worth reading.

I love the cover, a fashion plate done in 1913 for Paquin. The lady's dress and hat decorated with daisies, while she plucks the petals of a daisy to see if her love loves her. The theme continues in the first pages when the hero comes into the NY opera in time to hear the diva singing 'M'ama ..... non m'ama' (he loves me - he loves me not) 'since an unalterable and unquestionable law of the musical wortld required the german text of a french opera sung by swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of the english speaking audience'. The first chapter is stuffed w<ith memorable phrases from the elegant and fashionble Miss Wharton. The book has lots of charm and historically is very interesting with the authors inside view of old NY society and their ways, all to be flouted by the heroine, Countess Ellen Oblenska; who returns after about 10 years of glamorous marriage with a very rich Polish count who she met in Paris dancing in Tuileries!!! to the imagined security of her childhood years in NY. The hero, engaged to a young & inocent girl with a large dot, is carried away by the romantism of this exotic person who he knew as a child. So the eternal triangle exists, he sends large bunches of lily of the valley to his fiancée and golden yellow roses to the countess, whose cozy room is already filled with hothouse orchids and carnations from other admirers. The on off romance continues over years and has a very poignant and fitting end. Wharton was the first woman to win the Pullitser prize and she deserved it.

Boring boring boring. If you like social novels, where you get the intimate details of opera trips and planning dinners then go ahead. I genuinely can’t believe that this is a classic - nothing happens. For like 300 pages. Then they go to Paris and nothing happens again. Ugh.