Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #113736 in Books
• Published on: 1996-05-30
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Synopsis
The return of the beautiful Countess Olenska into the rigidly conventional society of New York sends reverberations throughout the upper reaches of society. Newland Archer, an eligible young man of the establishment is about to announce his engagement to May Welland, a pretty ingenue, when May's cousin, Countess Olenska, is introduced into their circle. The Countess brings with her an aura of European sophistication and a hint of scandal, having left her husband and claimed her independence. Her sorrowful eyes, her tragic worldliness and her air of unapproachability attract the sensitive Newland and, almost against their will, a passionate bond develops between them. But Archer's life has no place for passion and, with society on the side of May and all she stands for, he finds himself drawn into a bitter conflict between love and duty.

From the Publisher
A Norton Critical Edition. The editor, Candace Waid is an Associate Professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Customer Reviews

Where convention rules
The book begins with wit and irony, as Edith Wharton describes the small élite of New York society in the early 1870s. They lived within a whole series of well-understood conventions and assumptions which included nice and minute distinctions within the social hierarchy, a censorious and gossipy attitude towards any member of the set who strayed from what was expected of them in the manners, appropriate cultural interests, dress and furniture, and relations between the sexes. Those who were felt not to conform, such as the American-born Countess Olenska who had returned from Europe, leaving her husband and intending to divorce him, imperilled the reputation of their entire families. In that society, young unmarried women, in particular, were brought up in ignorance of the ways of the world, into which they were initiated only after their marriage. Until then, theirs was the age of innocence of the title.

That is the state in which May Welland was when she was engaged to Newland Archer. May Welland belonged to the same family as the Countess. They were cousins and the granddaughters of the powerful and wealthy matriarch, Mrs Mingott, a pivotal and superbly drawn character, both as to her personality and to her vast appearance. Newland was in a dilemma: he had really shared all the assumptions of his class; but now, to protect his fiancée, he felt he had both to defend the Countess and to dissuade her from going ahead with the divorce. The Countess is `unconventional' in other ways: she consorts with artists, who never mix with the social élite of New York, and she claims the right as a woman to live her own life. She is also very attractive, and Newland, in taking her side, not only finds himself unaccustomedly critical of the conventions in which he has been brought up, but falls in love with her, as she does with him. Then of course he wants her to divorce her husband so that they can marry, though he is engaged to May. The Countess thinks this impossible - perhaps out of loyalty to her cousin May (though this is not made explicit at the time); and Newland then does in fact feel bound to marry May, though he already feels the dread that he would be sucked into the conventional life which he was beginning to find stifling.

May's interests and attitudes indeed turned out to be much the same as those of the society into which she had been born (though she was no fool, understood more than her innocent air suggested, and knew how to use the coded language which said so much more than its surface would suggest). After a year and a half of marriage, Newland was just getting used again to the world in which he had after all also spent most of his earlier life, when the Countess Olenska reappeared in his life. Their love for each other has never died down, but they are no nearer to being able to make a life with each other: his code forbids divorce, and hers forbids the role of a mistress and the betrayal of other members of her family. And of the two, the enigmatic Countess is always the stronger and the saner one.

The strength of the tribe is irresistible, and it is brought out especially in the superlative description, both sardonic and touching, of the farewell dinner given, at May's insistence, in honour of the Countess' return to Europe.

A quarter of a century elapses between then and the last chapter of the book. This, too, is quite outstanding, describing not only how Newland`s family and public life had developed respectably in that time, but also what changes had come over New York society in the interval. Newland's son Dallas is so much less inhibited than his father had been; the stuffy mores of his father's generation have long passed away. In the brief portrayal of Dallas and of the relationship between him and his father Edith Wharton again shows herself as both a brilliant social historian as well as a sophisticated novelist.

suprisingly good
i love classics and when i first started this book i was so disappointed because it is about american's in new york...eewww..this wasn't what i wanted at all. However the more i read the more it drew me in...and it will you till you can't put it down. Superb

The emptiness behind the curtain...
The Age of Innocence is a work of beautifully subtle observation and delicacy, but though Edith Wharton paints with pastels, she delivers a vividly moving and meaningful fable on the damage society can inflict on the individual spirit.

What is fascinating about the novel, for me, is how nothing portrayed is at all as it seems, and yet there are never any glaring or obvious revelations or realisations - Wharton creates an environment in which everything is so delicately balanced that the tiniest ripple can assume seismic proportions. Newland Archer, a slave to respectability, and yet a closet dreamer, sees the beauty of the society he lives in, and its hypocrisy, but he never fully appreciates the strength of its ties and strictures until he finds himself drawn to the lovely Ellen Olenska, who symbolises, for him, a freedom and daring that he has never known. His affianced bride, May Welland, pales in comparison - to him she is merely an obedient ornament, a 'curtain dropped before an emptiness,' but he never realises the strength that lies underneath her apparent frailty. It is the steel in May Welland's character that is one of the most interesting aspects of the novel; Ellen Olenska outwardly appears to be a strong, free spirit, who shuns convention, but she is buffeted and bruised by the society that the delicate May Welland represents. May sees far more than Newland ever credits her for, and it seems that his journey through the novel is chiefly about the gradual realisation of all that he has missed. Newland is perhaps the only true innocent in the world he inhabits.

The novel is intensely bittersweet, and there are no clear heroes or villains, only individual strengths and weaknesses operating in an environment where society itself is the deity that controls all. There is real beauty in Wharton's finely drawn characterisation and her descriptions of a grand and intricately lovely setting, but what she truly portrays through the beauty is the bleak emptiness of a world where souls are sacrificed in order to maintain the sham of society's smooth and polished surface.