Lizzy's Reviews > The Age of Innocence

‘The longing was with him day and night, an incessant undefinable craving, like the sudden whim of a sick man for food or drink once tasted and long since forgotten. He could not see beyond the craving, or picture what it might lead to, for he was not conscious of any wish to speak to Madame Olenska or to hear her voice. He simply felt that if he could carry away the vision of the spot of earth she walked on, and the way the sky and sea enclosed it, the rest of the world might seem less empty.’

There was never getting away from their circumstances for Newland and Ellen, the protagonists of The Age of Innocence. As I weep for them and their unrequited love, I realized it was not meant to be. Edith Wharton depicts masterfully New York’s traditions and judgmental airs, which were from the start against them. This elite group within which they existed had very rigid rules of behavior, social rituals, fashion, and clear censures for those that violated them. There is a clear hypocrisy in their life that existed behind their conservative moral exterior.

"In reality they all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs."

As I started reading Edith Wharton’s crisp prose and witty dialogues, I got to know Newland Archer, May Welland and Ellen, Countess Olenska. What was inescapable from the outset is that they were a product of New York society of their time.

As Newland meets Countess Olenska, he is not prepared for her worldly persona. Thus it is that May and Newland make their engagement public right away, to ease the acceptance of Ellen into their social pack. May is considered the perfect model of what a young wife should be: young, beautiful, soft, obedient, pliant, conventional, and with no opinions on anything of importance. We would consider her boring, but those were different times.

Newland starts out pretty much the same; he's a young lawyer, used to his luxurious and idle style of living; all in accord with the strict rules of society. Yes, both are good persons with many amiable qualities, but they simply are not exceptional. They were clearly not in love, just following rituals that defined that a young man should marry a nice girl with a good family. ’There was no better match in New York than May Welland, look at the question from what point you choose. Of course such a marriage was only what Newland was entitled to…’

Newland and Ellen’s love story is nevertheless magnificent because it is the changes and character growth of both lovers that make it endearing and wonderful. When we first meet Newland Archer he could not have been more in tune with New York society’s status quo:

But Newland Archer was too imaginative not to feel that, in his case and May's, the tie might gall for reasons far less gross and palpable. What could he and she really know of each other, since it was his duty, as a "decent" fellow, to conceal his past from her, and hers, as a marriageable girl, to have no past to conceal?

If Newland Archer seems indecisive and hesitant, it's in part because he is conflicted with his values and desires. He even starts defending new ideas, ”Women ought to be free – as free as we are” Nevertheless, it is easy to note how typical Newland Archer was when we first meet him, how judgmental, how hypocritical:

There was nothing mean or ungenerous in the young man’s heart, and he was glad that his future wife should be restrained by false prudery from being kind (in private) to her unhappy cousin; but to receive Countess Olenska in the family circle was a different thing from producing her in public, at the Opera of all places, and in the very box with the young girl whose engagement to him, Newland Archer, was to be announced in a few weeks. No, he felt as old Sillerton Jackson felt; he did not think the Mingotts would have tried it on!

Could he have been more traditional? ’He hated to think of May Welland's being exposed to the influence of a young woman so careless of the dictates of Taste.’ Yes, in the beginning, he hated the idea of his innocent fiancé being contaminated by the worldly Countess.

Nevertheless, Newland's careful and predictable world is flipped completely upside down when he meets and really gets to know the intriguing and intrepid Countess Olenska. As the plot moves on, we discovered all is not as we first envisioned. Newland is changing as he falls deeper in love with Ellen. He soon starts to show signs of rebelling against his previous ideals, begins transforming himself. A conversation with Ellen’s grandmother and family matriarch is particularly revealing:

"Poor Ellen—she was always a wayward child. I wonder what her fate will be?"

"What we've all contrived to make it," he felt like answering. "If you'd all of you rather she should be Beaufort's mistress than some decent fellow's wife you've certainly gone the right way about it."

But his transformation is not fast or deep enough, he is not able to entirely free himself from the constraints imposed on him by society and his own upbringing. He is not courageous enough?, you might ask. ‘His whole future seemed suddenly to be unrolled before him; and passing down its endless emptiness he saw the dwindling figure of a man to whom nothing was ever to happen.’ But there is much more at play here. He soon realizes how restrictive his marriage was, how loveless and lonely his life would be:

’There was no use in trying to emancipate a wife who had not the dimmest notion that she was not free; and he had long since discovered that May's only use of the liberty she supposed herself to possess would be to lay it on the altar of her wifely adoration.’

And much more,

’He perceived with a flash of chilling insight that in the future many problems would be thus negatively solved for him; nut as he paid the hansom and followed his wife …he took refuge in the comforting platitude that the first six months were always the most difficult in marriage. "After that I suppose we shall have pretty nearly finished rubbing off each other's angles," he reflected; but the worst of it was that May's pressure was already bearing on the very angles whose sharpness he most wanted to keep.’

Even after understanding what his marriage would make of his life, he cannot escape.

"Outside it, in the scene of his actual life, he moved with a growing sense of unreality and insufficiency, blundering against familiar prejudices and traditional points of view as an absent-minded man goes on bumping into the furniture of his own room. Absent—that was what he was: so absent from everything most densely real and near to those about him that it sometimes startled him to find they still imagined he was there."

He cannot break up from convention, although he dreams of going as far as Japan with Ellen:

"Archer had fancied that his path was clear before him. He had meant to have a word alone with Madame Olenska, and failing that, to learn from her grandmother on what day, and by which train, she was returning to Washington. In that train he intended to join her, and travel with her to Washington, or as much farther as she was willing to go. His own fancy inclined to Japan."

Even if the story is told through Newland’s point of view, we cannot forget how much Ellen suffered. Probably even more than him, since it seems she had no choice:

"Oh, I know—I know! But on condition that they don't hear anything unpleasant. Aunt Welland put it in those very words when I tried.... Does no one want to know the truth here, Mr. Archer? The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend!" She lifted her hands to her face, and he saw her thin shoulders shaken by a sob.

We also soon discover that May is not so innocent. Although all her fight seems to be enforced to defend her marriage, its survival, and in that she would never change. What she learned with her mother she would repeat in her marriage 'Now she was simply ripening into a copy of her mother, and mysteriously, by the very process, trying to turn him into a Mr. Welland'. No, she was never weak just limited.

"I told her I was afraid I hadn't been fair to her—hadn't always understood how hard it must have been for her here, alone among so many people who were relations and yet strangers; who felt the right to criticise, and yet didn't always know the circumstances." She paused. "I knew you'd been the one friend she could always count on; and I wanted her to know that you and I were the same—in all our feelings."

But Newland was still dreaming of breaking away from everything, of being with Ellen. He tells May he needs to get away, but she was ahead of him. Not an innocent at all:

”I want to take a break–“
“A break? To give up law?”
“To go away, at any rate – at once. On a long trip, ever so far off – away from everything–“
He paused, conscious that he had failed in his attempt to speak with the indifference of a man who longs for a change and is yet too weary to welcome it. Do what he would, the chord of eagerness vibrated. “Away from everything – “he repeated.
“Ever so far? Where, for instance?” she asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. India – or Japan.”
“As far as that? But I’m afraid you can’t, dear … Not unless you take me with you. …That is, if the doctors let me go …but I’m afraid they won’t. For you see, Newland, I’ve been sure since this morning of something I’ve been longing and hoping for–“
“Have you told anyone else?”
“Only Mama and your mother. …That is – and Ellen. You know I told you we’d had a long talk one afternoon – and how dear she was to me.”
“Ah–“ said Archer, his heart stopping.

What I concluded is that Newland might be rebellious while May is until the end tradition itself. This pattern we witness endlessly, and when Newland ponders what their marriage and family life had been like it is all summed so clearly:

‘This hard bright blindness had kept her immediate horizon apparently unaltered. Her incapacity to recognize change made her children conceal their views from her as Archer concealed his; there had been, from the first, a joint pretense of sameness, a kind of innocent family hypocrisy, in which father and children had unconsciously collaborated.’

For one thing, his life as a man allowed him more freedom even to circumvent social customs for he was not as closely watched. Not that it was easier for him, for he struggles between social conformity and honesty to one's emotions. And not that May would want to change. She was set on her role without any uncertainty.

And often we see him contradict himself. Despite his transformation, we realize he will always be a 19th century man, as we witness him saying things such as “What could he and she really know of each other, since it was his duty, as a "decent" fellow, to conceal his past from her, and hers, as a marriageable girl, to have no past to conceal?”, while later he will dream of running away with Ellen.

The essence of Edith Wharton’s novel is whether Newland and Ellen ever had a chance? Not at their time. And Ellen recognizes reality: ”Ah, my poor Newland – I suppose this had to be… You’re engaged to May Welland; and I’m married”. And Newland replied, “It’s too late to do anything else”. To apart mean a return to their old respective life patterns, but to be together would mean going against what they both loved the most in the other. I can't love you unless I give you up. Being together would mean breaking too many rules, hurting loved ones, and carrying a guilt that would ultimately separate them if not physically for certain emotionally.

"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."

This great work is a bittersweet love story at the mercy of society’s morals and ethics, with conflicting values that prevents them from realizing their most ardent desire to be together. I'd say this is the strong and beautiful point of this classic.

The idea that he could ever, in his senses, have dreamed of marrying Countess Olenska had become almost unthinkable, and she remained in his memory simply as the most plaintive and poignant of a line of ghosts.

Even more heartfelt:

The long was with him day and night, an incessant undeniable craving, like the sudden whim of a sick man for food or drink once tasted and long since forgotten.

The characters are forced to adjust and readjust to their changing life, but that is still not enough. At least it was not in their lifetime. The changes they go through are not deep enough to allow them a happy ever after. How painful to live through this changing times; and how dreadful to accept their fate. I can just imagine and suffer for them, and weep for them. Here lies the greatness of The Age of Innocence.

Their fate was to be apart, and so nothing rests for them but to keep their memories intact. It's what we lost and our memories that stay with us. If he had gone up to meet her, it would be another story.

’"It's more real to me here than if I went up," he suddenly heard himself say; and the fear lest that last shadow of reality should lose its edge kept him rooted to his seat as the minutes succeeded each other.’

Oh, I have to repeat myself: there is nothing more heartbreaking than unrequited love. So I weep again for them.

---
My first impressions:

“I can't love you unless I give you up.”

Oh, Vessey, I just finished The Age of Innocence! And I have to tell you that the last 10% conquered me. It made it me think that it had to be. They were set on their way before Ellen arrived and Newland and Amy made public their engagement. And I believe it had to end as it did. Suddenly, I discovered it deserved 5 full stars. It's what we lost and our memories that stay with us. If he had gone up to meet her, it would be another story.

I loved how it analyzed his marriage with May, the old costumes that are no more. That hypocritical society that held him down is finally fading. But too late for Ellen and Newland.

Well, it is all still too new to me, and the only thing I can say is that it touched me deeply. Maybe more because of my age, since I know enough of life and remember all that I lost and could never simply be revisited.

"It's more real to me here than if I went up," he suddenly heard himself say; and the fear lest that last shadow of reality should lose its edge kept him rooted to his seat as the minutes succeeded each other.

There is nothing more heartbreaking than unrequited love. So I weep for them.
____