The Age of Innocence: Book Two

The Age of Innocence read-along is hosted by Beth at Bookworm Meets Bookworm. Today we are posting our thoughts on Book Two and the entire novel overall. You can read my thoughts on Book One here.

Oh Edith Wharton - she is truly fantastic. Prior to The Age of Innocence, I had only read Ethan Frome, which I liked very much. Wharton has now established herself to be a master in relating a tortured love story. But it really is much more than that. I think one of the things that makes The Age of Innocence so powerful is Wharton's ability to impose the character's emotions onto the reader. Book One concluded with the announcement that Archer's wedding had been pushed forward. We still weren't sure what would happen with Ellen and I wondered whether or not Archer would go through with the wedding. Book Two opens on Archer's wedding day. Wharton throws her readers into the event - highlighting the haste and slight confusion Archer himself undergoes. Wharton also does this to the reader in the end when we jump forward many years to learn about May's death, the birth of Archer's children and his son's engagement to Fanny Beaufort. There is a disconnection between Archer's life as we left it and the one that we now learn about.

Nothing could more clearly give the measure of the distance that the world had traveled. People nowadays were too busy - busy with reforms and "movements," with fads and fetishes and frivolities - to bother much about their neighbors. And of what account was anybody's past, in the huge kaleidoscope where all the social atoms spun around on the same plane?

In my post on Book One I mentioned that this book is almost a work of observational anthropology, critiquing our inherent societal values and rejection of the unusual. These ideas are true throughout Book Two as well. Wharton further examines Old New York society in Book two by considering its gender relations. In Book One we are lead to believe May falls short of average intelligence, but in Book Two we see her "blue eyes wet with victory" when Archer knows he must stay with her and let Ellen go. I think Wharton is highlighting the underrated astuteness of the girl who plays dumb, and the true potential they hold to get exactly what they want. Wharton also touches on the double standards of an affair and then examines them backward, insisting that a woman is prone to changing her mind and acting impetuously, and it's the man who should be at fault for adulterous actions. I found Wharton's examination of gender relations in Book Two both interesting and witty.

When reading books I am usually hesitant to believe two characters in a novel are truly in love. The author really has to show me this emotion and make it unique - in The Age of Innocence, I never doubted Archer's love for Ellen. Wharton really pulled at my heart strings when Archer picks up Ellen at the train station and states,

Do you know - I hardly remembered you?
Hardly remembered me?
I mean: how shall I explain? I - it's always so. Each time you happen to me all over again.

Now, a discussion of the ending (spoiler alert). I think Wharton really does this entire novel justice when Archer walks away from Ellen without even saying hello years later. I don't think this novel was ever just a love story, which is what it would have been had Archer and Ellen ended up together. I think this is a story about a life of regret. I think this is a novel that articulates the importance of timing in life and the mutability of of our everyday world. It's about doing what's best for those you care about and stifling selfish motivations. It highlights the repercussions of the choices we make and the inability to go back and do things differently. I think it's about understanding societal constraints and despite a yearning for something more, facing the inability to break free of those constraints. All in all, the ending as it was made me think about the book as a whole more than I would have had Ellen and Archer lived happily ever after. Well played, Edith Wharton. Well played.

The Age of Innocence won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize in fiction.

Publisher: Macmillan, 1920

The Age of Innocence: Book One

The Age of Innocence Read-along is hosted by Beth at Bookworm Meets Bookworm. Today we are posting our thoughts on Book One.

The Age of Innocence earned Edith Wharton the Pulitzer Prize in 1921. Set in "Old New York," we meet Newland Archer, who represents the ultimate figure in New York society. He is recently engaged to May Welland, a marriage that will unite two of New York's oldest families. Enter Countess Ellen Olenska, May's unconventional cousin who has just returned from Europe after a failed marriage.

From the beginning of the novel Wharton evokes the feeling of high-society New York through imagery and language. The opening scene takes us to an opera, an event attended by good society; a place where one can be seen in high fashion, displaying astute manners - while also keeping a close eye on their company, keeping up with the latest social news and gossiping about others when prompted. The opera has the benefit of being "small and inconvenient," thus keeping out the "new people whom New York was beginning to dread and yet be drawn to".

Countess Olenska is one of these characters who is dreaded. She and her cousin May could not be more different. While May is eager to please with her understanding of New York society and it's social expectations, Countess Olenska is more vivacious, understanding New York to be a place where one is taken on vacation "when one has been a good little girl and done all one's lessons". Of course the passionate and unusual (if not sometimes offensive) qualities of Olenska begin to enamor Archer, intriguing him more so than his traditional and meek fiance. Soon he beings to question his engagement.

He saw his marriage becoming what most other marriages about him were: a dull association of material and social interests held together by ignorance on the one side and hypocrisy on the other.

The idea of freedom from society is a prevalent theme in book one. Early on, when defending the Countess, Archer states, "Woman ought to be free - as free as [men] are". He then goes on to feel increasingly oppressed - oppressed by societal expectations and its ridged, unimaginative mores.

And he felt himself oppressed by this creation of factitious purity, so cunningly manufactured by a conspiracy of mothers and aunts and grandmothers and long-dead ancestresses, because it was supposed to be what he wanted, what he had a right to, in order that he might exercise his lordly pleasure in smashing it like an image made of snow.

It isn't until Archer is able to free himself from the city and it's social constrains that he allows himself to fully admit his feeling toward Olenska. It's not suprising that Olenska mimics these this feeling of constraint and yearning toward freedom. After returning to New York her Grandmother wanted Olenska to live with her, to which Olenska explains she had to live on her own - she "had to be free".

Thoughts:

So far I am really enjoying this novel - more so than I thought I would. It's almost a work of observational anthropology, critiquing our inherent societal values and rejection of the unusual. It's like society itself is a main character, because it's that prevalent throughout book one. It has a constant weight and pull on each character and their actions.

Of course I am hoping Archer ends of up the Countess in the end, but he's dug himself into somewhat of a hole. After he convinces the Countess not to divorce and sue her husband (a case in which he would have headed), he realizes he is in love with her, but isn't able to marry her as long as she listens to his advice and doesn't divorce.

Also, I like the bits that describe Archer as an avid reader - getting excited about a new box of books and preferring the "prospect of a quite Sunday at home with his spoils". Later, when he can't get his mind of the Countess after his return from Highbank, he tries to read and while he "turned the pages with the sensuous joy of a book-lover, he did not know what he was reading". I think this is a feeling that all readers can relate, and I enjoy these "bookish" descriptions Wharton includes.

I've also got to say that of May and the Countess - I really relate to the Countess. I'm quite outgoing - sometimes, but rarely, to the point of obnoxious - but have never regretted this quality of mine. I think it's better to be oneself than try to squeeze into a mold that doesn't quite fit. Some of my all-time favorite literary characters have been carefree women who forge their own path regardless of what people think and Countess Olenska is certainly one of these characters. I don't think that she doesn't recognize her "misbehavior" in the sense that it goes against scoietal norms - I think it's that she doesn't care. She would rather stay true to herself and seek freedom from these constrains.

I'm really looking forward to book two. I'm hoping Archer can man-up!

Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence Read-Along

Beth over at Bookworm Meets Bookworm is hosting The Age of Innocence Read-Along and I just signed up! The Age of Innocence won the Pulitzer Prize in 1921. Until now I've only read Wharton's Ethan Frome and I'm excited to tackle another one of her titles.

The read-along will be split into two parts - Book One and Book Two - and will take place from February 2nd to March 2nd. There will be a post for each section:

If you are interested in participating (and I think you should!) you can sign up at Bookworm Meets Bookworm.

Ethan Frome - Edith Wharton

If I were to review this novel using one word, I would say "bleak". After the last novel I read, I wanted to read something a little more uplifting. I picked up Ethan Frome - my first Edith Wharton - thinking it was probably a love story that would leave me smiling. Well, it was a love story, but it is one of the saddest love stories I have read in quite awhile. It's a very beautiful novel, but also incredibly heartbreaking. Since the novel is told in flashback form, the reader knows from the start Wharton does not offer a happy ending. Because of this device each page seems a little heavier, ultimately delivering a deep and emotional punch.

This is a novel about tragic longing and reckless passion. For me, what stood out the most in Wharton's work (besides the beautifully tragic ending) was her winter imagery. She writes of winter in a way that actually makes me yearn for snow, but look forward to Spring:

But at sunset the clouds gathered again, bringing an earlier night, and the snow began to fall straight and steadily from a sky without wind, in a soft universal diffusion more confusing than the gusts and eddies of the morning. It seemed to be a part of the thickening darkness, to be the winter night itself descending on us layer by layer.

The frozen, sparse landscape mirrors the state of Ethan's heart and also works to create a sense of oppressiveness throughout the novel, an oppressiveness that effects each character in the novel: 

He seemed a part of the mute melancholy landscape, an incarnation of its frozen woe, with all that was warm and sentient in him fast bound below the surface.

I really enjoyed this novel. Wharton is a fantastic writer and I look forward to reading more of her work. 

Publisher: Scribner, 1911