Reviews with content warning for Infidelity - The Age of Innocence

Nooooooooo! How can the story end like this? But it makes sense; yes, it does make sense. When I calm down and consider all the personal history and emotions that came before it, it ends well. It does end well. And throughout it is such an amazing novel, well-written and emotionally unrelenting!

So, from the start: The protagonist is Newland Archer, a young man who enjoys a secure membership in the fashionable, staid and rather shallow society of upper-class 1870s’ New York. Going against largely unspoken conventions of this society, however, can cast a member out of its ranks irrevocably. So a bitter dilemma faces Newland when he falls into a passionate, deep-felt love for a childhood friend, Ellen Olenska.

Ellen has returned from Europe estranged from her foreign husband. Although the cause of her estrangement is left unspoken – to do otherwise would be unseemly – and the fault probably lies with her husband, nonetheless Ellen is under increasing pressure to be reconciled. Marriage is a sacred institution, and upholding it is vital to society’s welfare.

Newland and Ellen face mounting temptation to start an intimate relationship and thus throw aside convention and their position in society. To do so would involve social ostracism and self-exile. During this period, while Newland is forced to distance himself from Ellen, he becomes psychologically alienated:

Outside [his internal mental ‘sanctuary’], 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 absentminded 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. (Chapter 26)

Towards the end of the novel we move forward 30 years, when Newland looks back at his life and considers the consequences of the choices he made. He takes great joy, satisfaction and meaning from how his life has played out. Things may have turned out differently now, he realises, as social conventions have changed; yet the new ways and the old ways each have their merits and disadvantages. With a jolt, too, he comprehends that he had underestimated an intimate’s kindly perceptiveness all along:

[The revelation] seemed to take an iron band from his heart to know that, after all, someone had guessed and pitied.... And that it should have been [her] moved him indescribably. ... To [some], no doubt, the episode was only a pathetic instance of vain frustration, of wasted forces. But was it really no more? For a long time Archer sat on a bench ... while the stream of life rolled by.... (Chapter 34)

That there are no facile answers either to life’s dilemmas of heart and duty or to the demands of the individual and of society; and that current conventions are not necessarily universally superior to those of the past – to me, these are what gives the novel a timeless greatness.

Content Warnings

yolanda_h's review against another edition

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emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

stardustmelody's review against another edition

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reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

Read for book club. A timeless plot, but very flowery language.

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toffishay's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

I love Edith Wharton; she is quickly becoming one of my favorite writers. This plot should be so boring to me! It's a book about rich white aristocrats in 1870s New York, their "high society" troubles, and how their insulated culture prevents anyone in it from truly living. In Newland, we have a character who struggles against the bounds of his society while also finding comfort, security, and identity. In Ellen/Madame Olenska, we have a woman who was raised a little unconventionally and had her fancied nurtured in a way that set her up for failure in a world that still expected her to conform. And May is a woman who represents that old society and lives fully in it in a way that supports her and does not allow her to see what she is missing. All of these characters come together and interact in this melodrama that kept me turning the page. Wharton writes them all in a way that is so human and even when I hate Newland, I feel for him. You pity and understand him. He makes things harder for himself, but he doesn't have as many options as he would want either and there is a sadness that underlines so much of these characters and their lives. This edition had a lot of helpful endnotes and footnotes to explain the references that I did not understand. I think that Wharton is such a writer's writer as well and studying her would be so useful to those looking to tell their own stories of the human condition.

Content Warnings

annapox's review against another edition

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reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

Content Warnings

chelsaat's review against another edition

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emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

“Each time you happen to me all over again.”

Between The Met Gala and the HBO show, the Gilded Age is having a revival of interest. The social conventions were as strict and silly as the Victorian Age over in the UK, but with a distinct Americanness that gives it a special flavor all its own. And the fashion was A+.

The Age of Innocence is the quintessential Gilded Age novel. And man, is it EXCELLENT. Edith Wharton was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1921, and while it’s terrible it took that long, she very much deserved it.

“We can't behave like people in novels, though, can we?”

I just adore Edith Wharton’s sly and sumptuous prose. Written post-WWI, Wharton was far enough removed from the era she grew up in to be able to look back on it more objectively, and with a wry sense of humor at its absurdities. The passages where she describes the hierarchies and faux pas of New York society were some of my favorite bits. True Old Money nonsense.

“Women ought to be free - as free as we are.”

On top of that, you have an incredible love story, full of pining and passion. Newland Archer is tempted to stray outside of social convention to pursue an affair with the dynamic Countess Olenska, but circumstances and his own hangups ultimately prevent him from doing so. He believes himself to be smarter and more imaginative than his dull, vapid wife, but the wonderful thing Wharton does here is subtly show that the women in this society, while adapted to survive, are much sharper than they first appear.

I do think I like The House of Mirth, the other Edith Wharton book I’ve read, slightly more, but I heartily recommend this one as well. Wharton in general needs to be on your list if you haven’t yet read anything of hers. She’s officially one of my favorite classic authors.

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