The design and UX isn't done, Rob and Abbie, okkurrrr! 😌
aaron444's review against another edition
- 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
5.0
Graphic: Infidelity
Minor: Slavery
evangelinedellamonte's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
Graphic: Infidelity
ashsparrow's review against another edition
- 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? It's complicated
3.5
Graphic: Infidelity
Moderate: Misogyny, Sexism, Toxic relationship, and Classism
bloomingpear's review against another edition
- 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? It's complicated
3.75
Moderate: Infidelity and Classism
jodar's review against another edition
- 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? No
5.0
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.
Minor: Classism and Infidelity
yolanda_h's review against another edition
- 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
Graphic: Sexism, Classism, and Infidelity
stardustmelody's review against another edition
- 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
Graphic: Infidelity, Classism, and Gaslighting
Minor: Abandonment, Ableism, Body shaming, Racial slurs, Pregnancy, Toxic relationship, Alcohol, Death, Death of parent, Racism, Colonisation, and Antisemitism
toffishay's review against another edition
- 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
Graphic: Classism, Infidelity, and Toxic relationship
Moderate: Fatphobia
Minor: Sexism, Pregnancy, and Racial slurs
annapox's review against another edition
- 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
Moderate: Fatphobia, Body shaming, Classism, and Infidelity
Minor: Antisemitism, Fire/Fire injury, Medical content, Racism, Sexism, Terminal illness, Ableism, Alcohol, Death, Death of parent, and Racial slurs
chelsaat's review against another edition
- 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
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.
Moderate: Infidelity