Type of bind: Paperback
Format: Bargain Price
Label: Unknown
Manufacturer: Unknown
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 432
Printing Date: April 01, 2000
Publishing house: Unknown
Sale Popularity Level: 469162
Studio: Unknown
Other books you might be interested in perusing:
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
Engaged to the docile May Welland, Newland Archer falls madly in love with the nonconformist Countess Olenska, an older woman with a reputation, but his allegiance to the social code of their set makes their love an impossibility. Reprint. Movie tie-in. 50,000 very first printing.
Amazon.com Review:
Somewhere in this book, Wharton observes that clever liars always come up with good stories to back up their fabrications, but that really clever liars don't bother to explain anything at all. This is the kind of insight that makes The Age of Innocence so indispensable. Wharton's story of the upper classes of Old New York, and Newland Archer's impossible love for the disgraced Countess Olenska, is a perfectly wrought book about an era when upper-class culture in this country was still a mixture of American and European extracts, and when 'society' had rules as rigid as any in history.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
-
Newland Archer, the protagonist of Edith Wharton's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, opens this story as an almost haughtily optimistic and self-satisfied young man - at the top of New York society, about to announce his engagement to the beautiful and sought-after May Welland, with little to mar what seems to be a life of uninterrupted happiness and fulfillment. Wealth, industry, friends, family, a fiancé he loves dearly....what more could a young man want from life? He can even afford to have a few radical ideas, one of them being the opinion that women should speak their minds and be genuine in their deportment and self-awareness, shaking off - just a little, perhaps - the stringent and elaborate rituals of conformity forced on them by a well-meaning but ultimately hypocritical society.
Despite the slightly smug impression we get of Archer at the beginning, it is this examination of himself that makes the reader realize there's more to him than most men of his age and class; that he possesses a sensitivity and longing for what is real, despite that reality's drawbacks, and it endears him to us. Early on he states, to the shock of his friend, that "Women should be free--as free as we are." Soon after, we get this insight into his mind as he reflects on what he sees around him in the marriages of his friends, parents, and relatives, which is precisely what he is determined to avoid between himself and May:
"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? What if, for some one of the subtler reasons that would tell with both of them, they should tire of each other, misunderstand or irritate each other?
He reviewed his friends' marriages - the supposedly happy ones - and saw none that answered, even remotely, to the passionate and tender comradeship which he pictured as his permanent relation with May Welland. He perceived that such a picture presupposed, on her part, the experience, the versatility, the freedom of judgment, which she had been carefully trained not to possess; and with a shiver of foreboding he saw his marriage becoming what most of the 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.
.....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."
So, this is where Archer is in life when May's cousin Ellen comes to New York from Paris, fleeing an illustriously-placed but disastrous marriage, and her entrance into New York society is tinged with scandal. When Archer falls in love with Ellen against all his better judgment and to what he knows would be the detriment of everything he deems crucial to his happiness, it's a torturous love that nearly drives him mad.
That description may make it sound like a forgettable bit of romance, but forgettable bits of romance don't generally win Pulitzers, and the true heart of this story is about the decisions we make that shape our lives one way or another, and what kind of devastating emotional havoc the `wrong' love can wreak on a person's soul. Archer is forced down an emotionally-tormented path few of us would choose, I think, and in many ways it's both beautiful and tragic to watch his story unfold. I was incredibly moved by it.
As mentioned, The Age of Innocence won Wharton the Pulizer Prize for fiction in 1921, making it the very first time a woman had ever won the award.
Rated by buyers 
-
Exceptional writing on the cultural and individual experiences of living in post war New York society. The question is: what really represents the age of innocence-- the appearance of stability by clinging to the conformity and rituals of the closely monitored, severely judged society or following one's true desire and passion that may disgrace, even destroy you and your family. The conflicts of the characters, and the discoveries in the end are heartbreaking and beautiful.
Rated by buyers -
Imagine living in a world where life is governed by intricate rituals; a world "balanced so precariously that its harmony [can] be shattered by a whisper" (Wharton); a world ruled by self-declared experts on form, propriety and family history - read: scandal -; where everything is labeled and yet, people are not; where in order not to disturb society's smooth surface nothing is ever expressed or even thought of directly, and where communication occurs almost exclusively by way of symbols, which are unknown to the outsider and, like any secret code, by their very encryption guarantee his or her permanent exclusion.
Such, in faithful imitation of Victorian England, was the society of late 19th century upper class New York. Into this society returns, after having grown up and lived all her adult life in Europe, American-born Countess Ellen Olenska, after leaving a cruel and uncaring husband. She already causes scandal by the mere manner of her return; but not knowing the secret rituals of the society she has entered, she quickly brings herself further into disrepute by receiving an unmarried man, by being seen in the company of a man only tolerated by virtue of his financial sucess and his marriage to the daughter of one of this society's most respected families, by arriving late to a dinner in which she has expressly been included to rectify a prior general snub, by leaving a drawing room conversation to instead join a gentleman sitting by himself - and worst of all, by openly contemplating divorce, which will most certainly open up a whole Pandora's box of "oddities" and "unpleasantness:" the strongest terms ever used to express moral disapproval in this particular social context. Soon Ellen, who hasn't seen such façades even in her husband's household, finds herself isolated and, wondering whether noone is ever interested in the truth, complains bitterly that "[t]he real loneliness here is living among all these kind people who only ask you to pretend."
Ellen finds a kindred soul in attorney Newland Archer, her cousin May Welland's fiancé, who secretly toys with a more liberal stance, while outwardly endorsing the value system of the society he lives in. Newland and Ellen fall in love - although not before he has advised her, on his employer's and May and Ellen's family's mandate, not to pursue her plans of divorce. As a result, Ellen becomes unreachable to him, and he flees into accelerating his wedding plans with May, who before he met Ellen in his eyes stood for everything that was good and noble about their society, whereas now he begins to see her as a shell whose interior he is reluctant to explore for fear of finding merely a kind of serene emptiness there; a woman whose seemingly dull, passive innocence grinds down every bit of roughness he wants to maintain about himself and who, as he realizes even before marrying her, will likely bury him alive under his own future. Then his passion for Ellen is rekindled by a meeting a year and a half after his wedding, and an emotional conflict they could hardly bear when he was not yet married escalates even further. And only when it is too late for all three of them he finds out that his wife had far more insight (and almost ruthless cleverness) than he had ever credited her with.
Winner of the 1921 Pulitzer Prize and the very first work of fiction written by a woman to be awarded that distinction, "The Age of Innocence" is one of Edith Wharton's most enduringly popular novels; the crown jewel among her subtly satirical descriptions of New York upper class society. By far not as overtly condemning and cynical as the earlier "House of Mirth" (for which Wharton reportedly even saw this later work as a sort of apology), "The Age of Innocence" is a masterpiece of characterization and social study alike: an intricate canvas painted by a master storyteller who knew the society which she described inside out, and who, even though she had moved to France (where she would continue living for the rest of her life) almost a decade earlier, was able to delineate late 19th century New York society's every nuance in pitch-perfect detail, while at the same time - seemingly without any effort at all - also blending together all these minute details into an impeccably composed ensemble that will stay with the reader long after he has turned the last page.
Also recommended:
Wharton: Four Novels (Library of America College Editions)
Edith Wharton: Vol 1. Collected Stories:1891-1910 (Library of America)
Edith Wharton: Vol.2 Collected Stories 1911-1937 (Library of America)
Henry James : Novels 1881-1886: Washington Square, The Portrait of a Lady, The Bostonians (Library of America)
Henry James: Novels 1901-1902: The Sacred Fount / The Wings of the Dove (Library of America)
Ethan Frome
The House of Mirth
Washington Square
The Portrait of a Lady
The Wings of the Dove
Rated by buyers 
-
I really liked Wharton's "House of Mirth" but could not stand this book. I think it was my extreme dislike of all the characters--all shallow, manipulative people who rigidly followed the aristocratic social mores of the time. The language was stilted and the social scenes boring. Read "House of Mirth" and forget this one.
Rated by buyers -
"...people who dreaded scandal more than disease, who placed decency above courage, and who considered that nothing was more ill-bred than "scenes", except the behavior of those who gave rise to them." Edith Wharton "The Age of Innocence"
The realm of high society in 1870's New York was a world that was much more sated with hypocrisy and odious ostentation than of innocence. Most of the main characters in this classic made my stomach turn, talk about a bunch of phony, self-important, affected aristocrats. However, what really made this Pulitzer Prize winner so enjoyable for me is the main female character - Countess Ellen Olenska. What a wonderful creation! She is not the least bit pretentious (she actually treats her maid as an equal and friend) and possesses a genuine, compassionate heart of gold. She had the courage to stand alone and be her own person, despite being ostracized from her inner circle.
The story centers upon the upcoming marriage of one of N.Y.'s elite couples - Newland Archer and May Welland - and the free spirited Ellen, who has all of upper-class society in an uproar since separating from her abusive husband. For in their myopic world, divorce is not an option and most of her family and friends believe she should go back to her husband despite all the unhappiness he has caused her with his persistently perfidious ways. Ellen's arrival also abruptly shakes the fragile foundation of Archer and May's union. For when Archer very first meets the Countess, his life and his future dreams suddenly change drastically. For the very first time in his life, Ellen helps him see how truly trapped he is in his superficial world.
This may be a fictional novel, and it may take place in a different era and place, but the world of the privileged class hasn't changed all that much in today's American society. Bottom line, Edith's attention to detail is dead-on accurate when depicting the singular, shallow world of the elite. This is the very first Wharton novel I have ever read, however, as a fan of Naturalism (i.e. Zola, Maupassant, Dreiser, Steinbeck, et al...) I knew I had to give her a shot. Needless to say, I was not disappointed in the least. I really enjoy her witty style and also the empathy she showed toward the plight of her characters, particularly her main protagonist Newland Archer and his shallow wife May.
Definitely recommended!!!
Find other books like this one:
