The Age of Innocence

Wow, that ending.

It was just as frustrating as the world that Newland Archer lives in. His eldest son, Dallas, couldn't have put it any better.

"You never did ask each other anything, did you? And you never told each other anything. You just saw and watched each other, and guessed at what was going on underneath. A deaf-and-dumb asylum, in fact!"

Then, Newland Archer took his cue solely from the fact that the Countess Olenska's manservant kept the balcony awnings and closed the shutters - and left after thirty years of not seeing her. I'm just blown away.

Overall, this was a great book examining the slowly cracking facade of the New York social scene, and the interface between the generation obsessed with Society and the museum-like superficiality that its participants needed to live every aspect of their lives with, and the one that throws these things to the wind. Amazingly and intricately written, it was an engaging read that kept me going page after page, despite a lack of “action” in its traditional sense.

Qué bonito y qué triste!

Me quedo con la forma de describir escenas y sentimientos de la autora. El argumento no me ha terminado de enganchar, pero sin duda querré leer otros libros de Edith Wharton.
A pesar de no ser mi tipo de libros favorito, la descripción de los personajes tan detallada y esa habilidad par hablar de sus sentimientos ha conseguido que sufra con ellos y que, a pesar de no tenerme enganchada, haya medio lamentado que llegue el final del libro... difícil de explicar!

Newland Archer has it all—he's a gentleman lawyer, occasionally popping into the office to do little bits of work, but generally occupying himself dining and socializing with his fellow affluent friends—and now, to cap off a wonderful life, his beloved May has agreed to marry him. What more could he want? Until he meets May's bohemian cousin, Ellen, and falls under her spell....

I am enchanted with this story, set in 1870's Gilded Age New York City, when the values and morals adhered to by society were beginning to come undone. It will definitely be on my Best Reads of the Year list.

Set in a New York of the 1870s Wharton won the Pulitzer Prize for this novel. Apparently she was displeased to find that it was chosen due to having “best present[ed] the wholesome atmosphere of American life and the highest standard of American manners and manhood” and rightly so as her novel shows the pompous idiocy of that generation trapped by the rules of their society.

I'm sure there are people who have had to read this book at school and discuss the imagery (Newland Archer, is his name a shadow of the New World to come, is he an ironic pioneer who cannot partake?). But there is such joy on Wharton's descriptions as she pokes fun at the staid and stuffy society he inhabits.

The pictures she paints are so clear that I was shocked to discover Scorsese had cast Winona Ryder as May and Michelle Pfeiffer as Ellen - if anything I'd have put them the other way around. I can't imagine how he filmed what is essentially an examination of unrequited love in a repressed society where glances speak volumes.

I was not surprised at how the novel ended, in the end it was only proper. But I can't say I wasn't a little disappointed on both Newland and Ellen's behalf. The true innocent here turned out to be Newland himself and his wife, May, the victorious hunter.

“‘Women ought to be free - as free as we are,' he declared, making a discovery of which he was too irritated to measure the terrific consequences.”

So states Newland towards the end of chapter 5. But, alas, none of you were really free.

Such an adorable surprise! It started a bit aloof but soon I was fully immersed in the hipocrisy, the families discussing each other's lives and influencing their futures, the love expressed and surprisingly not obvious as other triangles could have been - I acknowledge that to being a woman writer, so subtle and delicate yet deep and clear. Newland and that ending, Ellen and her dignity, May and her bovine mood - and yet! ... really gave me a lovely afternoon.

‰ЫПSomething he knew he missed: the flower of life. But he thought of it now as a thing so unattainable and improbable that to have repined would have been like despairing because one had not drawn the first prize in a lottery. There were a hundred million tickets in his lottery, and there was only one prize; the chances had been too decidedly against him.‰Ыќ

Oh what webs people create for themselves to try to adhere to what's decent on the surface while their desires and actions simultaneously undermine the whole thing. This tortured book could have been avoided if they had just been respectively divorced and freed of an engagement but after reading this I can see why they didn't. They had entrapped themselves in a mesh of invisible wires that govern and shape human interactions.