The Age of Innocence

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.