5 stars
I absolutely love this book. Absolutely love it. Edith Wharton is now one of my favorite authors because wow this is how you tell a story.
I saw the movie first (I know that's a cardinal sin of book lovers, please forgive me) and I just had to read the book because it was such a dynamic story with fascinating characters and a detailed look at this Gilded Age world.
The Age of Innocence takes place in Gilded Age New York City (1870s ish) and follows Newland Archer, a member of one of the rich high society families, as he falls in love with his fiancée's cousin. Newland's fiancée, May, is part of another established high society family, but her cousin, the Countess Ellen Olenska, has been largely ostracized by society because she has left her marriage and abusive husband, the Count Olenski, in Europe and returned home. Wives leaving marriages in the 1870s? Big no-no.
Edith Wharton masterfully crafts a story that is equally nostalgic and critical. Wharton had grown up in the rigidly structured high society of the Gilded Age and was highly disparaging of all of the rules of the society that punished people who were different. Her criticisms and ridicule of the absurd wealth and lifestyle of the Gilded Age form the center of this book, because Newland is different from the rest of high society in that he wants more out of life than sitting amongst his riches, and he is drawn to Ellen for her difference as well. But by the time Wharton wrote The Age of Innocence in 1920, that society that she had grown up in was almost completely gone, and so there is an undercurrent of sentimentality for the lost world.
“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.”
“The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend!”
There is a love triangle as Newland deliberates between his fiancée May and his new love Ellen, but it's not like a love triangle you've ever read before. It's not a stupid love triangle like many that are in current books, but a deep one that represents much more than just choosing between people. May and Ellen each represent completely different lifestyles, and being with either of them would have very different consequences on Newland's life. May represents safety, predictability, acceptance. Marrying May was what Newland's family and May's family and everyone else in New York expected him to do. They would live out a predictable life enjoying their wealth, and a safe life. Newland truly cares for May, because she could be deep and had profound understandings of emotion, but he is frustrated that she cannot understand like he does that both of them are trapped in the regulation of their society, unable to fully be who they want to be.
“His whole future seemed suddenly to be unrolled before him; and passing down its endless emptiness he saw the dwindling figure of a man to whom nothing was ever to happen.”
Ellen on the other hand represents deep and all-consuming love, but also a life of exile and rejection. Ellen is largely ostracized by high society, and if Newland left May for Ellen, he too would be ostracized. Theirs would be an unpredictable life of isolation, but also one of passionate love.
Newland is a character that you can get behind. He is respectful and intelligent, and recognizes high society and wealth for the cage that it is. He broods, but never too much. He never plays with either May or Ellen's affections because he simply respects them both too much. He is full of modern ideas, especially about female emancipation which is one of my favorite elements of the book. Newland fully supports Ellen leaving her husband, rejecting convention and marriage for her freedom from abuse, but his views are not shared by the rest of New York society.
“'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.”
Ellen, who could easily be portrayed as a simple victim, is a complex and fascinating character who can be both naive at times in her view of New York as a haven, as well as world-weary and cynical. May is another compelling character, who is much deeper than she seems.
Wharton's writing is exceptional and beautiful. The Age of Innocence is one of the most wonderfully written books I have ever read, hands down. Wharton's prose is compulsively readable, flowing so well that you won't want to put the book down at all. She has a witty and ironic sense of humor, based mostly on dry observations of the hypocrisy and foolishness of high society at the time.
This had me cackling:
“It was one of the great livery-stableman's most masterly intuitions to have discovered that Americans want to get away from amusement even more quickly than they want to get it.”
So did this:
."..an unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences."
And those were just on the first page.
Wharton also deftly handles scenes of great emotion, a spectacular feat because in Gilded Age high society one did not say what they meant or reveal any deep emotions, so the emotions in this book were either inside Newland's head or communicated through a single gesture or emphasis on one word in a phrase.
The ending of The Age of Innocence gets me every time, right in the heart. It's so beautifully and exquisitely written. I just love this book so much. It's irresistibly readable, with deep multi-dimensional characters. It's funny and witty, while also being profoundly and stirringly emotional.
“Each time you happen to me all over again."
How romantic is that?