Building Your Library: The Age of Innocence

Author: Edith Wharton

Recommended Reading: The Age of Innocence

“There was no reason why the young man should not have come earlier, for he had dined at seven, alone with his mother and sister, and had lingered afterward over a cigar in the gothic library with glazed black-walnut bookcases and finial-topped chairs which was the only room in the house Mrs. Archer allowed smoking.” (4 The Age of Innocence)

Published serially and in volume form in 1920 Edith Wharton’s novel of a bygone New York of the 1870s made her the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1921. As I’ve already recommended two works from the 1920s I decided to begin with this particular text by Wharton, though any of her New York novels are a joy to read.

I’m particularly excited to recommend this novel today because, if you’re following my research or curious about my scholarly output, I’ll be giving a presentation on this particular text at the Edith Wharton conference happening in New York this summer, and I’m working on an article on this particular novel, so, this isn’t just a novel recommendation, but a recommendation of a work that I spend a lot of time with.

Written in the aftermath of the First World War, when Wharton was still living in Paris, the novel revisits the New York of Wharton’s childhood, a period when New York was undergoing rapid change, though Wharton represents it as a period when the old New York was still in tact. The novel follows Newland Archer, a man from Wharton’s own class, belonging not to the Dutch patroons nor to any family that could claim aristocratic lineage, but to that old merchant-class who have lived comfortably in Manhattan for generations. The novel opens with him leading exactly this life, attending the opera, about to be engaged to May Welland, a young lady from the same background (though Wharton will describe some differences between the Archer and Welland families) who wears white dresses and always carries white lilies. But this particular evening a new figure enters all of their lives in the form of May’s long absent, married cousin the Countess Ellen Olenska. What ensues brushes against adultery novels like Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina as Newland finds himself drawn to the foreign Ellen in a journey of self and national discovery.

“No expense had been spared on the setting, which was acknowledged to be very beautiful even by people who shared his acquaintance with the opera houses of Paris and Vienna. The foreground, to the footlights, was covered with emerald green cloth. In the middle distance symmetrical mounds of woolly green moss bounded by croquet hoops formed the base of shrubs shaped like orange trees but studded with large pink and red roses.” (6-7 Age of Innocence)

The Age of Innocence is a novel that covers many familiar subjects in Wharton’s oeuvre: unhappy marriages, divorce (or the desire for it), a young society that prides itself on its traditions. It is about Newland’s attachment to New York and its ways, but also his youthful rebellion against them at the beginning of the novel as he fashions himself as a cosmopolitan, familiar with European ways and—from his own perspective—successfully imitating them. At the same time, the novel takes the reader into the rarified world of New York society, with its operas, balls, summers in Newport Rhode Island, and archery contests, it is a novel of manners and a society novel.

While many of Wharton’s novels are set in the early twentieth century, roughly contemporary with when they were written, The Age of Innocence is sometimes thought of as a historical novel because it is set in 1870s New York. It represents a transitional period as described in the opening paragraphs of the novel, when the opera was still performed in a small venue but the possibility of a larger opera house loomed in the distance. This small opera house marks a smaller still society of old families, while the construction of the new opera house allowed for an enlargement of that society. While, like so many of Wharton’s novels, The Age of Innocence features a banker who stands in for the way new money was invading the old system, the novel is primarily populated with debutantes and their families, and the story is a small one, different from Wharton’s contemporary novels in that it is not a novel concerned with social climbing or the penetration of the old society by the new, but, instead, concerned with the smallness and limitations of that original society.

While my last two New York novels written in the 20s are associated with the jazz age, the roaring twenties, and modernism, Wharton is typically seen as a naturalist writer from another era as well as a tastemaker with books out on architecture, gardening, and interior design. While she published some writing about the jazz age, in general she is best recognized for works like Innocence, which are more representative of her own milieu and era. If you’re interested in urban novels from the 1920s or Urban novels focused on New York then The Age of Innocence is a must have to add next to my previously recommended novels. The novel is deliciously gossip-y and at the same time an insiders look at a sub-culture of New York City, one characterized as a small town, which, in and of itself is fascinatingly paradoxical.

Have you read any Wharton, seen any of the adaptations, or are you familiar with Wharton in some way? Tell me in the comments below.