The Age Of Innocence, By Edith Wharton

The Age of Innocence, written by Edith Wharton, develops the theme of conflict between an individual and the society. The novel emphasizes the urge for personal fulfillment and the need for group stability. In fact, two problems are investigated in this novel: the moral issue of the needs of the individual versus the claims of tradition, family and community; and the nature of that community. In addition, Wharton uses her past as an inspiration for her novels, such as the Age of Innocence. As Chelsea House suggests, Wharton "journeys into her own past, a past which she had rejected, in order to recapture a time of lost stability and to achieve a reconciliation with the past." This novel is difficult to see as a story about reconciliation, rather,

Wharton begins the novel with the tied theme of marriage and freedom. Marriage represents the advantages and disadvantages of order, reason and social convention, however, against it stands the attraction of freedom, impulse and individuality. As Ellen continues to enlighten Archer, he finds himself ruminating over the roles of sexes. His reflection, however, results in an argument over women's freedom as he defends Ellen's nonconformity, "Why shouldn't she be conspicuous if she chooses? Why should she slink about as if it were she who had disgraced herself? . . . I'm sick of the hypocrisy that would bury alive a woman of her are if her husband prefers to live with harlots . . . Women ought to be free - as free as we are." (41-42) Ellen's marital dilemma prompts Archer to analyze the complex double standards on which his relationship with May and other women in Victorian New York are based. Archer begins to ruminate on Ellen's divorce case according to reason rather than convention. However, freedom through divorce is practically impossible in this society who believe that separation is better than divorce, which ultimately means freedom, because it causes less of a scandal. Ellen suffers because she is sacrificing her desires to the society. To deal with many centuries of oppression, women use an artificial product to insert their power in the society. This power is developed from "Untrained human nature [which] was not frank and innocent, it was full of twists and defenses of an instinctive guile" and those in the female world feel "oppressed by this creation of factitious purity, so cunningly manufactured by a conspiracy of mothers and aunts and grandmothers and long-dead ancestress." Wharton conveys the idea that women have used underhanded techniques to insert their power in an oppressive patriarchal