The Age Of Innocence, By Edith Wharton

The Age of Innocence is focused around Newland Archer and May Welland’s (an upper-class New York couple’s) impending marriage. While everything originally seemed to be going well for the couple, with Newland Archer highly awaiting the marriage between him and May, Edith Wharton soon introduces May’s cousin, Ellen Olenska, who is shrouded in mystery and scandal (due to her affair and flight away from her husband) which threatens the bliss of the newlywed couple. Wharton puts into question the morals of 1870s New York society and the elite that are so revered there, and she notes how although the upper-class is put on this pedestal above everyone else, in reality the people are savage, brutish, and backstabbing. Logically speaking, the upper-class

His son has discovered that Ellen is living there, and decides to arrange a meeting for both of them to go up and visit her. Newland is almost terrified by this idea, and he resolves to wait outside while he son goes up and talks to her. While the novel ends on an ambiguous note, it fits the overarching narrative of the story, and even though there is not any closure, it makes sense because just like the reader does not getting any closure, neither does Newland. This whole novel is chalk-full of irony about innocence - which makes sense regarding the title. Wharton sets up the characters as contributing to the irony of the novel’s title in the sense that they all exude different forms of innocence: true innocence, feigned innocence, ironic innocence, and unhappy innocence. By the time that Edith Wharton had officially published Age of Innocence, she had been in a lacklustre marriage for over 25 years. She knew that her husband was having an affair, but she decided to purposefully stay innocent and ignore this fact. Reminiscing about her childhood, Wharton remarks about how she is condemning of any society in which girls are kept innocent and protected. Instead, girls should be out in the world gaining knowledge, and learning about how to solve any problems or obstacles that they might come across without the help from a

Up until that point, Archer has no clue that his family has known about the affair for a long time, and has set up plans around him which have left him intentionally in the dark about their schemes. Despite growing up in New York’s high society having a multicultural world view, Archer is set in his ways believing that having an affair with Ellen would be taken lightly by the rest of society if they found out, partly because people like Larry Lefferts do it all the time and either people do not care, or are blissfully ignorant of the fact that it goes on - as in fear of not to mess up the dynamic of society. This innocence that Archer carries with him regarding this fact is what ultimately destroys him. By the end of the novel everyone has become enlightened to what is going on, and have surpassed him in knowledge and schemes, using his innocence to their advantage and leaving him in the