#edith wharton
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
[Originally published on my Medium page: link here]
Newland Archer is our guide through the high society of New York, a lawyer engaged to May Welland, contempt with the world around him, fully immersed in his position in life and in love with his fiance. Enter Countess Ellen Olenska, who, when compared to May, is the complete opposite; she doesn’t allow social constructs and obligations to dictate her life; she questions the regulations of society and who makes them. Fearing a family scandal, Archer convinces Olenska not to divorce her husband but ends up fearing for his own growing affections.
I found Archer annoying at first, all the talk of New York society, but he’s what I’d like to call the character development effect; turns a smidge attractive as the story progresses. Olenska is hands-down my favorite character, unapologetically herself in a world where it’s extensively criticized. Archer experiences the feeling of living, but can’t hold on to it; that is what love stories are made of. This story seems to be told before, in different time periods, characters, locations, etc. The Age of Innocence reads like many historical romance dramas and I love it. It’s always the raging war and discussion between love and obligation; the answer never is as simple as we make it out to be. Spoiling nothing, I’d like to say that if you’d like a happily ever after, please read one of the other many historical romance dramas (I always recommend Pride and Prejudice) and then come back to The Age of Innocence to fully bask in the angst. I have a love-hate relationship with the ending, but I wouldn’t want to change it.
Read this book, if you’re interested in taking a trip to 1870s New York and mingling with society. Tell me if you broke a smile whenever Olenska spoke or pulled eyebrows from the love, and don’t forget to count the mental eye rolls dedicated towards society!
- Rate: 3/5
- Time: 2 days
- Book-shelf Worthy: deserves to be up there with the others of its genre
Quoteworthy
Women ought to be free — as free as we are.
What’s the use? You gave me my first glimpse of a real life, and at the same moment you asked me to go on with a sham one. It’s beyond human enduring — that’s all.
To have you here, you mean-in reach and yet out of reach? To meet you in this way, on the sly? It’s the very reverse of what I want.
The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend!
Each time you happen to me all over again.
“All the words in me seem to have become throbbing pulses, & all my thoughts are a great golden blur–”—Edith Wharton, from a letter to W.M. Fullerton written c. March 1908 (via violentwavesofemotion)
The Narrator: They all lived in a kind of hieroglyphics world. The real thing was never said or done or even thought; but, only represented by a set of arbitrary signs.
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There is a hall, through which everyone passes in going in and out; the drawing room, where one received formal visits; the sitting-room, where the members of the family come and go as they list; but beyond that, far beyond, are other rooms, the handles of whose doors perhaps are never turned; no one knows the way to them, no one knows whither they lead; and in the innermost room, the holy of holies, the soul sits alone and waits for a footstep that never comes.
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“Don’t you ever mind,“ she asked suddenly, "not being rich enough to buy all the books you want?”
― Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth.
Moodboard: A Capricorn Winter Book List.
- There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby: Scary Fairy Tales by Lyudmila Petrushevskaya.
- Requiem by Anna Akhmatova.
- Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton.
- Mr. Salary by Sally Rooney.
- A Wild Winter Swan by Gregory Maguire.
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I’ve been letting a lot of books pile up on my shelf recently. If I won’t be getting reviews out anytime soon, I thought I could at least show everyone the books I’m constantly “getting to!” Here goes!
- The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson (halfway there, living on a prayer)
- The Tragedy of Mariam: The Fair Queen of Jewry by Lady Elizabeth Cary
- Renaissance Women Poetsanthology by…
@tcmparty live tweet schedule for the week beginning Monday, March 21, 2022. Look for us on Twitter…watch and tweet along…remember to add #TCMParty to your tweets so everyone can find them :) All times are Eastern.
Sunday, March 27 at 10:00 p.m.
THE AGE OF INNOCENCE (1993)
In 19th-century New York, a young upper-crust lawyer is engaged to the perfect woman, but his well-ordered life is upset when he meets his fiancée’s unconventional cousin,
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Set wide the window. Let me drink the day.
– Edith Wharton
(Lindau, Germany)
