From the Bookshelf of The Reading Challenge Group…

The Age of Innocence

Edith Wharton

Start date: August 1, 2015

Finish date: August 31, 2015

Discussion: Group Read Archive 2014-16

Why we're reading this: Classic Group Read - August 2015
[close] Classic Group Read - August 2015

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Group Read Archive 2014-16

Genre Group Read (Humour) - December 2016 - You Are Not So Smart
By Allison , Quest Hound · 11 posts · 30 views

last updated Dec 28, 2016 04:05PM

Alternate Group Read (Classics) - December 2016 - Mansfield Park
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last updated Dec 04, 2016 09:34AM

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What Members Thought

Feb 14, 2012 Tess Mertens-Johnson rated it it was amazing

WOW - this book was written in the 1920s, and the content at the time must have turned heads.
I loved this book. Edith Wharton took the proper New Yorkers and made Archer, the male, look beyond what was proper and expected and see true passion. Not only was writing a male as a female new to that era, but she gave him emotions. Powerful!
Archer becomes engaged to a proper girl from a good family when he meets her cousin the Countess. She is in the process of leaving and divorcing her husband the Co ...more

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Mar 23, 2012 Carol rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: pulitzer-prize-winner, wharton

Winner of the 1921 Pulitzer Prize, The Age of Innocence is Edith Wharton’s masterful portrait of desire and betrayal during the sumptuous Golden Age of Old New York, a time when society people “dreaded scandal more than disease.”

First I must comment that this is not one of my favorite classic. But I do admire Wharton's ambition, the fact that she volunteered to help others who desperately needed it. One example is her relief volunteer in France during Word War I. One thing that few people n Winner of the 1921 Pulitzer Prize, The Age of Innocence is Edith Wharton’s masterful portrait of desire and betrayal during the sumptuous Golden Age of Old New York, a time when society people “dreaded scandal more than disease.”

First I must comment that this is not one of my favorite classic. But I do admire Wharton's ambition, the fact that she volunteered to help others who desperately needed it. One example is her relief volunteer in France during Word War I. One thing that few people noticed (at that time) was when she received the the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel. "The Columbia trustees praised Wharton’s twelfth novel for its “wholesome atmosphere of American life and the highest standard of American manners and manhood.” Wharton wondered whether they had really understood her title?!

The three fiction judges—literary critic Stuart Pratt Sherman, literature professor Robert Morss Lovett, and novelist Hamlin Garland—voted to give the prize to Sinclair Lewis for his epic satire Main Street, but Columbia University’s advisory board, led by conservative university president Nicholas Murray Butler, overturned their decision and awarded the prize to The Age of Innocence. (Pulitzer had originally stipulated that the award be bestowed on the novel that best represented the “whole atmosphere of American life,” but Butler had changed the wording to “wholesome.” Outraged, Sherman and Lovett protested the decision in the pages of The New Republic.

Now the review -- Set in the old New York, of the early 1870s, Wharton's novel is an examination of the tension between society’s demands and personal freedom. Newland Archer is a young man from a wealthy family about to be married to May Welland, a sweet but unimaginative young lady. A bookish dilettante, he leads a comfortable life among New York’s moneyed set. However, his life is turned upside down with the arrival of May’s cousin Ellen Olenska, a damaged woman fleeing her troubled marriage to a European count. In contrast to conventional May, Ellen goes against the grain, spurning society’s expectations. Newland is immediately drawn to the more free-spirited cousin. Devasted, Newland follows through with his promise to May, while he secretly yearns for Ellen. (http://booksspeakvolumes.com) ...more

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May 28, 2013 Wendy rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-books, blooms-western-canon, classics, audiobooks, pulitzer

Hmmm...virtually all my GR friends who have read this gave this book 4 or 5 stars, so I feel like I'm somehow at fault for not appreciating this one more. Maybe I should have read the book instead of listening to the audio version (the narrator Lorna Raver was brilliant, though). Did I miss a huge twist? Are my tastes immature enough that I can't fully appreciate quiet books about the idle rich? Because I really did enjoy Wharton's Ethan Frome, and I'm trying to figure out why this one seemed to Hmmm...virtually all my GR friends who have read this gave this book 4 or 5 stars, so I feel like I'm somehow at fault for not appreciating this one more. Maybe I should have read the book instead of listening to the audio version (the narrator Lorna Raver was brilliant, though). Did I miss a huge twist? Are my tastes immature enough that I can't fully appreciate quiet books about the idle rich? Because I really did enjoy Wharton's Ethan Frome, and I'm trying to figure out why this one seemed to just whiz right over my head. One big difference between Ethan and Innocence (I believe, anyway) are the stakes. In Ethan, the characters are poor, they are isolated, they are trapped by more than just social tradition, and they have very few choices. The consequences are absolutely ruinous. in Innocence, the characters are like mimes in invisible boxes, acting trapped when really, they can walk through their invisible wall at any time. Archer wants to discourage Ellen's divorce? He wants to shorten his own engagement? May knows Archer isn't "into" her and wants to keep the long engagement, but then suddenly decides to ask her parents for permission to cut it down to a month anyway? Why? If these are the decisions the characters insist on making (and it seemed to me that the changing of the engagement was ruffling feathers and going against tradition, so I don't get why these people are so terrified of feather-ruffling at other times) I can't really feel bad for them when they don't get what they want. Or, at least, don't get what they think they want. It seemed to me that they all (view spoiler) That's just how life is for any of us--*correction, the luckier of us.

I'm not trying to say that I didn't like the book, because I did, but it didn't really move me beyond mild frustration with the characters, mostly Newland Archer. Wharton's writing was lovely as usual, her descriptions evocative, and I still caught of whiff of the haunting ending, though my reaction was more like "yeah, I know, that's how it is." Perhaps I'll read this again in a few decades to see if a little aging will do me some good and give me more insight into what I've missed--because I sure as hell must be missing something. ...more

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