From the Bookshelf of Classics for Beginners…

The Age of Innocence

Edith Wharton

Start date: December 1, 2017

Finish date: December 31, 2017

Discussion: Current Group Read

Find A Copy At

Libraries

Group Discussions About This Book

Showing 2 of -4 topics — 818 comments total

Current Group Read

The Prince
By ☯Emily , moderator · 3 posts · 32 views

last updated Jun 08, 2019 03:47PM

April 2019: The Crucible
By ☯Emily , moderator · 10 posts · 40 views

last updated May 09, 2019 05:21AM

showing 10 of 10 topics view all »

What Members Thought

Dec 14, 2021 Namida... rated it really liked it

Shelves: audiobook

Not sure if this is a weird take on the book but I frankly hated Newland Archer. The guy spends the entire book looking down on his society, on his beautiful wife May and thinks himself high and mighty and it pissed me off. I'm glad he felt so small at the end.

Don't get me wrong, his society is horrible, they're literal devils in disguise, but he doesn't really do anything to oppose them or stand up against them. He contents himself with just thinking that he is better than them, but throughout Not sure if this is a weird take on the book but I frankly hated Newland Archer. The guy spends the entire book looking down on his society, on his beautiful wife May and thinks himself high and mighty and it pissed me off. I'm glad he felt so small at the end.

Don't get me wrong, his society is horrible, they're literal devils in disguise, but he doesn't really do anything to oppose them or stand up against them. He contents himself with just thinking that he is better than them, but throughout the book, he doesn't actually say anything or do anything to counter them except in the case of Madam Olenska, and he ONLY ever does this AFTER he falls in love with her. This is very clear towards the end when the whole Beaufort fiasco happens and he just sits there and lets people trash talk however they want, in fact he thinks they're doing this to teach HIM a lesson. Boy, not everything is about you...

But my main issue is with how he trashes May throughout the book, from start to end. He thinks himself superior in intellect, superior in every fashion. At the beginning, he knows and accepts this as just how society expects him and her to be, even if HE is against it, playfully of course, because he secretly relishes that he is. Then when Madam Olenska comes in the picture, showing him an alternative (even if that alternative was just an idea and not really tangible), he just starts to rejects the whole thing, and yet he does nothing. And that's why at the end, the biggest tragedy for him is that he became a normal "citizen" instead of being anything great, because he thought so highly of himself. I honestly think that's not a very strange reading of the book because Edith Wharton does not present him as a good person even from the beginning. I'm pretty sure she wanted us to see him that way. I don't know how someone could read that book and think Newland was a victim. He is just so self-absorbed, conceited and entitled but he still remains passive and a pawn of society because woe is me, I have no control over fate like the younger generations do now. And you would think that at the end he would realize that, but he still trashes May all to the very end, calling her an idiot basically, with not a single intelligent thought passing through her little brain. When in fact, you could clearly see in the book that she was very much aware of his affair with Madam Olenska, he keeps wondering if she does if she does if she does and she so much as tells him multiple times that yes she does, then at the end when his son tells him point blank that she knew, he turns to the camera dramatically and is like "she knew....." yeah dimwit, she knew. His biggest insecurity with her was that she would treat him like her mother treated her invalid husband, patient and disparaging, but no, she was just a very kind person and he was out there wishing she was dead. I dont find his internal monologues at the end show him realizing this but I do think that's what Wharton wanted us to see. idk. idk.

But I liked this far better than Ethan Frome anyway, some symbolism was a little in your face, like May's dirty wedding dress, some were quite subtle like the flowers throughout. I kept thinking of Middlemarch and the slow burn we got with the romance there but here, it was a tad bit too fast. It was funny then when Middlemarch was mentioned in the book as one of the books that Newland hadnt read yet. I was like, you could learn a thing or two from there boy...

Anyway. Liked it though. And the audiobook lady did the voices so well. ...more

1 like · Like · see review