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The Age of Innocence

Edith Wharton

Start date: December 1, 2017

Finish date: December 31, 2017

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Aug 11, 2015 ☯Emily Ginder rated it really liked it

Shelves: institute-of-new-dimensions, classics, read-in-2015, read-in-2024

Archer is a young man raised in the closed society of Old New York. It is a society with too much money and not a lot of ambition. Outsiders are viewed with alarm. Archer feels a need to break away from all the traditions. However, his idealism is gradually destroyed by his inability to take decisive actions. He allows the society around him to make decisions for him. He never talks to his wife and does not attempt to understand her. He believes she is dull and stupid. She is actually smart and ...more

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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

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Jul 27, 2012 Jeremy C. Brown rated it liked it

Shelves: audio-e-book-located

What a great book, I mean, except terrible ending… how can you end a book like that?.. is that a spoiler? Well I’m sure some people love the ending, so seeing how it’s personal preference maybe it’s not a spoiler?

This is a very interesting book! Edith Warton’s writing is very witty and funny. I mean just look at this quote: “An unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the cle What a great book, I mean, except terrible ending… how can you end a book like that?.. is that a spoiler? Well I’m sure some people love the ending, so seeing how it’s personal preference maybe it’s not a spoiler?

This is a very interesting book! Edith Warton’s writing is very witty and funny. I mean just look at this quote: “An unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences.”

Here’s a great quote from the book that sets the scene for the novel: “It was the old New York way...the way people who dreaded scandal more than disease, who placed decency above courage, and who considered that nothing was more ill-bred than "scenes", except those who gave rise to them. ” In this world of superficiality the main character and narrator Newland Archer is awakened by his newfound love for this Countess Ellen Olenska. Her story and influence help him to become aware of the fake world he lives in and this knowledge and his love for her confronts him with the choice he must make, whether to stay in his current world to hurt those around him less or to break free and become one of those “real people.”

An interesting theme that is treated is the idea that some people are so indoctrinated in their oppression that when confronted with even the thought of freedom and equality they turn their backs to it.

Anyway, good book. I think as with most novels, and movies, and love storys for the past several hundred years there’s an over emphasis on the value of infatuation of two people over the loyalty and fidelity, but still there’s a lot of good to be understood from the story and ideas written about.

Here’s some great quotes:

“And all the while, I suppose," he thought, "real people were living somewhere, and real things happening to them ...”

“...he arrived late at the office, perceived that his doing so made no difference whatever to any one, and was filled with sudden exasperation at the elaborate futility of his life”

“It would presently be his task to take the bandage from this young woman's eyes, and bid her look forth upon the world. But how many generations of the women of had gone to her making had descended bandaged to the family vault? He shivered a little, remembering some of the new ideas in his scientific books, and the much-cited instance of the Kentucky cave-fish, which had ceased to develop eyes because they had no use for them. What if, when he had bidden May Welland to open hers, they could only look out blankly at blankness?”

“It seems stupid to have discovered America only to make it into a copy of another country.”
...more

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