The Age of Innocence

by Edith Wharton

she forbade Edith from reading any more novels until after her marriage, which took place as soon as it could be arranged—in 1885, to a wealthy sportsman with manic-depressive tendencies.

Wharton was forty when she published her first novel,

well, I feel better now!

She wrote most of The Age of Innocence in 1919, the year after the armistice, but the action is set in the 1870s,

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.

somewhat hazily confusing the scene of his projected honey-moon with the masterpieces of literature which it would be his manly privilege to reveal to his bride.

lol Faust as a euphemism for sex?

little less tall than May Welland,

or...shorter?

“Josephine look,” was carried out in the cut of the dark blue velvet gown rather theatrically caught up under her bosom by a girdle with a large old-fashioned clasp.

so she's wearing Regency dress??

(perhaps due to the knowledge that he was watching her)

I already kind hate this stuck up, self-absorbed guy

this undoubted superiority was felt to compensate for whatever was regrettable in the Beaufort past.

a very timely skewering, considering Pres. Trump's ballroom construction

tepid Veuve Clicquot without a year and warmed-up croquettes from Philadelphia.

the horror!

and Mrs. Mingott held out Ferrigiani’s model to the banker.

😂

An upper floor was dedicated to Newland, and the two women squeezed themselves into narrower quarters below.

this explains so much about Newland Archer

Anyhow, he—eventually—married her.” There were volumes of innuendo in the way the “eventually” was spaced, and each syllable given its due stress.

😂

“At the Opera I know she had on dark blue velvet, perfectly plain and flat—like a night-gown.”

it really does seem like she was close to Regency dress. I wonder why?

“Women ought to be free—as free as we are,” he declared, making a discovery of which he was too irritated to measure the terrific consequences.

ok, I'm coming around on him if he's going to make feminist statements like this

But here he was pledged to defend, on the part of his betrothed’s cousin, conduct that, on his own wife’s part, would justify him in calling down on her all the thunders of Church and State. Of

with a shiver of foreboding he saw his marriage becoming what most of the other marriages about him were: a dull association of material and social interests held together by ignorance on the one side and hypocrisy on the other.

she had a sense of humour (chiefly proved by her laughing at his jokes);

he really seems to only care about her in that she likes the things he likes and he gets to feel important

canvasback

this is a duck lol

the shade of difference (to New York) between being merely a Duke and being the van der Luydens’ Duke.

“As much as a man can be.”

is the limit implied due to the man or to May?

“The most romantic of romances!”

this guy is such an idiot

after-dinner guests,

oh this is fascinating. guests that weren't invited to dinner, but come after in the evening? kind of like Regency parties, when only a few would be invited to dine beforehand

In her dress of white and silver, with a wreath of silver blossoms in her hair, the tall girl looked like a Diana just alight from the chase.

wow the imagery can't get more explicit. May = white = pure = virgin

“Tomorrow, then, after five—I shall expect you,”

well, that was very forward. what's her motive here? is she into him? Just bored?

West Twenty-third Street,

where Wharton was born. a cultural hub in the late 1800s/early 1900s

He knew that the southern races communicated with each other in the language of pantomime,

lol imagine being racist about Italian people

It was odd to have summoned him in that way, and then forgotten him;

I think i would have sent a note to confirm lol. I thought she meant it as a throwaway line to impress the others, not an actual appointment

Why not make one’s own fashions?

seems like her motto

rings of dark hair

I was definitely picturing her as brunette and May as blonde

The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend!”

he wondered at what age “nice” women began to speak for themselves.

never! otherwise they are not "nice!" women just can't win. they must be innocent but not boring

What if, when he had bidden May Welland to open hers, they could only look out blankly at blankness?

can't believe Edith Wharton invented the Madonna-whore complex

a haunting horror of doing the same thing every day at the same hour besieged his brain.

your ennui is not the problem of the women in your life. go get a tattoo or something and leave them alone.

she went there with the Duke and Mr. Beaufort.”

does she know what she's doing and just not care?

All I know is, there was a woman who got up on a table and sang the things they sing at the places you go to in Paris. There was smoking and champagne.”

sounds like a good party

the evening she dined with us she rather suggested . . . rather let me see that she would be grateful for guidance. And she was.”

is she naive and grateful? or is she happy to have all the men puting themselves out to help her?

and Mr. Letterblair, for example, was, professionally speaking, his own grandson.

😂

I should like to consult you—to consider the case with you—before taking any farther steps.”

Just what he needs, to be *more* up in Ellen's business

she stood before him as an exposed and pitiful figure, to be saved at all costs from farther wounding herself in her mad plunges against fate.

and hero complex?

an undisturbed belief in the abysmal distinction between the women one loved and respected and those one enjoyed—and pitied.

After a velvety oyster soup came shad and cucumbers, then a young broiled turkey with corn fritters, followed by a canvas-back with currant jelly and a celery mayonnaise.

I think I'd rather go hungry, thanks

“But aren’t you as free as air as it is?” he returned. “Who can touch you? Mr. Letterblair tells me the financial question has been settled—”

he sounds like a slavery apologist. "but slavery wasn't so bad because these slaves were treated well"

On the threshold he paused to look at her; then he stole back, lifted one of the ends of velvet ribbon, kissed it, and left the room without her hearing him or changing her attitude.

😍😍

“The Shaughraun.”

better than the ingenuous May imagined. She had Beaufort at her feet, Mr. van der Luyden hovering above her like a protecting deity, and any number of candidates (Lawrence Lefferts among them) waiting their opportunity in the middle distance.

the dark lady

“a gentleman couldn’t go into politics.”

and finally, about midnight, he assisted in putting a gold-fish in one visitor’s bed, dressed up a burglar in the bath-room of a nervous aunt, and saw in the small hours by joining in a pillow-fight that ranged from the nurseries to the basement.

wtf

“Hallo, Beaufort—this way! Madame Olenska was expecting you,” he said.

what a dick