Status Updates From The Age of Innocence

Newland does not want a simple goose for a wife so he plans to mold her through Art to make her sophisticated. It is clear that he is envisioning a false paradise and I wonder if there is a duessa (who looks like she is wearing a nightgown at a society event) to bring about a great fall. Some of the opening chapters is devoted to gossip to help us see how Newland and May see their set as well as society.

The characters include the bachelor Newland Archer who woos the innocent May Welland but he falls in love with an ex-pat countess with a checkered past. A potential scoundrel also adds to the drama. Looking back from 1919 when the novel was written to 1870, the age seemed innocent: a clear understanding of good and evil and no idea of the slaughter of WWI to come. It sounds like Jane Austen with Dickensian humor.

Note by Maureen Howard - I’m going to see if she’s a nutter. LOL The book offers the joy of romantic love (not Romance). The boundaries are explored because of society’s restrictions on personal freedom and moral responsibilty, which sometimes leads to temptation. The ordered universe in 1870 New York was suffocating. I’m wondering if this is a novel of the manners as that time and place is recalled.

Edith's maiden name is Jones; her family inspired the phrase "keeping up with the Joneses." She was well-educated and well-travelled, and by age 18, already published. After a failed engagement, she had a failed marriage, which inspired books about failed marriages. She was friends with the writers of her day. In her early fifties, she divorced and moved to Paris. She wrote and reported from the WWI frontline.