The age of innocence Edith Wharton

THE AGE OF INNOCENCE
 Edith Wharton

A critical paper by

Gail Newman

         May Welland’s inexperience and purity thrilled lawyer and man about town Newland Archer, who delighted in imagining their honeymoon and future life together as an opportunity for him to read and explain his favorite literary works to May, while simultaneously revealing to her the mysteries of the marital state. Wharton calls his reaction to his tabula-rasa-love “a tender reverence for her abysmal purity.” 

         As Newland contemplates the perfect ignorance May’s parents and Old New York valued in women above everything (except for beauty), Mrs. Wharton slyly suggests that Newland “didn’t in the least wish the future Mrs. Newland Archer to be a simpleton ... (and) meant her (thanks to his enlightening companionship) to develop wit, wisdom and social tact ... (but) it had never occurred to him to wonder how this transformation was to be effected, or even if it was possible.”

         On a January night prior to attending the Beaufort ball, Newland encounters May’s cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska, the complicated, exotic beauty who “stirred up old settled convictions,” and eventually made him perceive beautiful, white clad, virginal May as a “terrifying product of the social system he belonged to and believed in ... the young girl who knew nothing and expected everything.”  But as everyone is gossiping about the Countess, somewhat selflessly Newland decides to deflect negative talk about Olenska by announcing his engagement to May at the Beaufort ball.

           Wharton describes the grossly fat and inordinately beribboned Mrs. Manson Mingott, Ellen’s grandmother and sometime champion, as “a natural phenomenon”, a poster-person for the pleasures of the flesh. The slightly desiccated Archer-Newland-Van der Luyden crowd, on the other hand, looked down on “the grosser forms of pleasure”, which they define as fine food and fancy duds. Valuing travel, horticulture and the best fiction above all else, their ideals echo those of their creator, Edith Wharton.

         After securing a small house for her, the family prevails upon social lions Henry & Louisa Van der Luyden to introduce Ellen to society at a party in their home, thereby casting upon her their aura of of impeccability. Their hope is that a Van der Luyden launch will quash the unfavorable gossip swirling about Ellen and the absent Polish scoundrel who is still her husband. 

         As though to confirm the gossips’ view that Ellen’s morals are open to question, Newland, paying an impromptu call on Ellen the next day, discovers wealthy, married Julius Beaufort ensconced in her parlor.  Neither divorced nor protected, Countess Olenska’s position is difficult because it is anomalous.  With little money and an absent husband with whom she cannot come to terms, people suspect Ellen of being predatory. The Count, whom some say she married for his money, is Ellen’s passport to bad character.

Olenska’s return to her New York family is recognized by them as a plea for protection, and they reluctantly offer succour in the form of invitations and a modicum of financial support.  But these indulgences don’t extend to permitting the profligate her freedom.  Thus the family arranges for a conflicted Newland to dissuade Ellen from seeking the divorce that would secure her freedom.

         Although Newland has fallen a little bit in love with Countess Olenska, his fear of unconventionality trumps his instinct for survival, and causes him to urge May to move their wedding date forward. She agrees, which forces him to recognize his duty to marry her, which he promptly does.

         When the family perceives the Archer marriage to be on rocky ground, Old New York society “circles the wagons” to shore it up and prevent Newland from breaking free. Composed of certain select New York families, and loosely divided by Wharton into hedonists and ascetics, they are of one mind when it comes to a preference for the “shrouded innocence” symbolized by the veils of the girl archers in the annual Newport archery contest, in which Wharton herself had participated as a young girl.

         May adores her cousin Ellen and only gradually perceives her as a threat to the Archer’s marriage. The fashionable backing and filling between Newport and New York which was customary among the young and rich on the East Coast, and into which May and Newland are naturally drawn, bores and stifles Newland.  He soon finds a reason to make a business trip to the capital where Ellen is living.  They meet, far from the prying eyes of old New York, where Newland can delicately suggest an affair.  Ellen agrees, but only if it can be managed without hurting May.

         When May tells Newland that she is pregnant, she also tells him that she has shared the news with Ellen, a slightly disingenuous confidence in  that it follows hard upon his Washington tryst with Ellen.  The dual announcement has the desired effect, forcing Newland to accept his trap; he
cannot now leave May, even temporarily.  But after May’s death many years later Newland receives an invitation from Ellen to visit her in Paris.  It is an unlooked-for chance to renew his old passion, and impels Newland to waste no time booking for Paris.  But he is accompanied by his son, Dallas, perhaps for protection from what he thinks he most wants.

Filled with longing, the 57-year-old Newland Archer soon stands immobile in the street below Ellen’s windows. But a profound ambivalence about actually seeing this old love is apparently paralyzing, and he sends the handy substitute, his son Dallas, in his place. 

         Perhaps it is the fear of shattering a precious illusion that prevents Newland from climbing Ellen’s stairs.  Having come all this way he may have to face the fact that he is neither young enough, nor in love enough to resume the love affair with his Countess.  Or perhaps the long years 
with May have made any sort of continuation of an ancient love affair seem perilously louche.   Mercifully Wharton doesn’t say.