A Tragedy with a Happy Ending:  Edith Wharton’s “The Age of Innocence”

Yes,” said [William Dean] Howells, “what the American public wants is a tragedy with a happy ending….”— Edith Wharton’s French Ways and Their Meaning

One of the most marvelous things about rereading is the consciousness of a changing perspective over time.   On my first reading of The Age of Innocence, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1920, I was an enraptured 19-year-old who loved everything about it:  the depiction of the characters,  their code of manners, the women’s clothing (May’s wedding dress!), the menus,  the tennis and the archery, and the library where the hero retires in the evening to read. 

Certainly The Age of Innocence is a classic, though as a Woman of a Certain Age I no longer read it as a romantic novel. Set in the 1870s, it is an elaborate study of a restricted society of New York aristocrats (whose ancestors were Europeans with titles)  and well-established wealthy families with very good names and manners.  

The novel focuses on the illicit but unconsummated love affair of Newland Archer, a handsome, smart, restless lawyer,  and Madame Ellen Olenski, a charming woman who has fled from a cruel European husband and returned to New York after many years abroad. Archer falls for her when they are introduced in a box at the opera: they are instantly attracted.  There is a problem:  Ellen is the cousin of Archer’s fiancée, May Welland.  But Ellen invites Archer to visit her the next day after 5. He fumes a little over her unconventional directness but of course pays the visit.

And this  is the beginning of his inner conflict:  he no longer wants to marry May Welland, a charming, beautiful, very conventional younger woman, but he doe not break it off. And he fancies himself in love with Ellen, a sophisticated, free-spirited, tolerant bohemian woman who is European in the eyes of the New Yorkers and receives exotic flowers from many men, including Archer, who resents the other men’s attentions.

And if you’re thinking this sounds  rather like a mini-Anna Karenina, you are absolutely right.  Ellen is like Anna, and May is a bit like Kitty, only shrewder.  Archer, however, is no decisive Vronsky.. He does not pursue Ellen beyond hand-holding and sweet talk, because he feels guilty and is afraid of breaking the rules of Old New York.

What surprised me is Wharton’s adoption of a male point of view. So often these thwarted love stories are told from a woman’s perspective. Much as we like the gentlemanly Archer, we cannot help but notice that he treats both May and Ellen horribly, and that makes his musings fascinating and upsetting.  Whenever he expresses his feelings too clearly to Ellen, he moodily contemplates them and then runs away to May.  He does not break off the engagement to May, and if he thought of marrying Ellen, he put an obstacle in their way:  he  persuades Ellen not to divorce her husband, who is a “scoundrel,” but there would be a scandal, which, in his opinion as a lawyer, would make her an outcast in New York.

Every time he and Ellen have an incipient passionate encounter it draws him closer to May.  At one point, he is so frightened that he travels to Florida to visit May, who is wintering there with her parents.  He presses her to marry in the spring instead of waiting till next fall.  And belatedly, when her parents agree to it, he regrets it, but goes through with it.  He is a gentleman.

Archer is a bit like a suave dithering Hamlet, if you can imagine a suave slightly older Hamlet.  It is left to May and Ellen to deal with their problems and make arrangements to separate Ellen from Archer.  Actually, it is mostly May, who is much shrewder than Archer gives her credit for.

Anyway, it is a splendid book. I love reading about society in Old New York. There are operas and balls, dinner parties and archery contests, yachts and gambling.  The women have less fun:  they are in charge of the household and the children, pay visits to each other, attend lunches, solve social problems, and order lovely clothing. 

Ellen is the most interesting character, but I can’t say she is the most vivid.  We mostly see her through Archer’s eyes.   Ellen has  “sub-society” friendships:  she visits an outrageous woman who gives entertaining parties on Sunday nights, socializes with witty men of old New York who are known womanizers , and is the sole comfort of a cousin who is shunned even by her relatives after her husband’s bank fail.

Archer cannot possibly fit in with the free-spirited Ellen, though he believes he would be able to – if society would let him, if May would let him, and, most important, if he wanted to.

A fascinating, brilliant book.  I cried over the ending, but I do feel I understand Archer’s weakness.  I used to think he was a romantic figure.  As a woman of a certain age, I rolled my eyes (just a little).  And I’m sure that Wharton deliberately showed his weakness. How can a charming man be so weak?

I will be haunted by these characters until I settle down with a witty Jane Austen book, which is surely the antidote for sadness!