The Age of Innocence
by Edith Wharton
c. 1920
Edith Wharton’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. My high school reads her Ethan Frome in Junior English but somehow this one seems more appropriate. It is longer, however but it is set in a more modern America–the 1870′s–and considers conformity to society’s norms.
Newland Archer is blissfully in love with his soon-to-be fiancee May Welland until her cousin Ellen comes to town. Ellen is estranged from her husband, a French count, and has come home to New York to be part of her family again. But she’s been in Europe too long or she was always too much of a free-spirit (her coming out dress was black) or something. She spends time with “those people” and entertains “people who write.”
Archer finds himself drawn somehow to Ellen. Oh, he is still blissfully happy when he is with May but there is just something about Ellen that he cannot resist and he finds himself making excuses to be where she is….
A book about Society. A book about conforming to norms. A book about commitments and what they used to mean. Well worth reading and re-reading.
No language or situations that would be embarrassing but there are thoughts that all of us should think and ponder. Unfortunately, church is simply superficial and there are few references to God and none to salvation but that very well may have been the true nature of the time.
Definitely worth being a Classic Work.
