Society In The Age Of Innocence By Edith Wharton
The Age of Innocence “Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.” –Oscar Wilde. Society has a significant role on the decisions made by individuals, and this is clearly displayed in Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence. This fictional romance novel depicts upper-class New York society in the 1870’s. The main character, Newland Archer, was blissfully engaged to the sweet-tempered, impeccable May Welland. When May’s cousin, Countess Olenska arrives, Newland begins to question his choice. Ellen Olenska was intriguing and alluring to Newland, while May began to seem like a predictable and ignorant projection of society. In Edith Wharton’s, The Age of Innocence, she validated her theme of the struggle
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She published her first novella in 1900, The Touchstone. In the book, Stephen Glennard, a man desperately in need of money in order to marry his fiancé, publishes the love letters given to him by a previous lover who happened to be a famous and recently deceased author. Wharton’s novels are quite often centered on themes involving love, jealousy, betrayal, and social standards. Edith Wharton married Teddy Wharton, and was satisfied in her marriage during the first years of their marriage. As she began to broaden her intellectual and imaginative levels through writing, she found that her husband was lacking in this field. The strength of their marriage slowly started to fade, and she engaged in a passionate affair with Morton Fullerton, a man who she found to be intriguing. This reflected in her writing, because the protagonist in her novel experienced an identical situation. The novel was set in the 1870s, but was written by Edith Wharton in 1920. It was written in a post-WWI intellectual climate. She wrote the novel at age 57, the same age which Archer has reached during the final scene of the novel. After witnessing the destruction of the First World War in Europe, Wharton sought to bring her readers back in time to the years following the war, when the economy was flourishing and people could afford huge, extravagant
She published her first novella in 1900, The Touchstone. In the book, Stephen Glennard, a man desperately in need of money in order to marry his fiancé, publishes the love letters given to him by a previous lover who happened to be a famous and recently deceased author. Wharton’s novels are quite often centered on themes involving love, jealousy, betrayal, and social standards. Edith Wharton married Teddy Wharton, and was satisfied in her marriage during the first years of their marriage. As she began to broaden her intellectual and imaginative levels through writing, she found that her husband was lacking in this field. The strength of their marriage slowly started to fade, and she engaged in a passionate affair with Morton Fullerton, a man who she found to be intriguing. This reflected in her writing, because the protagonist in her novel experienced an identical situation. The novel was set in the 1870s, but was written by Edith Wharton in 1920. It was written in a post-WWI intellectual climate. She wrote the novel at age 57, the same age which Archer has reached during the final scene of the novel. After witnessing the destruction of the First World War in Europe, Wharton sought to bring her readers back in time to the years following the war, when the economy was flourishing and people could afford huge, extravagant