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A review by celestesbookshelf
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
đź”– 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list
Although much has been analyzed and discussed on this novel I’ve written my ~strong~ feelings below 👇🏼
Archer, a gentleman delighted to be engaged to the beautiful May, is hypocritical, pedantic, and oblivious to his own ironic behavior.
When he meets his fiancées cousin, Ellen, the book quickly becomes a series of his constant criticism of May; feelings manifested from his comparison of May to Ellen. He labels May a product of Old New York with her perfect manners and “inability to notice inequalities between men and women and much less to question them”. He states she is unable to realize she is “free” and insists on basing her choices on what is accepted in society rather than to even consider what she wants.
Yet when he realizes he’s in love with Ellen he is not yet married. Instead of claiming this “freedom” he’s fond of he instead begs May to push their engagement up. May being much more cunning than he ever acknowledges, freely hands him an exit. She openly encourages him to pursue this “other woman” even if it goes against societies expectations.
Archer, being the one incapable of seeing his freedom, denies it and continues his persistence to marry sooner. He gets what he wants and days after their wedding thinks “there was no use in trying to educate a wife who had not the dimmest notion that she was not free”. Ummm???? She literally handed Archer freedom and he couldn’t accept it because he couldn’t go against society’s norms. In another scene he’s daydreaming of his wife dying young and, get this, “setting him free”. As if she didn’t encourage him to call off their engagement and it wasn’t him to push it forward.
The scene with Ellen and May’s grandmother where she meets with Archer privately to increase Ellen’s allowance now that she’ll be staying with her left a bad taste in my mouth. The grandmother makes suggestive comments as to Ellen’s good looks, the misfortune that it wasn’t he whom Ellen married, the encouragement to keep from May, also her granddaughter, what they’ve met to talk about. Completely traitorous and shocking that a grandmother would callously plant the seed of dishonesty in one granddaughters husband in favor of another granddaughter.
Archer claims to Ellen that he doesn’t want her as a mistress, that he doesn’t want to sneak around and that it’s marriage to her that he yearns for. I call BS. I don’t think Archer knows what he wants. His feelings for Ellen are lust and the high of something forbidden and unorthodox. Him claiming his “love” for her shows that it’s he, not May, who are naïve. Marriage is meant to be stable, predictable, and there will always be “monotonous” periods. Yet all of these characteristics he shuns in his marriage to May. Even her comments at his reading poetry bothers him.
His naïveté lies in his claiming it’s marriage he wants when everything about his current marriage he abhors. It’s an adventure he wants to break from the same Old New York product that he’s been groomed to be. It’s the concern for appearances that keeps him from breaking off his engagement to May in the first place yet he resents May for these same qualities.
The last chapter jumps 26 years, May has been deceased 2 years and their 3 children are grown. Archer has become an “upstanding citizen” and reflects that Ellen had become a memory that kept him from other women.
He goes onto to narrate to reader that he’d been a faithful husband once their children were born and he “genuinely mourned” Nay when she passed. 🙄 How altruistic of him to genuinely feel for his wife and mother of his children.
His eldest son casually asks about his being in love with Ellen, claiming his mother told him that his father gave up “what he wanted most” for their family.
I don’t know about y’all but May never asked him to give it up; she gave him an out way before marriage and it was Archer who acted selfishly and locked May into a marriage where she is unappreciated, undervalued, and overlooked. It is crass for their son to not feel loyalty for mother and be encouraging his father to go visit his former “love”, the “woman he would’ve given anything for”. This overlooks the fact that May had put herself second from the beginning and encouraged Archer to pursue his happiness and implies Archer is the one who had to make a sacrifice.
The only redeeming factor for Archer was in the last scene he decides to not go meet Ellen and chooses to keep her as a memory.
I don’t consider this a romance. I consider this the perspective of a man who doesn’t have the gall to fulfill his dreams in fear of becoming socially exiled yet resents his wife for having the same values and consciousness of her appearance in society. It was May who deserved better, she deserved Archer to put her first and set her free from their engagement so she could find a partner who valued her.
Follow me on Instagram for more book reviews: @celestes.bookshelf
Although much has been analyzed and discussed on this novel I’ve written my ~strong~ feelings below 👇🏼
Archer, a gentleman delighted to be engaged to the beautiful May, is hypocritical, pedantic, and oblivious to his own ironic behavior.
When he meets his fiancées cousin, Ellen, the book quickly becomes a series of his constant criticism of May; feelings manifested from his comparison of May to Ellen. He labels May a product of Old New York with her perfect manners and “inability to notice inequalities between men and women and much less to question them”. He states she is unable to realize she is “free” and insists on basing her choices on what is accepted in society rather than to even consider what she wants.
Yet when he realizes he’s in love with Ellen he is not yet married. Instead of claiming this “freedom” he’s fond of he instead begs May to push their engagement up. May being much more cunning than he ever acknowledges, freely hands him an exit. She openly encourages him to pursue this “other woman” even if it goes against societies expectations.
Archer, being the one incapable of seeing his freedom, denies it and continues his persistence to marry sooner. He gets what he wants and days after their wedding thinks “there was no use in trying to educate a wife who had not the dimmest notion that she was not free”. Ummm???? She literally handed Archer freedom and he couldn’t accept it because he couldn’t go against society’s norms. In another scene he’s daydreaming of his wife dying young and, get this, “setting him free”. As if she didn’t encourage him to call off their engagement and it wasn’t him to push it forward.
The scene with Ellen and May’s grandmother where she meets with Archer privately to increase Ellen’s allowance now that she’ll be staying with her left a bad taste in my mouth. The grandmother makes suggestive comments as to Ellen’s good looks, the misfortune that it wasn’t he whom Ellen married, the encouragement to keep from May, also her granddaughter, what they’ve met to talk about. Completely traitorous and shocking that a grandmother would callously plant the seed of dishonesty in one granddaughters husband in favor of another granddaughter.
Archer claims to Ellen that he doesn’t want her as a mistress, that he doesn’t want to sneak around and that it’s marriage to her that he yearns for. I call BS. I don’t think Archer knows what he wants. His feelings for Ellen are lust and the high of something forbidden and unorthodox. Him claiming his “love” for her shows that it’s he, not May, who are naïve. Marriage is meant to be stable, predictable, and there will always be “monotonous” periods. Yet all of these characteristics he shuns in his marriage to May. Even her comments at his reading poetry bothers him.
His naïveté lies in his claiming it’s marriage he wants when everything about his current marriage he abhors. It’s an adventure he wants to break from the same Old New York product that he’s been groomed to be. It’s the concern for appearances that keeps him from breaking off his engagement to May in the first place yet he resents May for these same qualities.
The last chapter jumps 26 years, May has been deceased 2 years and their 3 children are grown. Archer has become an “upstanding citizen” and reflects that Ellen had become a memory that kept him from other women.
He goes onto to narrate to reader that he’d been a faithful husband once their children were born and he “genuinely mourned” Nay when she passed. 🙄 How altruistic of him to genuinely feel for his wife and mother of his children.
His eldest son casually asks about his being in love with Ellen, claiming his mother told him that his father gave up “what he wanted most” for their family.
I don’t know about y’all but May never asked him to give it up; she gave him an out way before marriage and it was Archer who acted selfishly and locked May into a marriage where she is unappreciated, undervalued, and overlooked. It is crass for their son to not feel loyalty for mother and be encouraging his father to go visit his former “love”, the “woman he would’ve given anything for”. This overlooks the fact that May had put herself second from the beginning and encouraged Archer to pursue his happiness and implies Archer is the one who had to make a sacrifice.
The only redeeming factor for Archer was in the last scene he decides to not go meet Ellen and chooses to keep her as a memory.
I don’t consider this a romance. I consider this the perspective of a man who doesn’t have the gall to fulfill his dreams in fear of becoming socially exiled yet resents his wife for having the same values and consciousness of her appearance in society. It was May who deserved better, she deserved Archer to put her first and set her free from their engagement so she could find a partner who valued her.
Follow me on Instagram for more book reviews: @celestes.bookshelf