As I work through my summer reading list, I’m noticing similar themes across the three fiction picks (Emma, The Age of Innocence, and Mrs. Dalloway): agency and society. I’m currently focusing on The Age of Innocence because I’ve been reading it the longest, and will leave the others for another time.
Major spoilers below.
The Age of Innocence was published in 1920 and set in 1870s New York, post-Civil War and on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution. The book provides commentary on how the “old New York” is being replaced by the “new New York”: customs are changing, people are moving up in society through business rather than family, and the established social hierarchy is starting to break down.
Newland Archer, our protagonist, is a dilettante who grew up in a respected, old money family and comfortably fits within the conventions of his time. He doesn’t outwardly question the standards of society, though he considers himself superior to and more intelligent than those who follow them rigidly. He’s a man who is, as one fellow book clubber put it, “ripe for getting his world rocked.” And rocked he gets.
At the beginning of the book, his fiancé’s cousin, Ellen Olenska, arrives back in New York after leaving her abusive husband, a European count, and she is so unlike anyone else that Newland is immediately intrigued. Ellen acts against the unspoken rules of old New York by living in an artists’ neighborhood and spending her evenings with whomever she chooses. As Newland spends time with both counter-cultural Ellen and his traditional fiancé May and sees what a future with each might look like, he strains more and more against what society seems to be dictating for him.
One situation in particular shows the contrast between Newland’s inner leanings and society’s rules. Ellen wishes to officially file for divorce from her husband and Newland is called upon by Ellen and May’s family to dissuade her from going through with it, worried about the societal backlash against their family. Newland tells a friend in chapter 5 that “Women ought to be free — as free as we are,” yet by chapter 12 is persuading Ellen not to divorce for the sake of her family and society. Ellen’s sad response is “But my freedom — is that nothing?”, but she eventually agrees to let the matter pass for the sake of everyone else.
The story’s tension builds until chapter 18, when Newland admits his feelings for Ellen in a passionate, dramatic scene. Ellen accuses Newland of only sharing his feelings because he has made it impossible to act on them: at the same time he has admitted his feelings, he is rushing his engagement to May and convincing Ellen not to divorce her husband. He is trapped in a situation of his own making.
In the next chapter we see Archer get married to May, and not under coercion. Yet he is not emotionally present during the event, and in the months following the wedding he does not happily settle into married life like he thought he would. Instead he continues to chafe against his situation and feels like May is rubbing off his edges that he would rather keep.
And yet, May is not merely the traditional, boring woman that Newland assumes she is. During their engagement, we see multiple scenes of May’s sharpness, her understanding that Newland is not being honest with her, and she positions herself as someone he can open up to. Yet Newland fails to act on May’s invitation; his path to being authentic is shut down by his own inability to be honest with the one person he should be able to. Now that they are married, May seems to have fallen back into the tropes of what a wife is and acts like. Both Newland and May are unhappy in their marriage, and it seems unlikely that the situation will be solved in a satisfactory way for all parties involved.
Now, I do not know how this book ends. At time of writing this post, I’m on chapter 23, where Ellen and Newland meet again for the first time since the wedding. Given the time periods that the book was written and set in, I am curious to see how Wharton resolves the tension between the characters.
It’s easy to dunk on Newland because he kind of sucks, lol. As the book is written in the third person from Newland’s perspective, we know the inner struggles he faces when parsing through what he desires and what is expected of him, and how he sabotages himself by making plans against his interest. But as the story continues you feel more sympathy for him because — it is hard to move against the customs and expectations of your day when you have always lived within them. Newland does not make the choices he wants to make, and when he does push against social norms by shortening his engagement to May, it’s a way to take a small action instead of forcing a disruptive change. The one time he is honest about his feelings is when he’s with Ellen, when he can share without changing outcomes. At the moment when Newland is coming into his own, forming his own opinions, and deciding what he really wants from life and relationships, he follows the path of least resistance.
The transformation of New York City as the backdrop to the story is a telling one. I don’t know how much of a proxy Newland is for Wharton’s own ideas of autonomy within society, but I sense throughout the narrative that, as the old is giving way to the new, so we are supposed to be rooting for Newland to break free of society’s constraints and live in the freedom of his desires.
Underneath a story that reads like high society gossip lie a number of questions: Is it good to stay within societal norms? What are the virtues of living in a society, even when the rules are silly? At what point must you break out? Who has the agency to break out, and who has the odds too stacked against them? Is personal freedom more important than maintaining the status quo? And on a personal level: what is the end goal of marriage? What qualities influence whether you should marry someone or not?
If I had read this book when I was younger, I would probably have leaned into the Newland + Ellen versus Newland + May plot. But reading it now, I see more interesting things happening than just two love interests being pitted against each other. I’m pacing myself for the sake of the readalong, but I am impatiently and anxiously waiting to see how Wharton wraps up the narrative, knowing that she doesn’t mind an unhappy ending.1
Looking at you, Ethan Frome!