well-written book. newland archer seems set to condition in the path of tradition created by his well-off new york ancestors by marrying, may welland, another descendent of well-off new yorkers. that is until the arrival of her cousin, countess ellen olenska. she rocks newland's world and that of the tight-knit, upper-crust new york society. ellen is off the cuff and unconventional and she draws newland in; his love is not only for her but for that of change and throwing off the shackles that nice, conventional, duty-bound new york has chained him in. may represents all the things of that society and, therefore, doesn't make newland's heart skip a beat but makes him feel he's done what he should and that's what bothers him!

wharton draws her characters well (reading the descriptions of old catherine are awesome) and makes you empathize with the deadened spiritual crisis newland fights through in wanting to strike out on his own from the path that's been laid out for him. ( )

The Age of Innocence is a truly beautifully written book which transports us seemingly effortlessly into the drawing rooms of upper-class "old" New York in the 1870s. It's a wonderful story, peopled by all those exceedingly 'proper' types with their ridiculous double standards, who never really said what they thought. The characters are portrayed with great insight, but also compassionately .

A quote: "It was the old New York way of taking life" without effusion of blood": the way of people who dreaded scandal more than disease, who placed decency above courage, and who considered that nothing was more ill-bred than 'scenes', except the behavior of those who gave rise to them."

Wharton gives us an acutely observed social commentary of the time: when manners, pedigree, 'form', and the resultant social acceptance are all.

I give thanks (yet again) that I was born into the time and place I was, rather than then . . . ( )

A worthy story to read, such a nice one that show how the person could live in struggle because of the family's tradition and how the person may leave his love for his child or family.
Laila ( )

No doubt she simply echoed what was said for her; but she was nearing her twenty－second birthday, and he wondered at what age "nice" women began to speak for themselves.
....
It would presently be his task to take the bandage from this young woman's eyes, and bid her look forth on the world.

And earlier
And he felt himself oppressed by this creation of factitious purity, so cunningly manufactured by a conspiracy of mothers and aunts and grandmothers and long－dead ancestresses, because it was supposed to be what he wanted, what he had a right to, in order that he might exercise his lordly pleasure in smashing it like an image made of snow.
...
He could not deplore (as Thackeray's heroes so often exasperated him by doing) that he had not a blank page to offer his bride in exchange for the unblemished one she was to give to him. He could not get away from the fact that if he had been brought up as she had they would have been no more fit to find their way about than the Babes in the Wood; nor could he, for all his anxious cogitations, see any honest reason (any, that is, unconnected with his own momentary pleasure, and the passion of masculine vanity) why his bride should not have been allowed the same freedom of experience as himself.

...

he asked himself if May's face was doomed to thicken into the same middle－aged image of invincible innocence.
Ah, no, he did not want May to have that kind of innocence, the innocence that seals the mind against imagination and the heart against experience!

This was Newland Archer contemplating his bride-to-be. And who says those times are lost? I see that innocence manufactured day-by-day, done all too well. It would happen to me too, I will walk into my bridal chamber literally terrified out of my skin. And the point of the whole elaborate marriage ceremony is that it is a pantomime set up to fool the bride. And just because I understand this doesn't change the fact that I will be willingly fooled by it, fooled into believing that it all ends on the day of marriage.

This cognitive dissonance, the ability to separate the theory of sex from its application, is by no means unique to me. I know enough girls- including me- who are perfectly willing to believe that a couple who have spent entire nights in one small room, have never- to use the prevalent slang- done it. Who would laugh at explicit jokes all day, yet at the end of it, would remain the archetypical 'nice' girls, not only virgins, but virginal.

Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach terrified me, literally, when I first read it, and I still have a morbid fascination with it. But lets stick to the book we are talking about. If we are talking about the book. But we are not. We are talking about me, and reading my story inbetween the lines of The Age of Innocence. The story of closed gossipy societies, and the girls who belonged in them. Of coming home, and never leaving it. Of bad, unhappy marriages, ruined by both too much passion, and too little. Of girls trained from their birth, and bound by the lessons. Of boys who did not know what they wanted. Of desire. Of love.

To Archer's strained nerves the vision was as soothing as the sight of the blue sky and the lazy river. They sat down on a bench under the orange－trees and he put his arm about her and kissed her. It was like drinking at a cold spring with the sun on it; but his pressure may have been more vehement than he had intended, for the blood rose to her face and she drew back as if he had startled her.
"What is it?" he asked, smiling; and she looked at him with surprise, and answered: "Nothing."
A slight embarrassment fell on them, and her hand slipped out of his. It was the only time that he had kissed her on the lips except for their fugitive embrace in the Beaufort conservatory, and he saw that she was disturbed, and shaken out of her cool boyish composure.
....

May seemed to be aware of his disappointment, but without knowing how to alleviate it; and they stood up and walked silently home.

.....
He gave a reckless shrug. "It's too late to do anything else."
"You say that because it's the easiest thing to say at this moment－－not because it's true. In reality it's too late to do anything but what we'd both decided on."
...
If he could have got her in his arms again he might have swept away her arguments; but she still held him at adistance by something inscrutably aloof in her look and attitude, and by his own awed sense of her sincerity.
At length he began to plead again.

And that is it really. You play the cards you are dealt, and really, this is not a bad story to be in- it might be tragic, but I prefer tragic to placid, anyways. And if that sounds too flippant, it was meant that way, because happiness is not funny.
--

Storyline and characters are very consistent, style of writing is suggestive, and the book is written in formal English. It's about a man who wants to have the best of both worlds, no one had a happy ending. It's a little tragic the way the events unfolded but that's life in this perfect world. They're sometimes unpredictable especially in the end, all the while May is living in an ideal setting of married life, she chose to ignore that while her husband is married to her, he's in love with her cousin, Ellen Olenska. The way the author wrote Archer's feelings is vivid, one can see into his mind. There are a lot of sacrifices made her by the three central characters. Ellen - not giving in to temptation of being Archer's mistress, May - accepting that Archer loves another but didn't let it interfere with her happiness, Archer - just when you're looking for that dramatic reunion in the end, it doesn't happen. He was given the chance to be free of a marriage he does not want but out of duty or society's morees, he endured it. ( )