There is love of course. And then there's life, its enemy. ~ Socrates
Penguin Classics describes this book as one of the ‘best
books ever written’. A strong claim, and a person could be forgiven for
indulging in a spot of cynicism over it. Until suddenly you’re transported back
to New York’s upper crust 1870s society with descriptions so vivid and
characters so real you feel like you’re truly sitting down to dinner with them
rather than spying through the pages of
a book.
Edith Wharton wrote The
Age of Innocence in 1920. It was her Pulitzer Prize winning crowning glory.
From the first page you feel her world springing to life around you. You become
acutely aware of the importance of honour, duty and reputation. Of society
ranking, ancestry and wealth. And so
begins a heart breaking glimpse into the small universe of Mr Newland Archer.
Newland Archer isn’t immediately a man who naturally draws
sympathy. A well to do Manhattan resident with a career in law and a pretty fiancée
he adores, Archer appears rather set when we first tune into his life. And then
his head is turned by his wife’s rather beautiful cousin Ellen Mingott, who is
in possession of the rather more glamorous and suiting title of Countess
Olenska.
What unfolds afterwards is Newland’s struggle between
fulfilling his duty to wife May and maintaining his reputation in the process,
or throwing caution to the wind, declaring his love for Ellen and abandoning
ship (or island) with her. What he eventually decides to do I shan’t reveal
here in case anyone has not yet read it. And if you haven’t, you really should.
Wharton beautifully captures Newland’s emotional turmoil leaving you desperately
willing him on. And the ending is the most touchingly frustrating finishing to
a novel I’ve read since Gone with the
Wind.
This brings us to the focus of this blog. Our ladies. May
and Ellen, connected through their grandmother, the family matriarch Mrs.
Mingott, the former Catherine Spicer.
May Welland is as uncontroversial as can be. Ellen Olenska
is as unconventional as can be. Ellen is welcomed back into New York life
having left her titled husband in Europe and fleeing home. She is cloaked in
scandal, and, ironically, shielded from negative comments and society’s
shunning only by respectable family connections made through her cousin May’s
engagement to Newland. She is thirty, beautiful and exotic. Newland, who is
portrayed as something of a feminist, is drawn to her vivaciousness and lust
for life. He wants her because she is different to the other ‘wife material’
girls he has been consorting with.
Before Ellen sweeps onto the scene Newland is quite happily
aboard a ship going full steam ahead into his marriage to May. He begs her family to bring
the marriage forward, desperate to be with her as quick as possible. May is
portrayed as everything expected from a good nineteenth century society wife.
Bland, apparently lacking opinions, deeply concerned with outward appearances and
the comfort of her own life. As Ellen crashes into Newland’s world like a
hurricane he begins to realise this about the woman he is set to marry. He
subscribes to the idea that women should be able to do as they please, making a
mental note to allow his wife to be ‘free’ rather than kept at home like his
society believed a good wife should be. May, to Newland’s frustration and
disappointment, doesn’t appear to realise she’s been set free. She is happy to
play the part he has come to despise.
On the other hand Ellen has defied all the rules by leaving
her husband when she was unhappy and absolutely refuses to get back together
with him whatever the cost to her finances and reputation. She lives in a part
of town upper class sort wouldn’t normally delve in, and does it happily. She mixes
with disreputable people, the kind whom ‘nice’ people wouldn’t enjoy the
company of. And Newland falls in love
with her for it. And the feelings are mutual. The two begin an emotional, if
not physical, affair.
So far, so classic story. The man falls in love with another
woman. One who is exciting, different to anyone he’s ever met before, and
worlds away from the monotony of life with his wife. But Newland can’t shake
off the old bonds that tie him to convention and duty. Firstly, he is engaged,
and he feels he must see that through. Then, the marriage he has harassed his
wife’s family to bring forward IS brought forward. By this time he knows he
does not love May, at least not to the extent he loves Ellen. But he marries
her still. Out of duty and awareness of how easily reputations are damaged.
Now, I am usually 100% in favour of the anti-heroine figure.
The one who Ellen represents. The different, not conventionally womanly one.
But here I am torn. I feel that May is greatly underestimated and both admire
and pity her equally. Whilst Newland is running about dealing with his angst
over his love for his wife’s cousin, his wife, not being stupid, is aware of
his dwindling love for her and the usurping of his affections by her own
cousin, the one she herself welcomed and tried to protect from a mass society
rebuff.
At one point, just prior to her marriage, May even offers
Newland a get-out-of-jail-free card. She suspects him of loving another woman,
albeit at this point she believes it to be an ex flame of his rather than
Ellen. She explains she does not want to set up her married life, her future,
on a foundation of someone else’s unhappiness, and that if he wanted someone
else then he should go to her. Newland refuses and marries her, despite not
wanting to and May having hit the nail on the head in a roundabout way.
Newland’s love for Ellen continues after his wedding and for
a couple of years into it. May comes in for a lot of criticism: she does not
care for the splendour of Europe, she is interested in clothes. She does not
indulge in many intellectual pursuits, instead preferring sports. Negatives in
Newland’s eyes, but they always will be when he believes her a vacant, immature
airhead, and one that is never going to measure up to his beloved Countess
Olenska.
And so Newland continues to underestimate his wife whilst
taking good care of his growing desire for Ellen, until, finally, he decides he
would rather cause waves of scandal and leave. By this point, May has
beautifully manipulated the situation so Ellen is fleeing overseas believing May
to be pregnant, and Newland is once again forced to stay by his wife’s side
when she finds out she really is going to have a baby.
May knows what is going on under her own nose the whole
time. She knows her husband would prefer to be with another woman, and yet does
everything in her power to keep him anyway. Whether for love of him or in an
attempt to maintain her own reputation is debatable. Either way it is deeply
sad, and I feel sorry for her even as I wonder why she doesn’t just leave him
as her cousin Ellen left her husband when she discovered he was cheating on her.
Which leaves me with respect for Ellen, Countess Olenska.
Though she is clearly after Newland from the start, it is family loyalty that
prevents her from stealing away with him early on in the book, and it is an
acknowledgment that May is having a child who needs Newland that causes her to
leave New York. Her moral compass does not point as firmly north as it could,
but it is this that makes her an appealing, interesting and exciting character.
Even if May is not the wish-wash character Newland thinks she is, Ellen still
trumps her in having the guts to think it better to go it alone in life without
a husband she’s unhappy with despite what damage it might do to her reputation
than May, who so desperately wants a husband and a perfect looking life that
she stays with a man who loves another woman.
I promised earlier not to mention how Wharton resolves the
situation, so I won’t. But the thread of duty and appearance that runs through
Ellen, May and Newland’s lives leads a trail of devastation, heart ache and
tears which perhaps would not happen in today’s world. Though it is of course
debatable whether that is a good or bad thing. Ellen and May are two women who
I think are more alike than common consensus gives credit for. Both do, or at
least offer, to sacrifice Newland to another woman. And both show steely
determination in getting what they want. Both are hurt in the process. Ellen
and Newland hurt May in their obvious love for each other. May hurts Ellen and
Newland in her bittersweet ploy to keep them apart.
Three captivating,
endearing, frustrating and very human characters, beautifully written by
Wharton.
