Having been introduced, like many people, to Edith Wharton via Ethan Frome (though I found it one of the most moving books I’ve ever read), I was surprised to find such differences between that book and The Age of Innocence. Though Wharton condemns hypocrisy, imposed morality and the society surrounding her suffering characters (who suffer mainly DUE to that society’s rules), it is far more believable in “Innocence” than in “Frome”. In the latter, if one knows anything about Edith (you should read her autobiography) and her supposed “expertise” on the culture of the “hill folk” (I snicker silently!) of the Berkshires, one must take the whole thing with a pound of salt. I did, and hence, loved the book for its maudlin, pseudo-tragic representation of the hopelessness of 19th Century rural, New England life. And the film adaptation, with the excellent Liam Neeson as the eponymous hero (?) shows how great he is as an actor, soulfully, yet almost tearfully hamming up Wharton’s pseudo-perspective, and thus shedding MORE light on the hill folk and their lot than she did!

But The Age of Innocence is different. Here she is thoroughly in her element: high society. Though she would have only been a young girl in the late 1970’s, her world did not change that much. Her world rarely changed at all, for all her gadding about to the Berkshires, Italy, cruises to Greece, and even a stint in a hospital in WWI London (basically forced on her by an altruistic friend). She, who claimed to despise her peers and their “smooth hypocrisy”, was every bit as stuck up as they, but she managed to put the glossy cachet of a supposedly “artistic” temperament, and better yet, “being published” upon it, and made sure only to worship those writers, like Henry James, who had “arrived”, as they used to say. She is like a female Soames Forsyte (Of James Galsworthy’s The Forsyte Saga, the “Man of Property): a connoisseur of things which are already or bound to be successful and therefore valuable.

As such, she is far more like Newland Archer’s vacuous, yet level-headed and shark-like fiancee, May, than she is like poor, scatterbrained, bohemian Madame Ellen Olenska, for all her sympathetic posturing toward the latter. I would venture to say that, even if she did not sympathize with May’s nefarious husband-pinning tactics (though I would assume that she DID), she would understand them well enough to make them frighteningly real—not a thing one often sees in articles on marriage, much less in novels about 19th Century courting.

Wharton’s whole demeanor toward Ellen Olenska, though written to sound sympathetic, is easily seen through as condescending, disapproving and her sanctioning of Ellen as a heroine only gained by having her sacrifice her beloved on the altar of the very hypocrisy and Puritanical, New York society she claims to despise! It is unimaginable to Wharton that Ellen and Newland Archer could actually take off to live together, though neither would be breaking up an established, happy marriage, unlike Galsworthy’s real hero, Jolyon (Soames’ cousin), who thrice “goes against everything”, as his lover and later, wife, Irene, tells their son.

Wharton simply cannot allow this to happen, putting the pathetic, unconvincing lines into the supposedly carefree Ellen’s mouth that she could never love him if he DID go against morality. What TOSH! At least Galsworthy had the guts to create a hero and heroine who had the courage of their convictions and would continue loving, despite public condemnation, which was quite severe (the time period was less than twenty years after Wharton’s story—the 1890’s).
Though I thoroughly trounce Wharton’s hypocrisy, and the unbelievable nature of her hero and heroine, I DO celebrate her ability to describe late Victorian life, in all its detail. One of my favorite lines involves Americans and their desire to “get away from amusement even more quickly than they went to it”—something that does not seem to have changed much! Hence: Facebook and the Internet entire. There is a sort of cozy regularity about the scenes of her Victorian-American life: the visits to Granny Mingots “cream-colored mansion”, the rituals of grand balls, operas, petty gossip (which is primarily carried on by men! No surprise, actually) and what Galsworthy dubbed “spotless domesticity” of Newland’s married life. It makes one shudder!

Wharton’s incisive description of manners and rules and society are, indeed, so powerful, that reading alone can make one feel like stepping bodily into a Merchant-Ivory production…or into the dubiously preferable past itself. Here, the wealthy stroll about Manhattan, Newport or the Continent, basically doing nothing but dressing and undressing, socializing and occasionally competing at archery (May wins a prize!). The blackguards, like Julius Beaufort, who keeps a mistress in a fancy flat, live like kings until they are ruined, NOT by scandal, but by stock market speculation (sound familiar?). The “gentlemen” abide by rules almost as strict as those of their wives and mothers and fiancees, and they seem almost as constricted, but without corsets.

The ones who feel, who really live, are consigned to the outskirts of society, to either love fully and be “exterminated” by society, as Wharton says of Mme. Olenska, or accept its burden, repent and join the throng, only to find that they have “carried on with a false” life. The only escapees seem to be soulless idiots like the gossip monger/adulterer, Larry Lefferts, or the “happily married” May Archer, née, Welland. Her “bright blindness” not only protects her from thinking of others’ feelings but arms her against threats to her domestic plans, even when she is sure her husband loves another. She, to be fair, gives him one chance to be honest, to admit what he feels and she will let him go. The real tragedy is that despite his feelings for Ellen, he is too cowardly to take it.

It would have been interesting to have Galsworthy (who actually liked America) at one of Wharton’s “at homes”, and listen to them discuss their disparate views on marriage, love, deception and the inevitability of infidelity in an unhappy Victorian union. Though I consider Wharton the superior writer (of fiction, NOT of autobiographies!), I must hand Galsworthy the prize for having the most courage and insight into the soul of Victorians, and of humans in general. Edith was simply too self-absorbed to give any of that such deep thought!

I expect that Galsworthy and Wharton would have come to blows, with Henry James acting as a bi-continental referee! ( )

One of Modern Libraries Best 100 books of the 20th Centruy. Published in 1920,the marvelous author Edith Wharton draws you into the lives of New Yorks upper crust as they live according to strict social customs. ( )