January discussion thread: The Age of Innocence

[SusanH]

Here is our discussion thread for The Age of Innocence. As always, be cautious of reading if you haven't finished as posts may contain spoilers.

If you'd also like to discuss the 1993 film adaptation with Daniel Day-Lewis and Michelle Pfeiffer, please do! I highly recommend it after you've finished the novel.

[Caryl]

Who else is reading this book? I know jennifershepard is -- I like your description, Jen, of it being "wonderfully sly." I just finished chapter three last night. It's very fun!

[Brocken]

I am in chapter 11 It is a great book. I do not get a lot of quiet time but am working it in. So far it is very intriguing. I do like the characters. Madame Olenski is awesome. I can actually relate to her. I love her blindness to routine and what has been considered proper. She seems like such a real person. I will read more this weekend.

Brocken

[Caryl]

I'm glad you are enjoying it, Brocken. How far along are you now? I am almost done with Book One, and I can't wait to find out what happens to these characters in the second half of the novel! At first, I rolled my eyes at them a lot, but now I am feeling sympathetic towards them. I worry that they are all going to come up against these awful conventions and not be able to do what they really need to do, and will make some bad choices because of it.

[SusanH]

I've decided I have to quote my absolute favorite physical description of a character from anywhere in all of literature (well, at least all that I've read so far):

The immense accretion of flesh which had descended
on her in middle life like a flood of lava on a doomed
city had changed her from a plump active little woman
with a neatly-turned foot and ankle into something as
vast and august as a natural phenomenon. She had
accepted this submergence as philosophically as all her
other trials, and now, in extreme old age, was rewarded
by presenting to her mirror an almost unwrinkled
expanse of firm pink and white flesh, in the
centre of which the traces of a small face survived as if
awaiting excavation. A flight of smooth double chins led
down to the dizzy depths of a still-snowy bosom veiled
in snowy muslins that were held in place by a miniature
portrait of the late Mr. Mingott; and around and below,
wave after wave of black silk surged away over the edges
of a capacious armchair, with two tiny white hands poised
like gulls on the surface of the billows.

It continues on and the rest is great too, but I'll stop with that section. I'm not normally a fan of narration (I prefer dialogue to description), but Wharton is the master of the sly and creative description. It's pure delight to read her descriptive passages.

[Caryl]

Ah, I loved that description, Susan! I read it a couple of times. This book is so rich; Wharton is an excellent writer.

I just came upon another part at the end of chapter 26 that has become an all-time favorite passage of mine. I'll copy it here. (I love public domain!) This is about May:

"The change will do you good," she said simply, when he had finished; "and you must be sure to go and see Ellen," she added, looking him straight in the eyes with her cloudless smile, and speaking in the tone she might have employed in urging him not to neglect some irksome family duty.

It was the only word that passed between them on the subject; but in the code in which they had both been trained it meant: "Of course you understand that I know all that people have been saying about Ellen, and heartily sympathize with my family in their effort to get her to return to her husband. I also know that, for some reason you have not chosen to tell me, you have advised her against this course, which all the older men of the family, as well as our grandmother, agree in approving; and that it is owing to your encouragement that Ellen defies us all, and exposes herself to the kind of criticism of which Mr. Sillerton Jackson probably gave you this evening, the hint that has made you so irritable... Hints have indeed not been wanting; but since you appear unwilling to take them from others, I offer you this one myself, in the only form in which well-bred people of our kind can communicate unpleasant things to each other: by letting you understand that I know you mean to see Ellen when you are in Washington, and are perhaps going there expressly for that purpose; and that, since you are sure to see her, I wish you to do so with my full and explicit approval -- and to take the opportunity of letting her know what the course of conduct you have encouraged her in is likely to lead to."

Her hand was still on the key of the lamp when the last word of this mute message reached him. She turned the wick down, lifted off the globe, and breathed on the sulky flame.

"They smell less if one blows them out," she explained, with her bright housekeeping air. On the threshold she turned and paused for his kiss.

Wow.

[Brocken]

I just finished the book. It was very good, yet I was quite saddened by the ending I was really disappointed. I did not see that ending coming.

My opinion is that Newland, even though he had a fantasy of being with Ellen, in the end realized how much he loved and respected May.

I do think it was cool how it went fast forward 30 years. I also thought it neat how the character of Dallas was so unlike the older characters. He was believable as the next generation.

The description of Dallas calling his dad on the phone was great. It was interesting to see how not too long ago we did not have the luxery of a telelphone and how people became accustomed to it.

It truly was a great book in the writing style and the detail. I just kinda wish the ending was different.

Brocken

[Caryl]

I finished last week! I have lots of thoughts and feelings swirling around my head about this book. I have a bad cold right now, so I'm worried they'll come out rather muddled, but I'll try jotting a few of them down right now and then come back to this early this coming week.

Brocken, I enjoyed reading your thoughts. For me, the ending worked. I was really caught up with this story near the end, and wanted desperately to see how Wharton would finish it up. It was a sad ending, very melancholy, but that is what I expected as I found the whole story rather sad, even though I smiled at certain bits.

I'd love to hear this story from Madame Olenska's point of view. I can see re-reading this book again just trying to look for the clues Wharton gives us as to what she's thinking and feeling. I found it difficult to get inside the heads of both May and Ellen, and I think this was intentional; Newland finds this difficult, too. I suspect Ellen didn't feel as strongly for Newland as he did for her, but I could be wrong.

I really liked how Wharton took the last chapter 30 years forward, too. And now that I think about it, the ending was partly happy for me because of the hope of the next generation. I think Newland feels this hope for his children, too. I liked this bit from him:

"The difference is that these young people take it for granted that they're going to get whatever they want, and that we almost always took it for granted that we shouldn't. Only, I wonder -- the thing one's so certain of in advance: can it ever make one's heart beat as wildly?"

I don't know that I agree with him about "these young people," but this little bit really defines Newland's character to me. I think he was enthralled with the Countess Olenska because she was the unobtainable, and the risk he would have been taking for her definitely made his "heart beat wildly." As I said before, I'm not sure what Ellen's heart was doing during all of this.

I should see the movie and see how they interpreted it. Quite a challenge to play these roles, I think, as the characters don't give away much about themselves through their words, and their actions are such subtle communications. I love how Wharton wrote a book with really nothing much happening, but so much going on under the surface, people about to burst under the conventions they'd built for themselves.

[SusanH]

That's an interesting point, Caryl. I think that in many ways, Countess Olenska couldn't feel the same passion for Newland because she knew that there was no hope for them. I'm thinking of the scene in which he says he wants to find a country for them to be together in and she replies:

"Oh, my dear--where is that country? Have you ever
been there?" she asked; and as he remained sullenly
dumb she went on: "I know so many who've tried to
find it; and, believe me, they all got out by mistake at
wayside stations: at places like Boulogne, or Pisa, or
Monte Carlo--and it wasn't at all different from the
old world they'd left, but only rather smaller and dingier
and more promiscuous."

I want to quote the whole scene but I think that says enough. She is so much more worldly, more cynical and less of a dreamer than he is. She knows that there is no way for them to be together, so she can't approach him with the same sort of hope and passion that he does her. I think she does honestly love him, but she tempers it with her better understanding of their situation.

Brocken: I saw the very beginning of the film version done in, I think, the 1930's. It starts with shots of New York as it then was - motorcars, neon, etc and then moves back to as it was in the novel. It was a really effective way to show the differences that happened in such a short time that you were commenting on.

Caryl, you should see the movie. It's worth it, I think, even though it isn't perfect. I think Winona Ryder does her best although she's physically badly miscast. Daniel Day-Lewis and Michelle Pfeiffer are wonderful, of course. There's a definite subtlety to the performances and the costumes and set designs alone are worth watching. I remember reading about the film just before it came out and the filmmakers were extremely careful to get everything exactly correct for the time period. So for that alone, it's interesting to watch.

[Caryl]

Thank you for your thoughts on Countess Olenska, Susan. That helps a lot. I adore that quote of hers; she's right on.

I read the introductory commentary in my Modern Library edition this last week, and I found that knowing more about Wharton and the time she grew up in, and a bit about her personal life, helped me to see what she was trying to do with this novel. I never read this kind of stuff until after I read a novel, because I am fearful of spoilers; and rightly so as there were several of them!

I found this quote interesting from the introduction by Louis Auchincloss:

The only way that Ellen and Archer can convert their love into a thing of beauty is by renunciation. And the twist of the plot is that the value of renunciation has been taught them, not, after all, by Europe with all its art and history, but by the very society of brownstone New York that the young Ellen and the mature Archer found so stuffy and limited.

I'd love to read a biography of Wharton. Any suggestions? I see she has an autobiography called A Backward Glance. In reading the little bit that I did, I learned that she was in an unhappy marriage and eventually separated from her husband and moved to Paris. She is not Ellen, but she clearly understands her very well, and she understands Newland, too.

Neither of my two library systems carries a DVD of The Age of Innocence film, so I had to do a state-wide request, and I think I've found one and did it correctly online. I'll let you know when I watch it!

I thought you all might be interested in this link: Edith Wharton: A Life in Pictures and Text. I haven't gone through all of it yet, but what I've seen is really neat.