Edith Wharton, the victim of a loveless marriage of twenty-five years, critiques the absurd manners in which New York society regarded marriage during the 1870’s in her ninth novel, The Age of Innocence. In the rapidly changing society that was New York City during the late 19th century, strict societal rules were put in place in order to create structure for those who yearned for it. Rules regarding marriage were included in this need for structure. However, whilst the ridiculous traditions and rules were put in place to create stability, and perhaps in turn naïve happiness, they actually resulted in a society that based marriage in a façade. Throughout The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton satirises marriage in this society through the ridiculous protocols of the wedding day, Newland Archers and May Wellands behaviour on the day of the wedding, and the behaviour of the other characters in attendance on the day of the wedding.
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Wharton satirises the belief that marriage matures someone significantly in a day. Through Archer commenting on how it “seemed inconceivable” to him that adults should worry about trivial matters of the wedding. By having Archer say this via the narrative description, Edith Wharton is able to critique the ridiculousness of the traditions in regards to weddings as well as satirise Archer’s new found superiority whilst standing and waiting for May. However, whilst Newland Archer may have acquired a new superiority, he still finds himself filled with “numbness”. In this, Wharton satirises the façade that is marriage in the 1870’s. Marriage is to signify the joining of two into one, and yet Newland finds no excitement in this. It could be inferred that at her own wedding, Edith Wharton felt a similar “ numbness” to Archer. This creates a further critique of the façade of
The angry tone of Wollstonecraft’s “Vindication of the Rights of Women” significantly contrasts with the cautionary tone of Austen’s “On Making an Agreeable Marriage,” seeking to reform society rather than guide people to live in that society. When Austen describes the drawbacks of loveless marriage, she writes that “Anything is to be preferred or endured rather than marrying without affection” (Austen 72-73). Austen uses “preferred” and “endured” to warn her niece against marrying too quickly, creating a cautionary tone. Moreover, “anything” emphasizes the miserableness of a marriage without affection, beseeching Austen’s niece to verify her love before diving headfirst into a marriage. In contrast, when demonizing the education system, Wollstonecraft
Novels such as “The Age of Innocence”(The Editors of), which discusses a “ picture of upper-class New York society in the 1870s” (The Editors of), strongly relates to Wharton and her background. “The Age of Innocence” is considered Wharton’s “finest work” (The Age Of). The novel is based off Newland Archer and May Welland’s troubled marriage. At first, the married couple live in harmony and joy, however this dramatically changes throughout the book. Once Newland meets “May's cousin, the Countess Ellen Olenska, on the run from an unhappy marriage” (The Age of Innocence), Newland immediately falls in love. Society plays a major key role in this book. Therefore, Ellen cannot divorce her husband or make a public announcement of her feelings for Newland. As Newland’s feelings grow deeper for Ellen he feels a strong need to run away with her and live their life together. However, Newland knew that severe consequences would be upheld against him if he were to run away with Ellen. Such as, being disowned from his family. However, he never cared much about the consequences and put Ellen as his main focus. May is a sharp woman and figured out their feelings toward each other and as a result, the day they planned to leave was the day May announced her pregnancy with Newland. The book ends with May and Newland carrying on their unhappy marriage and kids while Ellen and Newland’s relationship is forever
When Nettie first introduces her newborn child to Lily, she tells her “Marry Anto’nette-that’s what we call her: after the French queen in the play” (Wharton 334). The significance of the baby’s name is because it is an allusion to Marie Antoinette. Her lavish lifestyle is similar to the aristocrats of New York, but she was soon murdered during the French Revolution. Her murder represents an imminent downfall, as Lily experienced. However, Wharton changes the spelling in order to signify that Marry will not belong among the wealthy, such as Lily did not. Therefore, Wharton creates a connection between Lily and Marry, because both will obtain wealth, but diverge from society causing their decline and untimely death. When Lily dies, Wharton continues to highlight Lily’s connection to Marry. After she has overdosed, Lily begins to hallucinate that she is holding Marry, in which “…the baby more likely symbolizes [Lily’s] desire to born again” (Dixon). From this wish, Wharton is able to symbolize that Marry will embody Lily, and then is doomed. But Marry is a child, who cannot control her life, and according to Social Darwinism, is forced to endure her unsuccessful future. By making Marry a futile and naive baby, Wharton employs a sense of pathos, so she can censure Social Darwinism for harming a child and
The plot of The Age of Innocence revolves around Countess Olenska, who while being raised in New York is considered an immigrant to the “Old” New York society because she married and moved to Europe. Upon separating from her husband who was very cruel to her, she reunites with her cousin May and her family, and May’s new husband Newland Archer (whose family she thereby also inherits). This is where the frame of family allegiance is initially encountered in the novel. May and Newland wanted to hold off announcing their engagement until the standard cultural time period passed, but decided to go ahead with it in order to put the full force of two families behind the Countess instead of only May’s family. This cultural frame shows how the society was limited; in order to confront the taboo of possible divorce, the character’s options were restricted. Edith Wharton does a nice job of highlighting the irony of this frame: by viewing the situation and responding through this cultural frame, the characters squelched another cultural norm (the customary waiting period). Viewing it through this frame, Countess Olenska seems meek because she needs the help of her family to pull her through the situation. She is powerless to fight off an entire society who frowns on divorce, even if it is in her best interests. But Wharton does not leave it at that, because she uses her irony within the context of this frame to show that her sufferings come from this intra-family allegiance that does not give her any options.
In Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, the necessity of marrying well is one of the central themes. In Austen’s era a woman’s survival depended on her potential to acquire an affluent partner. This meant a choice of marrying for love and quite possibly starve, or marry a securing wealthy person, there was a risk of marrying someone who you might despise.
The pressure of conformity affects individual expression and varies in degrees in which it impacts an individual’s life. Regardless of time period, conformity is able to force individualists to abide by the social standards inculcated into society and deemphasize the importance behind individualism. In the 1920s, New York City adopted a structure parallel to conformity in its figurative hierarchy after the grief and devastation of World War I. With fear of the unknown, a reestablishment of tradition and routine followed, including an adaptation to the use of silences. The individuals with class and power used silence as a vehicle to conform and unify but, free-willed individuals gave another purpose to silence. It became a tool to express the pitfalls of this new society. Edith Wharton analyzes the dual purpose of the silences through characters that represent different facets of views during the time. In the Age of Innocence,Wharton emphasizes Olenska and Archer’s silences to identify and criticize the invisible evils that lurk within the hierarchy of “old New York” and reveal the rationalization of a pretentious and delusional society.
The Age of Innocence, written by Edith Wharton, is about the upper-class society of New York City in the 1870’s. The novel follows the life of an upper-class lawyer named Newland Archer. He is going to wed May Welland, who comes from another upper-class family. As the novel progresses Newland starts to become intrigued with May’s cousin, the poor Ellen Olenska. Ellen is called “poor” because she is shameful in the eyes of the society that surrounds her. Ellen left her husband and moved back to New York City to be with her family. Divorce is not acceptable in the 1870’s high society like it is today. Newland tries at first to protect Ellen from the bad reputation that she will perceive if she divorces her husband. In the end he just wants her to be free and desires to be with her for the woman she became. There are still different levels of society in the world, but the lives of distinction are perhaps not as evident.
Edith Wharton’s novel, Ethan Frome, constructed an internal conflict with the main protagonist, his passion, and his responsibility. The protagonist, Ethan Frome, fell into a love triangle after tragic events involving his unhealthy wife, Zeena, and his wife’s youthful cousin, Mattie Silver. Almost immediately, the love triangle brought forth a strong internal and external dilemma; affecting Ethan Frome dramatically. Ethan Frome found himself trapped in a newly formed passion that almost wholeheartedly threatened the responsibilities he had towards his sickly wife.
Premarital sexual relationships during the time period (1917) are extremely taboo. In the past if a young woman from a small town and a man from the city had an affair, it would end with the family of the wealthy young man paying for a place for the young women to raise the child. Wharton does not directly elude to sex between Charity and Harney but their afternoons and nights spent at the shack that they found together, we are supposed to infer that they are having a sexual relationship. Charity is becoming Harney’s love object and has no intention of marrying Charity, Grafton
Edith Wharton once stated that she “ . . . [doesn’t] know if [she] should care for a man who made life easy; [she] should want someone who made it interesting,” showing how Edith reflects Lily Bart, an unwed woman living in the midst of the elite society of New York, who struggles to find a suitable husband and live in the elite society that leads to her inevitable demise, in Edith's novel The House of Mirth (CITATION). Although many of the characters in the novel were in an elite and prominent society, they were possibly the most morally corrupt people since women married men for their wealth, and men expected women to constantly act proper and sophisticated. Edith Wharton’s modern novel The House of Mirth demonstrates why people in the
In The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton depicts and contrasts New York and European society during the 1870s. This period was termed the “Gilded Age” due in part to Mark Twain’s portrayal of the social problems of the era as disguised by a thin layer of gold in his 1873 novel The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today. Wharton establishes a stark divide between the attitudes and outlooks on society of the main character, Newland Archer, and a love interest and his fiancee’s cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska. Though Archer disagrees with some norms and expectations in New York society, he feels a need to conform, while Ellen denounces these norms and stays true to herself.
“We can’t behave like people in novels, though can we?” questioned Edith Wharton in one of her renown novels, The Age of Innocence (Goodreads). As a writer, she combined her own values regarding culture and humankind into her novels. In fact, she often queried issues regarding society’s social standards and behaviors, especially emphasizing feministic ideals. Therefore, Edith Wharton thoroughly presents the motif of feminism through her novels, The Age of Innocence and Ethan Frome.
In the late 1800s, the average wealthy woman conformed to society 's very high standards, but Edith Wharton was not your average wealthy woman. She stood out as being a women 's rights activist, and always wanted to push the boundaries of society 's standards by reading and writing even from a very young age. Her view of marriage was skewed because of the hardships she faced with her second husband. Edith Wharton 's cynical view of marriage and society are reflected in her characters emotions and actions in her short stories because of the injustices she faced with her mother and standards of women at the time.
The different reasons and attitudes for marriage in the early 1800 come from the foundation of love, money, and class. Societal statuses reflect on the reputation of which a family holds. Comparing and contrasting these many aspects of reasons for marriage play an important role in Pride and Prejudice.
Within these marriages, readers get a sense of how education plays an important role in a successful marriage, as this fulfills both of their dreams of personal identity. Although women in the nineteenth century were viewed to be superior wives and mothers, manage the household, and perform domestic tasks, it was important for women to become educated as “an education was supposed to enable these girls to become successful women in society” (Leigh 117). Women were not meant to be “trained” in some way to become good wives, but needed to be formally educated in order to be a successful wife and