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The age of innocence edith wharton citation
The age of innocence edith wharton citation
The age of innocence edith wharton citation
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Ellen Olenska as a Mythological Muse in The Age of Innocence
Long ago in ancient Greece, mythology was used to explain our world, our lives, and most importantly, our interpersonal relationships. Still today Greek mythology is infused into the literature of almost every influential and lasting author, one of the more effective authors being Edith Wharton, author of The Age of Innocence. The relationship between Newland Archer and Madame Ellen Olenska, two protagonists in Wharton’s novel, is an example of the classic relationship between a muse and an inspired man. Wharton was obviously well learned in the art of mythology as seen in her stories, The Lamp of Psyche and The Muse’s Tragedy, and used this knowledge in order to portray a tragic tale of an inspired man.
From Ellen Olenska’s first appearance at New York’s ornate opera house, her presence is of a mythological being that “catches the eye and the interest of every man of the prominent New York social scene” (Millicent 229). Blake Nevius states that Ellen has the mysterious faculty of suggesting tragic and moving possibilities outside the daily run of experience (185); it is a classic trait of a muse to evoke ideas of a life superior to the ordinary with endless possibilities.
There are nine muses of Greek mythology who evoke different arenas of inspiration in a man; a muse of epic poetry, a muse of tragedy, a muse of comedy, a muse of history, a muse of astronomy, a muse of dance, a muse of sacred song, a muse of lyric poetry, and Erato, a muse of love poetry and passion (Marks 34).
Erato, whose name translates into passionate is known as the “awakener of desire” (35), and most closely resembles Ellen Olenska. The poet Hesiod wrote, “the muse’s spirit is free from care and for though men has sorrow and grief in his soul, when the Muses sing, at once he forgets his dark thoughts and remembers not his troubles (34). This explains Archer’s state of mind whenever he is in the company of Ellen, for an affair was of bad “taste,” and Archer believed that “few things seemed more awful than an offense against ‘Taste,’ that far-off divinity of ‘Form’ was the mere visible representative and vice-regent,” yet this notion slipped out of thought whenever he was in the presence of Countess Ellen Olenska.
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...ernatives, which Archer was able to do after Ellen inspired him to (96 Lyde).
Edith Wharton successfully portrayed Countess Ellen Olenska as a muse who inspired Newland Archer to open his eyes to the world outside of conventions and to act on what she had taught him. In no Greek tragedy does the certainty of defeat – the irresistible power of fate – free the central figure, in this case, Newland Archer, from personal responsibility. The important thing, the lesson learned by Ellen Olenska, which made the tale of Newland Archer tragic, is a quality of character which transforms suffering into wisdom and humanity.
Works Cited
Bell, Millicent. Edith Wharton and Henry James. Millicent Bell, 1965.
Coxe, Louis O. “What Edith Wharton Saw in Innocence.” The New Republic. Louis
O. Coxe, 1955.
Lyde, Marilyn Jones. Edith Wharton. University of Oklahoma Press, 1959.
Mansfield, Katherine. Novels and Novelists. New York Knopf, 1930.
Marks, Tracy. Our Muses. Tracy Marks, 1989.
Nevius, Blake. Edith Wharton. University of California, 1953.
Named Works:
Wharton, Edith. The Age of Innocence. Dover Publications, Inc. 1997.
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The society in which classical myths took place, the Greco-Roman society was a very patriarchal one. By taking a careful gander at female characters in Greco-Roman mythology one can see that the roles women played differ greatly from the roles they play today. The light that is cast upon females in classical myths shows us the views that society had about women at the time. In classical mythology women almost always play a certain type of character, that is to say the usual type of role that was always traditionally played by women in the past, the role of the domestic housewife who is in need of a man’s protection, women in myth also tended to have some unpleasant character traits such as vanity, a tendency to be deceitful, and a volatile personality. If one compares the type of roles that ladies played in the myths with the ones they play in today’s society the differences become glaringly obvious whilst the similarities seem to dwindle down. Clearly, and certainly fortunately, society’s views on women today have greatly changed.
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defeating the villains and that the Gods are the good guys. However, minimal research will reveal that this isn’t the case. In Edna St. Vincent Millay’s sonnet “I Dreamed I Moved among the Elysian Fields” she intertwines the allusions to mythological Greek woman with the speaker 's own experience to make a powerful statement on the sexual objectification and victimization of women in the 1930s.
Utilizing their natural forces, they personified an idea of trust and the past by being the deliverers of truth and also history. The Muses came into his life and transformed it for the better; this is apparent because he focuses on them in the beginning and the end of his poem. Hesiod’s overall purpose of including the Muses was to create a base of authority and reliability while reading his poem; the presence of the Muses did that exactly. The nine daughters of Zeus led Hesiod’s stories and that is obvious when you simply read them. The stories that he tells have a lyrical rhythm to it as they are read to resemble the song and dance of the Muses as heard by Hesiod long
Within the writings of Greek mythology women commonly display certain attributes that the Greek society associated with women or femininity back in the day. A common quality demonstrated amongst the women in Greek society, and more specifically in Greek mythology, is deception. Throughout the Greek literature discussed in class, women have commonly showed their deception and trickery in different ways and for numerous different reasons. The Odyssey, Theogony, and Homeric Hymm all displayed Greek women showing some form of deception within the stories and poems. These stories show various ways and reasons for Greek women being deceiving and disingenuous, reasons for which there needs to be more discussion.