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The Age of ‘The Age of Innocence’ The Age of ‘The Age of Innocence’
(10 days later)
In some ways, Edith Wharton’s classic novel feels more current than ever. Elif Batuman explains.In some ways, Edith Wharton’s classic novel feels more current than ever. Elif Batuman explains.
A literary “classic” is a recurring character in one’s life. One reads it, years go by, one reads it again, and it becomes the sum of those readings over time. One identifies with the character closest to one in age — and then one’s age changes. Eventually, each classic tells two stories: its own, and the story of all the times one has read it. In a way, in “The Age of Innocence,” Edith Wharton wrote an allegory of this very process: of the way stories acquire new meanings over time.A literary “classic” is a recurring character in one’s life. One reads it, years go by, one reads it again, and it becomes the sum of those readings over time. One identifies with the character closest to one in age — and then one’s age changes. Eventually, each classic tells two stories: its own, and the story of all the times one has read it. In a way, in “The Age of Innocence,” Edith Wharton wrote an allegory of this very process: of the way stories acquire new meanings over time.
Like most novels, “The Age of Innocence” offers a version of its author’s biography. Newland Archer, the central character, is, like Wharton herself, someone who has lived long enough to see the ideals of his youth become outdated.Like most novels, “The Age of Innocence” offers a version of its author’s biography. Newland Archer, the central character, is, like Wharton herself, someone who has lived long enough to see the ideals of his youth become outdated.
Edith Wharton was born in 1862, during the American Civil War. She started writing her first novel of manners at age 11, but her mother disapproved of women novelists, and of novels in general; she forbade Edith to read any more novels until after her marriage, which took place as soon as it could be arranged — in 1885, to a wealthy sportsman with manic-depressive tendencies. Wharton was 40 when she published her first novel, the year after her mother’s death. She wrote about one book per year for the rest of her life. In 1907, she moved to Paris, which is where she was at the start of World War I. People didn’t know yet that it was World War I, and called it the Great War. Many American expatriates left Paris at that time, but Wharton stayed behind, working on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of refugees who flooded across the French border. She personally housed 600 Belgian orphans, organized workshops for unemployed seamstresses and opened a home for tubercular children.Edith Wharton was born in 1862, during the American Civil War. She started writing her first novel of manners at age 11, but her mother disapproved of women novelists, and of novels in general; she forbade Edith to read any more novels until after her marriage, which took place as soon as it could be arranged — in 1885, to a wealthy sportsman with manic-depressive tendencies. Wharton was 40 when she published her first novel, the year after her mother’s death. She wrote about one book per year for the rest of her life. In 1907, she moved to Paris, which is where she was at the start of World War I. People didn’t know yet that it was World War I, and called it the Great War. Many American expatriates left Paris at that time, but Wharton stayed behind, working on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of refugees who flooded across the French border. She personally housed 600 Belgian orphans, organized workshops for unemployed seamstresses and opened a home for tubercular children.
Life and novel-writing were utterly transformed by the war. “Before the war, you could write fiction without indicating the period, the present being assumed. The war has put an end to that for a long time,” Wharton told her friend Bernard Berenson after the Armistice. With so many developments succeeding one another over such a short period, even the recent past had come to seem historical, each decade marking off a different world. From now on, Wharton said, “the historical novel will be the only possible form for fiction.” She wrote most of “The Age of Innocence” in 1919, the year after the Armistice, but the action is set in the 1870s, with only the last chapter jumping forward to the 1900s. Readers in 1920 would have been thinking about all the developments — industrialized warfare, cars, telephones, airplanes — that made even the 1900s, let alone the 1870s, feel like ancient history. They would be recalling the past stages of their own lives, mapping them against the newly historicized decades of the recent past.Life and novel-writing were utterly transformed by the war. “Before the war, you could write fiction without indicating the period, the present being assumed. The war has put an end to that for a long time,” Wharton told her friend Bernard Berenson after the Armistice. With so many developments succeeding one another over such a short period, even the recent past had come to seem historical, each decade marking off a different world. From now on, Wharton said, “the historical novel will be the only possible form for fiction.” She wrote most of “The Age of Innocence” in 1919, the year after the Armistice, but the action is set in the 1870s, with only the last chapter jumping forward to the 1900s. Readers in 1920 would have been thinking about all the developments — industrialized warfare, cars, telephones, airplanes — that made even the 1900s, let alone the 1870s, feel like ancient history. They would be recalling the past stages of their own lives, mapping them against the newly historicized decades of the recent past.
By the time I encountered “The Age of Innocence,” in the summer of 1993, almost nobody was alive who could even remember the 1900s. But people still read the book, and Martin Scorsese had adapted it into a movie. My mother and I went to a rooftop screening at the Sheraton Hotel in Ankara, around the block from where my grandmother lived. The sun sank behind the hills of Ankara, and the Old New York opera houses and drawing rooms grew increasingly vivid, as did the fraught relationship between Newland Archer, his fiancée, May Welland, and her unconventional cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska. I had just turned 16, and I immediately started trying to figure out which of the female leads I most closely resembled. Even at 16, I identified with the foreign, troubled older woman. On some level, I understood that the choice of roles — nubile virgin or sexy outcast — was an impoverished one, corresponding roughly to the stages of Edith Wharton’s life, from society bride to divorced expatriate. But I didn’t feel implicated, because I lived in modern times. My livelihood, my social role, would never depend on my love life. Women now had professions. They could be lawyers, travel alone and have premarital sex, just like Newland Archer. I, the beneficiary of all this freedom, could thus identify both with Ellen, in flight from her brutish husband, and with Newland, the independent protagonist whose subjectivity stood for that of the author. If I felt any tension between the two, I thought it was inherent to historical drama. Nineteenth-century constraints, however annoying to live with, had made life more romantic: Wasn’t that the point? Wasn’t it like the women’s long, buttoned gloves? It would be annoying to have to wear long gloves, but then just think if someone slowly undid the buttons in the back of a carriage, as Daniel Day-Lewis did with Michelle Pfeiffer’s glove in the movie.By the time I encountered “The Age of Innocence,” in the summer of 1993, almost nobody was alive who could even remember the 1900s. But people still read the book, and Martin Scorsese had adapted it into a movie. My mother and I went to a rooftop screening at the Sheraton Hotel in Ankara, around the block from where my grandmother lived. The sun sank behind the hills of Ankara, and the Old New York opera houses and drawing rooms grew increasingly vivid, as did the fraught relationship between Newland Archer, his fiancée, May Welland, and her unconventional cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska. I had just turned 16, and I immediately started trying to figure out which of the female leads I most closely resembled. Even at 16, I identified with the foreign, troubled older woman. On some level, I understood that the choice of roles — nubile virgin or sexy outcast — was an impoverished one, corresponding roughly to the stages of Edith Wharton’s life, from society bride to divorced expatriate. But I didn’t feel implicated, because I lived in modern times. My livelihood, my social role, would never depend on my love life. Women now had professions. They could be lawyers, travel alone and have premarital sex, just like Newland Archer. I, the beneficiary of all this freedom, could thus identify both with Ellen, in flight from her brutish husband, and with Newland, the independent protagonist whose subjectivity stood for that of the author. If I felt any tension between the two, I thought it was inherent to historical drama. Nineteenth-century constraints, however annoying to live with, had made life more romantic: Wasn’t that the point? Wasn’t it like the women’s long, buttoned gloves? It would be annoying to have to wear long gloves, but then just think if someone slowly undid the buttons in the back of a carriage, as Daniel Day-Lewis did with Michelle Pfeiffer’s glove in the movie.
I recently reread “The Age of Innocence” in 2018, at age 40, on a writing fellowship at Edith Wharton’s estate in the Berkshires. As I read, I remembered how, when I was a teenager, I thought it was a sign of liberation to identify at the same time with Ellen and with Newland. On some level, I had felt grateful that I was free to “work like a man” and “love like a woman.” Today, this idea of empowerment strikes me as dated and problematic. It seems to me that, at 16, I was already somehow prepared for my lot in life and in love to be a sad and dangerous one, as if this were the natural price a woman paid for not being a housewife. It didn’t bother me, in those days, to think that a man might someday view me as Newland views Ellen: “the most plaintive and poignant of a line of ghosts.” It didn’t occur to me that I might not enjoy being a ghost, or that having a series of plaintive and poignant ghosts might not be the best or most fun thing for men.I recently reread “The Age of Innocence” in 2018, at age 40, on a writing fellowship at Edith Wharton’s estate in the Berkshires. As I read, I remembered how, when I was a teenager, I thought it was a sign of liberation to identify at the same time with Ellen and with Newland. On some level, I had felt grateful that I was free to “work like a man” and “love like a woman.” Today, this idea of empowerment strikes me as dated and problematic. It seems to me that, at 16, I was already somehow prepared for my lot in life and in love to be a sad and dangerous one, as if this were the natural price a woman paid for not being a housewife. It didn’t bother me, in those days, to think that a man might someday view me as Newland views Ellen: “the most plaintive and poignant of a line of ghosts.” It didn’t occur to me that I might not enjoy being a ghost, or that having a series of plaintive and poignant ghosts might not be the best or most fun thing for men.
In many ways, “The Age of Innocence” feels more current to me now than it did in the 1990s. Criminals like Julian Beaufort and Count Olenski are protected by an invisible safety net, while Ellen lives under constant threat of destitution, dishonor and homelessness. In the past two years, new reporting has brought to light the existence of a social and legal system in America that protects powerful male sex abusers at women’s expense. Many of the abuses took place in the 1990s, and were already known or suspected for decades. But they weren’t publicly described as abuses, weren’t publicly described at all, and were understood as an implicit aspect of work life. Put into clear language, these stories took on a new reality, and new meanings. Stories that had seemed to be about, say, the inability of women to handle workplace pressures, now seem to be about something altogether different. In many ways, “The Age of Innocence” feels more current to me now than it did in the 1990s. Criminals like Julius Beaufort and Count Olenski are protected by an invisible safety net, while Ellen lives under constant threat of destitution, dishonor and homelessness. In the past two years, new reporting has brought to light the existence of a social and legal system in America that protects powerful male sex abusers at women’s expense. Many of the abuses took place in the 1990s, and were already known or suspected for decades. But they weren’t publicly described as abuses, weren’t publicly described at all, and were understood as an implicit aspect of work life. Put into clear language, these stories took on a new reality, and new meanings. Stories that had seemed to be about, say, the inability of women to handle workplace pressures, now seem to be about something altogether different.
To describe the world more fully is to change it. To let the world go undescribed is, in some way, not to know it, at one’s own peril. “The Age of Innocence” opens in “a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs.” In the course of the novel, Wharton puts those “real things” into thought and writing. By the last chapter, they are generally said and thought, and 57-year-old Newland understands the extent to which people’s lives were deformed by what was only half known. This is a novelistic insight, the kind that comes with living through historical change. It isn’t particular to the 1870s, or the 1920s. In a way, every age is an age of innocence, because every age has its own unsaid, half-known truths, which are articulated more clearly over time. Even after the particular circumstances described in a novel have vanished, we can still recognize ourselves and our lives in them. This is because novels are about change and realizations, and we never stop changing and realizing things. Many of the insights articulated by novels over the past four centuries — for example, that servants and slaves have emotional lives, that fighting in a war can be boring and confusing, that morality has to be redefined if you don’t believe in a Christian afterlife, or that dreams follow a different logic from waking life — seem obvious in retrospect. But the obvious may be unrecognized until it is spoken.To describe the world more fully is to change it. To let the world go undescribed is, in some way, not to know it, at one’s own peril. “The Age of Innocence” opens in “a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs.” In the course of the novel, Wharton puts those “real things” into thought and writing. By the last chapter, they are generally said and thought, and 57-year-old Newland understands the extent to which people’s lives were deformed by what was only half known. This is a novelistic insight, the kind that comes with living through historical change. It isn’t particular to the 1870s, or the 1920s. In a way, every age is an age of innocence, because every age has its own unsaid, half-known truths, which are articulated more clearly over time. Even after the particular circumstances described in a novel have vanished, we can still recognize ourselves and our lives in them. This is because novels are about change and realizations, and we never stop changing and realizing things. Many of the insights articulated by novels over the past four centuries — for example, that servants and slaves have emotional lives, that fighting in a war can be boring and confusing, that morality has to be redefined if you don’t believe in a Christian afterlife, or that dreams follow a different logic from waking life — seem obvious in retrospect. But the obvious may be unrecognized until it is spoken.
The novel is a constantly evolving technology, always finding ways to convey more reality, to articulate more truths, to identify new equivalences. Underlying this project is the optimistic belief that seeing the world more clearly can make individuals more free, and societies more just. Wharton is not generally viewed as one of literature’s great optimists, and yet, by the last chapter of “The Age of Innocence,” people are a little less hypocritical, a little more willing to see and accept the world. I am particularly moved by the description of May’s grown-up daughter Mary: a young woman who, though “no less conventional, and no more intelligent” than her mother, “yet led a larger life and held more tolerant views.” A larger life and more tolerant views: That’s the greatest promise the novel holds out to us, and it’s as necessary now as it was when Edith Wharton put it into words.The novel is a constantly evolving technology, always finding ways to convey more reality, to articulate more truths, to identify new equivalences. Underlying this project is the optimistic belief that seeing the world more clearly can make individuals more free, and societies more just. Wharton is not generally viewed as one of literature’s great optimists, and yet, by the last chapter of “The Age of Innocence,” people are a little less hypocritical, a little more willing to see and accept the world. I am particularly moved by the description of May’s grown-up daughter Mary: a young woman who, though “no less conventional, and no more intelligent” than her mother, “yet led a larger life and held more tolerant views.” A larger life and more tolerant views: That’s the greatest promise the novel holds out to us, and it’s as necessary now as it was when Edith Wharton put it into words.