In class on Friday we split up into Lit Circle
groups to start reading Edith Wharton’s The
Age of Innocence on our own and meet in our groups to fulfill various roles
regarding several different aspects of the book’s social and gender criticisms.
While I have only read the first two chapters of the book, I thought now would
be the perfect time to write a blog that can sincerely reflect my first initial
reflections on what I have read so far and a lot of the different criticisms
that Edith Wharton is making. After reading the first few paragraphs of the
book, I immediately realized who Wharton’s target of the rest of the book would
be: the opulent and rather prideful upper class New York hierarchy in the
1870s. Newland Archer is portrayed as being a man completely absorbed in what
society has pre-determined his role to be, which is a member of the ostentatious
upper class and is something he finds to be quite natural. While at the opera
listening to Christine Nillson sing in French, “this seemed as natural to
Newland Archer as all the other conventions on which his life was moulded: such
as the duty of using two silver-backed brushes…and of never appearing in
society without a flower in his buttonhole” (4). To Archer, the stratified
world that he finds himself at the top of is full of a plethora of nuances that
are upheld to the highest extent. It becomes increasingly clear that he is part
of a culture that values the superficial and materialistic over anything else
that someone or something may have to offer. On top of the elegant lifestyle
constantly pervading his life, Archer seems to also have a very dominating
attitude over others, particularly women. Here the gender criticism comes into
play, as Archer describes the relationship with his fiancée May Welland to be
one of ownership over mutual love. He toys with the idea, “with a thrill of
possessorship in which pride in his own masculine initiation was mingled with a
tender reverence for her abysmal purity” (6). Archer, while having a small
amount of respect for the purity of the woman he is soon to be wed to, feels
overall more compelled to dote upon his ownership of her than any other personal
feelings he may have for her. It seems as if the entire idea of being in a
relationship with a woman is not so much about developing an unbreakable
personal bond with another human being, but rather, it is more of a competition
between the men of this stature to see who can acquire the best “piece of
property”. While Archer does in fact have some personal romantic fantasies
about how his life with his future wife will be, these are overshadowed by the
next paragraph, where he describes how he wants May to turn out. Again this
ties back in to the already dominating criticism on male-dominated society and
the runaway egos that seem to fuel it. Wharton’s other key point of criticism
shows up in Chapter 2, best summarized by Archer saying, “No indeed; no one
would have thought the Mingotts would have tried it on!” (10). Archer is
referring to Mr. Sillerton Jackson’s comment about the box on the other side of
the opera house, where he sees May’s cousin Ellen Olenska, who brings attention
to herself by her rather showy dress and is even referred to as one of the “few
black sheep that their blameless stock had produced” (10). Here Archer embodies
Wharton’s criticism of how quick the stratified and prideful upper class men
are to judge not only a woman but someone who is of lower social stature than
they are. Archer seems to know very little real knowledge about who Ellen is
yet he still calls her an outcast among the others in her family, giving the
presumption that he knows what is best. Perhaps the greatest criticism being
made in these first to chapters is that of how quick people seem to be to judge
that which is different or less than what they believe to be the “norm”. It is
the inability to truly understand that makes the opulence of the upper class
seems all the less human.
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