The Age of Innocence (1920) (edit title/settings)

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• Newland Archer: Protagonist of the story. Acts in accordance with custom, expectations of New York society.
• Countess Ellen Olenska: Divorced, free-spirited cousin of May Welland. Her husband, after accepting a huge dowry, is living a debauched life in Poland.
• May Welland: Newland Archer's fiancée then bride. Countess Olenska's cousin.
• Mrs. Manson Mingott: Powerful matriarch of the Mingott family. May and Ellen's grandmother.
• Marchioness Medora Manson: Took Ellen to Europe as a child.
• Julius Beaufort: A newcomer to New York society, but he marries well and is very rich.
• Regina Beaufort: The wife of Julius, and a relative of the Mingott family.
• Mrs. Welland: The mother of May, and Countess Olenska's aunt.
• Mr. Welland: May's father.
• Dr. Bencomb: Mr. Welland's and Mrs. Mingott's doctor
• Henry van der Luyden: He and his wife, Louisa, are the most important and powerful people in New York society.
• Mr. Letterblair: One of the Founders and Partners in the law firm where Newland is employed, and the one who entreats Newland to handle Countess Olenska's messy marital matters.
• M. Riviere: Count Olenska's emissary
• Louisa van der Luyden: A relative of Newland's family, and one of the highest of the uppercrust establishment. She is Henry Van der Luyden's wife.
• Ned Winsett: Man of letters that is an acquaintance of Newland
• Janey Archer: Newland's shy younger sister, who lives at home with Newland and his mother.
• Mrs. Lovell Mingott: May and Ellen's aunt, and the daughter-in-law of Mrs. Manson Mingott.
• Dr. Agathon Carver: Add a description of this character.
• Mrs. Carfry: An English acquaintance of Janey and Mrs. Archer.
• Sillerton Jackson: An expert on the families of New York society.
• Duke of St. Austrey: Dull English duke and cousin of the Van der Luydens.
• Lawrence Lefferts: An expert on manners and of all family matters, hidden and flaunted, by the uppercrust society to which Newland belongs.
• Mrs. Archer: Newland Archer’s devoted mother. She believes in the old social order of New York.
• Fanny Beaufort: Daughter of Julius Beaufort and his second wife
• Mrs. Lemuel Struthers: Woman who is perceived to have forced her way into the society

Quotes edit see section history

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• “But after a moment the sense of waste and ruin overcame him. there they were, close together and safe and shut in; yet so chained to their separate destinies that they might as well have been half the world apart.”

• “The fact that a coarse-minded man found her lacking in attraction was simply another proof of her quality; yet the words sent a faint shiver through his heart. What if 'niceness' carried to that supreme degree were only a negation, the curtain dropped before an emptiness?”

• “The affair, in short, had been of the kind that most of the young men of his age had been through, and emerged from with calm consciences and an undisturbed belief in the abysmal distinction between the women one loved and respected and those one enjoyed -- and pitied. In this view they were sedulously abetted by their mothers, aunts and other elderly female relatives, who all shared Mrs. Archer's belief that when "such things happened" it was undoubtedly foolish of the man, but somehow always criminal of the woman.”

• “"Yes: the day before she died. It was when she sent for me alone -- you remember? She said she knew we were safe with you,, and always would be, because once, when she asked you to, you'd given up the thing you most wanted."”

• “His own exclamation: "Women should be free -- as free as we are," struck to the root of a problem that it was agreed in his world to regard as nonexistent. "Nice" women, however wronged, would never claim the kind of freedom he meant, and generous-minded men like himself were therefore -- in the heat of argument -- the more chivalrously ready to concede it to them.”

• “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.”

• “Around her neck was a narrow black velvet ribbon with the ends falling down her back.When her wooer turned from her she rested her arms against the mantel-shelf and bowed her face in her hands. On the threshold he paused to look at her; then he stole back, lifted one of the ends of velvet ribbon, kissed it, and left the room without her hearing him or changing her attitude. And on this silent parting the curtain fell.”

• “What could he and she really know of each other, since it was his duty, as a 'decent' fellow, to conceal his past from her, and hers, as a marriageable girl, to have no past to conceal?”

• “He perceived that such a picture presupposed, on her part, the experience, the versatility, the freedom of judgment, which she had been carefully trained not to possess; and with a shiver of foreboding he saw his marriage becoming what most of the other marriages about him were; a dull association of material and social interests held together by ignorance on the one side and hypocrisy on the other.”

• “He could not get away from the fact that if he had been brought up as she had they would have been no more fit to find their way about than the Babes in the Wood; nor could he, for all his anxious cogitations, see any honest reason (any, that is, unconnected with his own momentary pleasure, and the passion of masculine vanity) why his bride should not have been allowed the same freedom of experience as himself.”

• “but the van der Luydens, who stood above all of them, had faded into a kind of super-terrestrial twilight, from which only two figures impressively emerged; those of Mr. and Mrs. Henry van der Luyden.”

• “But how many generations of the women who had gone to her making had descended bandaged to the family vault? He shivered a little, remembering some of the new ideas in his scientific books, and the much-cited instance of the Kentucky cave-fish, which had ceased to develop eyes because they had no use for them.”

• “He was out of spirits and slightly out of temper, and a haunting horror of doing the same thing every day at the same hour besieged his brain.”

• “(...) and plunged out into the winter night bursting with the belated eloquence of the inarticulate”

• “A gentleman simply stayed at home and abstained.”

• “I always feel as if I were in the convent again - or on the stage, before a dreadfully polite audience that never applauds.”

  Countess Ellen Olenska

• “"And all the while, I suppose," he thought, "real people were living somewhere and real things happening to them..."”

• “There was no use in trying to emancipate a wife who had not the dimmest notion that she was not free;”

• “His whole future seemed suddenly to be unrolled before him; and passing down its endless emptiness he saw the dwindling figure of a man to whom nothing was ever to happen.”

• “It seems stupid to have discovered America only to make it into a copy of another country. Do you suppose Christopher Columbus would have taken all that trouble just to go to the Opera with the Selfridge Merrys?”

  Countess Ellen Olenska

• Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers

• since it was his duty, as a ‘‘decent’’ fellow, to conceal his past from her, and hers, as a marriageable girl, to have no past to conceal?

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• a dull association of material and social interests held together by ignorance on the one side and hypocrisy on the other.

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• and he understood that her courage and initiative were all for others, and that she had none for herself.

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• been divided into the two great fundamental groups: the Mingotts and Mansons and all their clan, who cared about eating and clothes and money; and the Archer-Newland-van-der-Luyden tribe, who were devoted to travel, horticulture, and the best fiction, and looked down on the grosser forms of pleasure.

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• But in Archer’s little world no one laughed at a wife deceived, and a certain measure of contempt was attached to men who continued their philandering after marriage.

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• I wonder—the thing one’s so certain of in advance: can it ever make one’s heart beat as wildly?’’

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• It was one of the great livery stableman’s most masterly intuitions to have discovered that Americans want to get away from amusement even more quickly than they want to get to it.

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• It was true that her early radiance was gone. The red cheeks had paled; she was thin, worn, a little older looking than her age, which must have been nearly thirty.

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• It was easier, and less dastardly on the whole, for a wife to play such a part toward her husband. A woman’s standard of truthfulness was tacitly held to be lower:

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• In the interval not a thought seemed to have passed behind her eyes or a feeling through her heart; and though her husband knew that she had the capacity for both he marvelled afresh at the way in which experience dropped away from her.

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First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

List the chapters of this book.

Series & Lists edit see section history

Preceded by All the King's Men, and followed by Look Homeward, Angel.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Edith Wharton (Author)

Other Contributors:

1. Cynthia Griffin Wolff (Editor)
2. Chris Duke (Illustrator)
3. Regina Wharton (Introduction)
4. Judith Barreca (Afterword)
5. David Horovitch (Reader) - reader of unabridged audio cassette edition from Audio Partners/Cover to Cover

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• Pulitzer Prize (1921: Novel)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: PS3545.H16
• Dewey: 813.52

Notes for Parents edit see section history

The story is suitable for young adults but written at an adult level. Extraordinary use of the English language.

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › World Literature › United States › Classics › Wharton, Edith
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Authors, A-Z › ( W ) › Wharton, Edith
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Classics
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Classics

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

• Book Review Folio Society: When the respectable young lawyer Newland Archer becomes engaged to the beautiful May Welland he is content to be ‘placidly in love’, marrying one of his own kind. For this is Old New York, where money and social conformity are paramount. Their decorous courtship, however, is interrupted by the arrival of May’s cousin Ellen Olenska, fleeing her marriage to a Polish Count. Ellen seeks ‘rest and oblivion’ among friends, but her bohemian ways – an inappropriate dress, an ill-advised visit, a dubious acquaintance – do little to win her allies among society’s chosen. To Newland, however, she has everything May lacks – sophistication, wisdom, independence – and he falls passionately in love, with tragic consequences.

Movie Connections edit see section history

• The Age of Innocence (IMDb): 1993 - Starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Daniel Day-Lewis.

More Books Like This edit see section history