It’s interesting the difference that fifteen years can make. A few weeks ago, I read Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth, published in 1905. It was a scathing satire of New York society and the power of reputation. But The Age of Innocence does not carry the same sting, even though it’s thick with criticism of the rule-bound, judgmental world of high society. Set in the 1870s, The Age of Innocence is about the ties that bind–specifically bad marriages. Divorce was possible at the time, but to divorce was to chance social suicide.
The book centers on Newland Archer, a lawyer who doesn’t need to work that hard, scion of two highly regarded New York families, who has just proposed to the perfect girl. But then he meets Countess Ellen Olenska, his fiance’s cousin. Olenska has recently fled from her wastrel Polish count of a husband to the shock of her family and New York society. As he gets to know her better, Archer starts to question things he’d never questioned before. He grows more and more dissatisfied with the status quo, and outright disgusted with the hypocrisy around him.
Unlike Lily Bart of The House of Mirth, the characters in The Age of Innocence are not going to buck the social order. In fact, a lot of this book takes place inside of Archer’s head as he ponders his many questions. He wonders whether divorce is really that bad or whether his fiance can be more than just the model of high society girlhood that she portrays. He wonders if Olenska is the woman he should have married. He wonders and wonders, so not much actually happens. Olenska doesn’t become a tragic figure (other than being trapped by her marriage). Mostly, he wonders about the idea of old New York, a mythical place that all the characters have made exist by mutual agreement.
I enjoyed The House of Mirth a lot better, but I can see why this book won a Pulitzer back when it came out in 1920. It said things that needed to be said, but I wish there had been a bit more drama in this book.