Rating: 
Summary: Hypocrisy of the Age of Innocence
Review: The Age of Innocence is a thought provoking literary piece which I enjoyed immensely. It is written in a simple, accessible style, yet deeply portrays human emotions and interactions in late 19th century New York City. This novel represents an account of high society life of the 1870s. The events of this novel are wrapped around a prevailing lifestyle of jealousy, shame, and excessive pride which colors the main characters. Not unlike many other segments of the society, then and now, the characters of this novel attempt to disguise these feelings through hypocrisy and deception.
In a time where keeping appearances is everything, the protagonist, Newland Archer, is at conflict with himself. He is engaged to May Welland, who represents stability and the traditional high society life. He begins to fall in love, however, with May's cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska. After seeing Ellen and her freedom and spontaneity, he begins to question his life and why he feels the need to conform. He realizes how dull his life is and how materialistic and fake the high society aristocrats are. He loves May, but cannot stand the idea of living such a predictable life with no deeper meaning. In the end, he must choose between living the life he is expected to live with May, or being happy with Ellen, yet ruining the family name.
Rating: 
Summary: Great literature; really deserves to be more widely read!
Review: "The Age of Innocence" is a wonderful read on many levels for all kinds of readers. It shouldn't just appeal to "literature" buffs but also to romance readers, those interested in history or psychology, and anyone looking for an interesting and involving story.Wharton weaves an intriguing tale of New York society in the late 19th century, where old ways have not yet made way for "modern" views, but it's evident that it is only a matter of time. For example, what would have been considered socially unacceptable in Newland and May Archer's time, such as marrying your mistress after your wife dies, is perfectly alright by the time May and Newland's son, Dallas, is ready to marry. Dallas is to marry the daughter of the previously mentioned union, demonstrating that by the early 20th century, the old social conventions of Old New York have gone by the wayside. Unfortunately this didn't happen in time for Newland and the Countess, and in fact, it appears that he wishes that everything could remain the same as it was in his youth, which is seen by his reaction to Countess Olenska at the end of the novel. What makes the book truly great, though, is Wharton's detail of EVERYthing, from how a dinner was served, to an evening at the opera, and more. It's almost impossible not to enter the mind of the characters; they are so completely and complexly developed that this book should be required reading for every writer! I really give this book 4 1/2 stars; the only reason it isn't 5 stars is because the ending was a little disappointing to me, although it was quite in keeping with the characters and the story. We tend to satisfy our curiosity as soon as possible, but a hundred years ago one had to look at other issues as more important than personal satisfaction.
Rating:
Summary: A Look at Old New York
Review: All of Edith Wharton's books about New York society are, of course, a glimpse of an older society for us. The Age of Innocence stands out, however, because it was a nostalgic book for Edith Wharton. She wrote this book after World War I and looked back at an earlier age. Interestingly, this makes the book more rather than less resonant today. It resonates because we read this book mainly to see what society was once like. And Edith Wharton was writing for the same purpose--although for her it was more of a trip down memory lane. We struggle between rooting for characters to break free from social constraints that have since passed away and thinking that maybe these constraints created a happier society. I got the sense that Wharton was doing the same thing. The book tells the story of Newland Archer who is engaged to May. May's cousin, Countess Olenska, comes to town escaping from a bad marriage. Countess Olenska grew up in New York but moved to Europe. She loves the newness and rationality of the New World, but has Old World mystery around her. Newland is quickly intrigued by her. The rest of the book revolves around the triangle of May, Newland and the Countess. It often focuses on the mores of the society, the attempts of the Countess to become at home in New York, May's attempts to be good to her cousin and yet make a good marriage with Newland and Newland's struggle between his background in society and his rational view that that society's rules should be cast aside. I would, however, recommend reading this more for the view of New York than for the plot. One example: we quickly accept the view that Newland, his family and his relations are the pinnacle of New York society. However, Wharton throws us a curveball. Newland goes to the van der Luydens to ask a favor. And we learn that Newland is really not at the pinnacle of society. The van der Luydens stand on another level and Newland's tier of society exists at the heels of this society. Throughout the book, Wharton gives us similar little nuggets of what American society once was like. I sincerely recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: The age of wisdom
Review: Edith Wharton has a place in the North American Literature canon as one of the best female writers ever. With her novels and novellas she was able to portrait and, above all, criticize the wealth North American society of the turn of the Century. Although she wrote about New York, her books acquired a universal dimension, since they talk about the human nature. 'The Age of Innocence' is widely regarded as one of her masterpieces, and so it is. It received a Pulitzer Prize in 1921, and has passed through the years as a seminal book from the early XX Century. With her wit and knowledge, Wharton was able to recreate that universe where money and liaisons matter more than people's feelings. Due to this situation, her characters are unhappy, and trying --or not-- to change their almost unchangeable destinies. At the center of the turmoil are Madame Olenska and Newland Archer. She, a unhappy married woman moving back to USA, trying to divorce from her rich and mean husband. He, a wealthy and brilliant lawyer who has a bright future ahead of him. The couple could have a beautiful love story were she not married and, to make matters worse, he not the fiancé of her cousin. Archer's life split in two: on one side is the love of Madame Olenska, with whom he could be happy, but ostracized; on the other a dull marriage with May Welland, what would confirm his status in society and give him the bright future. In the background of this turmoil is Wharton's powerful voice, of a person who has lived in this society and suffered its consequence. Describing and criticizing with brilliance things from a time she lived and knew, the writer was able to create a timeless book. Something that nowadays, almost a hundred years later, is still fresh and very important. The most important thing is not if we have wisdom or not, but what we do with the wit we have. Edith Wharton, for one, used her in a brilliant way creating some books that will last forever, such as 'The Age...' and 'The House of Mirth', showing people how a beautiful society can be mean and hurt whose who dare to be different.
Rating:
Summary: The Age of Innocence is a must-read novel
Review: Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence takes the reader into the fantastic world of New York in the late 1800s. Wharton shows an adept handling of her figurative language as she tells of the elite society in that great city. But more importantly, she draws the reader into the burning love triangle between Newland Archer, his fiancee, May Welland and her cousin, Countess Olenska. These characters each display a certain piece of society; with beautiful, innocent May the ideal society-girl, following all the conventions she had been moulded to follow; with Countess Olenska, the foreign, freedom loving, and sensuous member of one of the highest-ranking families of New York, who broke all the rules and never noticed they had been broken; with Newland Archer, the man who had been raised under the strict hand of society, yet longed to break free, torn between his fiancee and the woman he loved. This novel seduces the reader with its tale of betrayal and forbidden love, and astounds them with the outright hypocrisy that this old New York society displays. If you are someone who loves literary structure, hidden symbolism, and outstanding use of figurative language, this is a must-read novel.
Rating:
Summary: Tension between individualism and confomity
Review: Edith's book talks about the tension between following one's heart and loyalty to societal expectations. Case in point, Newland Archer. Torn by his loyalty to his wife-to-be, who repesents tradition and stability of Old New York society and the soon-to-be divorce, who represents the worldly bohemian life of the Old World, namely European. Mr. Archer has a major dilemma since he's both has both progressive and conservative views. He has very progressive views on art, literature, politics, etc., while at the same time have conservative views on romance. It's the dilemma of most upper class and professional men even in these progressive and liberal times. Most men want stability in their lives, they want a "May Welland" type over the outspoken and unpredictable "Ellen Olenska". Let me get back to the issue at hand, the choices of Newland Archer. Newland seemed to want to have it both ways. He wants to marry May and have Ellen as his secret lover. Knowing that New York society frowns on such things, Ellen decides to leave New York for Europe, therefore annul that possiblity. In the meantime, Newland became a devoted husband to May until her death.
Rating:
Summary: surprisingly fluid and entertaining:
Review: Generally I don't care for books written by anyone with an agenda. Now of course most self-serving and overwhelmingly too serious tomes aren't particularly worthwhile, those of partisans attacking their equal and opposite extreme. This book was surely written in a heightened and urgent time of deep disgust for the author. She had recently been divorced, ending a loveless marriage to someone history tells us (now, in hindsight and considering the superior accomplishments of his former wife) was something of a jerk. Edith sat down in those moments of disillusion mired in a confusing, overwhelming state of newfound personal freedom and ranted out this smart, funny and throughly entertaining book about how stupid and petty she believed some of her contemporaries and ancestors to be.
It doesn't matter whether we agree with Wharton's viewpoint or not--that isn't necessary to enjoy this book. One of the criticisms of male authors of this era (and prior as well as today) is that they are unable to represent realistic female characters. In most cases this is true, but it is also true with their male characters--self-serving drones who stand in for self-important authors. It was the rare author who was frequently overpraised for somehow 'understanding' women (I am thinking specifically here of Henry James) as if the author-as-God would be otherwise unable to know the thoughts of their creations. The truth is that someone like James and, more to the point here, someone like Edith Wharton, were wonderful character profilers. Wharton's male characters are very true-to-life considering the limitations of the world they exist in. Her female characters seem more to be like cardboard with the obvious exceptions of the primaries. Wharton's agenda, here, regardless of what various generations of literary types of forced onto the meaning of this novel, appears to be quite simply an attack on the world she grew up in. Now this is of course the usual path for self-conscious and self-important writers struggling over their first or second novels and using the often fragmented premises of their own lives as some sort of baited self-therapy exercise, but with Wharton there is something different in her execution. Perhaps it is because she managed to lose herself in the varying paths of her characters and understood the realities of telling a story that she was able to get away from many of the excesses of this usually annoying genre of self-exposure. Maybe she was just a better writer than all of these whining and silly ladies who worship/imitated her repeatedly and timelessly only in their own vision they supplied a shrill sort of political statement believing that their godmother would somehow approve.
I know that I somehow got off track of reviewing this mostly excellent book--four and a half stars more likely for its constant and beautiful evocation of a world gone by, rounded down, simply, because so many other people attempt to prove the validity of their own inhibitions based on a personal connection to something vague they misread in a book that had nothing to do with them.
Recommended with a huff of enthusiasm and an irritable reply to anyone who imagines they truly understand the rage Ms. Wharton was speaking of--
Rating:
Summary: One of the best books I've read
Review: I enjoyed every word of this book. It just captivated me. I'm glad Wharton chose the sentimental ending rather than going for the melodramatic.
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Breathtaking
Review: On a 5 star scale, this is a 7. The Age of Innocence is about New York society in the late 1800's. Wharton's fast paced dialogue is unequivocally the best I have ever read. The reader is not only pulled in immediately but comes quickly to understand the nonverbal communication inherent in the interchanges. This is the heart of the story - the things that are not said, the things that are not done in New York society at that time and how the rigid rules of that society were enforced without ever explicitly saying any of it. In Mrs. Wharton's words: "It was the old New York way of taking life "without effusion of blood": the way of people who dreaded scandal more than disease, who placed decency above courage, and who considered that nothing was more ill-bred than "scenes," except the behaviour of those who gave them. " This is as much a story about the mores of New York society as it is a bitter love story of two people caught up in it.
Newland Archer represents New York society as a young man of high society blissfully engaged to equally prominent May Welland. The reader comes to know him and the story is told through his eyes. It is through him that we come to understand "the rules". When Countess Ellen Olenska returns from a ruined marriage abroad, everything in Newland's structured view of society is challenged. It is as if a veil is lifted from his eyes and he can suddenly see the big picture from multiple points of view. However, one of the facets of "the rules" is to be blind to these angles and once empowered to see, he belongs neither to New York or to the world at large. He has only the choice of destroying all that he knows in pursuit of the mysterious woman who has brought about this change or living a life whose values for him have lost their luster. She, on the other hand, has come to see the value to the ideas that have had Newland so rigidly encased. Together they are a ringing disavowal and endorsement at the same time.
This is not an indictment of that society. Ms. Wharton had condemned it early in her life but eventually found a value in the way that things were done and reflects that sentiment in Madame Olenska who, having had her eyes opened could never fully return.
"... if it's not worthwhile to have given up, to have missed things, so that others may be saved from disillusionment and misery - then everything I came home for, everything that made my other life seem by contrast so bare and so poor because no one there took account of them - all these things are a sham or a dream. "
This is not your typical love story and there have been no spoilers given here. In the end, you will feel that the characters have done what is right; however, in this book, it is the definition of right that is being questioned.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing
Review: She writes the way Samuel Richardson would have if he was fast-fowarded a century or so. Lovely book, and full of the people you always wanted to meet.
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