The Jilted Age

Edith Wharton writes about the gilded age and New York “society” in The Age of Innocence. What can you add to a discussion on a book that’s been around for a century and an author that won a Pulitzer Prize in 1921? What the hell, not everything worth saying about this book resides in the stacks of the libraries of the Seven Sister colleges for women.

To me, Wharton’s novel represents how “systems theory” can be used not only to analyze fiction but social dynamics and group behavior. New York society is a closed system and its inhabitants struggle to maintain that system in an equilibrium. When Countess Ellen Olenska arrives on the scene, she disrupts the equilibrium. That disruption could probably be tolerated but Archer Newland falling in love with her cannot as he is already committed to May Welland. Thus, the novel is, in one sense, about how this social system works to rid itself of this “infection.” In more than one instance, Wharton uses the words system and systematized to describe how the society works almost like a machine to extract and discard what is not desired.

The tale of morality lurking within the novel is a juxtaposition between the deception New York society uses against Archer Newland and the deception Archer Newland must deploy to pursue his love of Countess Olenska. Which is worse? Clearly, Wharton allows society’s deception to win with a sly grin upon all of those in the know (including Archer’s wife May, who was in on the deception from the get go). Archer is such a broken man by the end that he cannot bring himself to accompany his son to visit the Countess thirty years later.

The one thing you can conclude is that deception rules the day and the social system trumps any individual member of it.

One other thing notable: The Age of Innocence reminded me a great deal of another of my favorite literary works, A Streetcar Named Desire. In both, a femme non grata enters and disrupts the social “system” and therefore must ultimately be banished and removed.