Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Wharton's Masterpiece
Review: Edith Wharton escapes from a tendency to melodrama (a problem of her era) to create her masterpiece novel "Age of Innocence." Set in post-Civil War New York, she deliniates the mores and customs of the New York Social List with care and depth.

Newland Archer is the protagonist, a true Greek tragic hero with a flaw. While Newland is a most upright, conventional young man, he harbors an urge to be artistic and "different" while taking a course through his life on a well-trodden path. He chooses May Welland as his bride, whose family is almost frozen by a rigid devotion to social custom; Mr. Welland, Newland soon realizes, has been made almost a cipher by the strictures imposed by his limited but socially conscious wife. May is likewise limited (Newland thinks about lifting the blinders that her upbringing has imposed on her and in a moment of perception, wonders if she has lost any ability to see beyond her limited horizons like the blind fish dwelling in caverns.) But he marries her nonetheless, admiring her silent ability to communicate subtle wishes and opinions by a single knowing glance. Later, this will come back to haunt him as he doesn't realize that what is pleasant when it conforms to his wishes, is restrictive and oppressive when it doesn't.

Meanwhile, May's cousin "poor Ellen" or Countess Olenska, returns from Europe after fleeing a poorly-arranged marriage with a dissolute Polish count. Her name is clever: the pedestrian "Ellen" contrasts almost comically with the pompous "Countess Olenska." As a contrast, Newland's spinsterish, horse-faced sister Janey shows the non-glamourous side of New York femininity, while Medora Manson, Ellen's aunt is a comic foil and a fun-house mirror to Ellen, much-married, and her real name is Chivers but she styles herself "The Marchioness Manson" as Manson can be transmuted to "Manzoni" in Italy. She flits between Europe and North America, married too many times and descending into eccentricity and poverty--a harbinger of what Ellen is heading towards.

Newland falls in love with Ellen, and she with him, but the paths they choose in living their lives lead them inexorably to loss and tragedy; but could any other choices have given them any more happiness?

Newland is tragic because he yearns for freedom and artistic expression but stays in his rut; this makes him in his own eyes a dilletante. When finally he has a chance to acquire his life's desire, he, at mid-fifties, gives it up. Is his last action in the book a renunciation of desire? Or is it a realization that his dreams are more real than what he can ever achieve for himself in the life he has chosen to live? I think the latter.

This is one of America's great novels and Wharton's masterpiece, in my opinion. I always look forward to re-reading it.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: a perfect world gone awry....
Review: Eighteenth century American "high" society is shown in this subtly uncomfortable, at times merciless novel by Wharton. It explores the unwanted, inevitable, but, in the end, understandable change that occured within a young man on the verge of being married.

On the onset, everything seemed headed for bliss: perfect fiancee, stable prospects, and a comfortable yet predictable soon-to-be married life. But then he meets the Countess Olenska, cousin of his betrothed. This epitome of eccentricity (and source of ignominy of her relatives) becomes strangely alluring to him, what with her unconventional looks, manner of dressing, chosen companions, and overall lifestyle.

As his interactions with her become more frequent, he finds his fiancee somehow paling in comparison next to the vibrancy of the Countess. He becomes disdainful of the ridiculousness with which young men and women are brought up into their glittering society, and who will no doubt foster the same beliefs and traditions to their sons and daughters. As his life and everything he was taught at birth ostensibly comes crashing down upon him, he discovers his attraction to the Countess grow into passionate love. But these two lovers are mired into a world that would shun their relationship: the Countess at the very least is still very much married, and Archer is still very much engaged to be so...

This novel is a veritable force to be reckoned with (though it was tough gaining momentum on the first few pages). Not only does it explore the many intricacies in romantic love, it sheds a blinding light on the ways society draws its defenses around itself, constructs rules and traditions to be followed for the continuation of its existence, and in turn drowns out the very foundations of reason. There is subtlety in the way the author exposed a society so caught up in the world they have built around itself that it becomes blind to change and is still, in so many ways, innocent in its need to keep itself closeted from things both severely chaotic and beautiful that make up the inherent human experience.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Wonderful read works on so many levels
Review: This was one and still remains one of my favorite books from college. If you've seen the movie you might be misled into thinking this is a romance, which it's not, as most respectable English teachers would be quick to tell you. However, the truth be told is that it actually does work on a romance level too if that's what one is looking for. Wharton's descriptions bloom like spring flowers, and her understanding of how the young feel when they are in love is dead-on accurate.

More than a romance, I would call it one of those truly literary works as its themes, which mainly have to do with class hierarchy and its ridiculously arbitrary rules, are so meticulously and carefully developed that the theme, story, and characters truly become a seamless whole.

Wharton is truly one of the 20th century writers, and I expect her light to continue to shine brighter as the years go by. I'd also like to add that House of Mirth is another spectacular book that is far better than the movie (not that I've minded any of Wharton's movie adaptations--they are better than most.) So for crafty storytelling, beautiful imagery, and an eye for subtle satire you've come to the right author.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Brilliant
Review: I don't read books twice, at least not often. This is one of the few and the only one if you omit children's books! It is a book that struck deep into my heart and made me re-read passages just to marvel at the prose, the wisdom, and the simple elegance of Edith Wharton's narrative of the human condition. I literally wept as the sad tale of impossible love unfolds. It is a credit to Wharton's writing that her characters press onward and take their defeat with grace and class, therein making this bittersweet novel more honest, both intellectually as well as romantically.
I can not say that you will like this, although if you have read Ethan Frome, you will be familiar with the gift Wharton has for skipping the sugar-coating and allowing the reader some credit. This is one of only a handful of novels that have moved me on a deep level. That may not mean much to you, but it means a lot to me.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Archer is a Poor Little Rich Man [58][42]
Review: This story about the turn of the last century and the old-fashioned protagonist, Archer Newland, is queerly both outdated in most or all aspects and yet capable of being read by many future generations of readers.

Just about everything in this book has little to do with our present day lives - before electricity, before phones, before either world war, and set amid the upper crust New York society made up of persons (even those of the Mingotts who dwell up by that "park" near that art museum of the future) who babble and gossip among and about themselves - for better and for worse.

The heroine, Madame (Ellen) Olenska, shakes their pedigree tree when she and her European-reared mannerisms cajole easily and deftly with the suspicious and tightly-cliqued New York wealth. By always doing the right thing, she eventually shatters Archer's life - or does she? Her character personifies the coined term, "Do the right thing."

Because this script is penned by a woman's hand, it uniquely depicts the male perspective in an extremely accurate tone. Wharton's soft message against the not-as-soft strictures of elitist northeastern society can be read with double entendre: as Wharton is one of those she criticizes with glove hands and boiled-noodle whips.

A constant theme in this book is high class society's hypocrisy. And, one discussion between Archer and his law partner about women's rights -- most specifically Madame Olenska's attempt to exercise (what was then) exclusively male rights -- beautifully depicts how his liberal opinions jibe with his personal life -- one strewn in old fashioned and high browed morals. The greatest hypocrisy almost floors the reader with an ending which evidences Archer's decisions to be, as self-described, "old fashioned."

The topic is much like Fitzgerald's "Great Gatsby." However, comparisons of the authors must end soon thereafter. Their writing style is different and so are their books' respective messages - or at least the tone in which the messages are delivered. I prefer the midwesterner's style over the northeasterner's prose, but to each their own. This writer reminds me more of the her British contemporaries: Forster, Waugh or Murdoch. In any event, Wharton is a master, and has a handful of great novels from which any reader should be lucky enough to have time to read.

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