Reframe · No. 54
The Age of Innocence is not a forbidden romance. Edith Wharton never wrote one.
Most readers arrive with the triangle already drawn: a decent man, a dull innocent fiancée, and the exotic cousin he truly loves, with society as the villain that keeps them apart. That is the popular summary. It is not where Edith Wharton starts the page.
The Age of Innocence appeared in 1920. In 1921 it won the Pulitzer Prize, the first given to a woman. Wharton wrote it from France, looking back at the New York of the 1870s. It opens at the opera. Faust is on the stage. Newland Archer reads the boxes the way other men read a ledger. Ellen Olenska walks into the Mingott box, back from Europe and a failed marriage, and the whispers start before the curtain falls. Archer is already engaged to May Welland. He is proud of being more advanced than his world. He is sure May is the innocent one.
The family sends Archer to talk Ellen out of a divorce. He does it well. He tells her how the Mingotts, the Wellands, and the van der Luydens will judge her, and she gives way. In chapter 18 he finally declares himself, and his own argument comes back to him. Ellen thanks him for teaching her that happiness bought by disloyalty and cruelty is not worth having. I can't love you unless I give you up. That night a telegram arrives. May's parents consent to a wedding the Tuesday after Easter. Grace Church. Eight bridesmaids.
May is the title's sharpest edge. In chapter 16 Archer goes south to ask her to bring the wedding forward. She asks if there is someone else. Then she offers to set him free: don't give her up because of me. She has guessed the wrong woman, but not the wrong fear. At Newport in chapter 21 she lifts a bow with classic grace and wins the archery prize. Archer sees a girl through whom no thought seems to pass. Wharton shows a woman who hits what she aims at.
In chapter 31 Ellen offers once: shall I come to you, and then go home? Archer plans to follow her to Washington, or as far as Japan. Then May has a long talk with her cousin. Ellen writes that she will sail for Europe next week.
Chapter 33 is the trapdoor. May gives a farewell dinner for Ellen, and the van der Luydens stay in town to attend. Over the asparagus Archer understands, in a vast flash, that everyone at the table believes he and Ellen are lovers. They have watched him for months. The whole tribe has rallied round his wife. He feels like a prisoner in the centre of an armed camp. When the guests have gone, May tells him she is going to have a child. She told Ellen a fortnight ago. I wasn't sure then, but I told her I was. Her blue eyes are wet with victory. Nobody raised a voice. The problem left the room with the Madeira.
Chapter 34 jumps nearly thirty years. May has died. Their son Dallas tells Archer what she said the day before: she knew they were safe with him, because once, when she asked him to, he had given up the thing he most wanted. In Paris, at fifty-seven, Archer sits on a bench below Ellen's balcony and sends Dallas up alone. Say I'm old-fashioned: that's enough. It is more real to him there than if he went up. A servant closes the shutters, and he walks back to the hotel. The popular summary keeps the forbidden romance. The book keeps a wife who knew, a tribe that knew, and a man who learned too late that he was the innocent.
What most readers assume
“A forbidden romance: a decent man torn between his dull, innocent fiancée and the exotic cousin he truly loves.”
What Edith Wharton actually stages
Most readers arrive with the triangle already drawn: a decent man, a dull innocent fiancée, and the cousin he truly loves. Wharton published in 1920 and won the Pulitzer in 1921. In chapter 18 Ellen tells Archer she cannot love him unless she gives him up. In chapter 33 May gives a farewell dinner at which everyone already believes they are lovers. Then she tells him she told Ellen about the baby before she was sure.
The Age of Innocence · Edith Wharton
The popular summary sells a forbidden romance. The book sells a dinner where everyone already knew, and a wife who said she was sure before she was.
Common Questions
Search questions this reframe installment answers about The Age of Innocence.
Is The Age of Innocence a love story?
The longing is real, and Wharton gives it full weight. She does not leave the book as a forbidden romance with society as the villain. Archer talks Ellen out of her divorce, and in chapter 18 his own argument parts them: she cannot love him unless she gives him up. The novel is about how a group settles a problem without a scene, and how a man who thinks he is advanced is the last to see it.
Is May Welland innocent?
She is trained to look it, and Archer believes it. Wharton shows more. In chapter 16 May guesses there is another woman and offers to release him. At Newport in chapter 21 she wins the archery prize. In chapter 33 she tells Archer she told Ellen she was pregnant a fortnight before she was sure. I wasn't sure then, but I told her I was. Her eyes are wet with victory.
Did May know about Newland and Ellen?
Yes. At the farewell dinner in chapter 33 Archer realises the whole table believes he and Ellen are lovers, and has watched him for months. In chapter 34 Dallas repeats what May said the day before she died: she knew they were safe with him, because once, when she asked him to, he had given up the thing he most wanted.
Why does Ellen say she can't love him unless she gives him up?
Because Archer taught her to. He was the one sent to talk her out of a divorce, and he did it by explaining what the family would suffer. In chapter 18 she thanks him for showing her that happiness bought by disloyalty and cruelty is not worth having. When he finally declares himself, she holds him to his own lesson. The same night May's telegram fixes the wedding at Grace Church.
Why doesn't Archer go up to see Ellen at the end?
In chapter 34 he is fifty-seven and in Paris, below her fifth-floor balcony. He sends Dallas up alone and tells him: say I'm old-fashioned, that's enough. He thinks it is more real to him there than if he went up. He sits until a servant closes the shutters, then walks back to the hotel. Wharton does not call it cowardice or peace. She leaves him with a life chosen for him and kept by him.
Why do people misread The Age of Innocence?
The title sounds sweet, and the triangle is easy to retell. Readers keep the gowns, the longing, and the bench, and forget the farewell dinner and May's announcement. Wharton wrote from France in 1920 about the New York of the 1870s, and she meant the title as irony. The innocent person in the book is not May. It is the man who thought his secret was a secret.