The Age of Innocence (First Edition) (Norton Critical Editions)

A great classic, with first class professional annotation and discussion.

I had to read this book for my film analysis class and it was very very very good. It's a story about a man who can't make his own decisions when he has the chance. It's somewhat of a love story, so if you're a romantic then it's good for you. Plus in the back of the book there's all this extra information and opinions about it from other people.

Newland Archer, the protagonist of Edith Wharton's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, opens this story as an almost haughtily optimistic and self-satisfied young man - at the top of New York society, about to announce his engagement to the beautiful and sought-after May Welland, with little to mar what seems to be a life of uninterrupted happiness and fulfillment. Wealth, industry, friends, family, a fiancé he loves dearly....what more could a young man want from life? He can even afford to have a few radical ideas, one of them being the opinion that women should speak their minds and be genuine in their deportment and self-awareness, shaking off - just a little, perhaps - the stringent and elaborate rituals of conformity forced on them by a well-meaning but ultimately hypocritical society. Despite the slightly smug impression we get of Archer at the beginning, it is this examination of himself that makes the reader realize there's more to him than most men of his age and class; that he possesses a sensitivity and longing for what is real, despite that reality's drawbacks, and it endears him to us. Early on he states, to the shock of his friend, that "Women should be free--as free as we are." Soon after, we get this insight into his mind as he reflects on what he sees around him in the marriages of his friends, parents, and relatives, which is precisely what he is determined to avoid between himself and May: "What could he and she really know of each other, since it was his duty, as a "decent" fellow, to conceal his past from her, and hers, as a marriageable girl, to have no past to conceal? What if, for some one of the subtler reasons that would tell with both of them, they should tire of each other, misunderstand or irritate each other? He reviewed his friends' marriages - the supposedly happy ones - and saw none that answered, even remotely, to the passionate and tender comradeship which he pictured as his permanent relation with May Welland. He perceived that such a picture presupposed, on her part, the experience, the versatility, the freedom of judgment, which she had been carefully trained not to possess; and with a shiver of foreboding he saw his marriage becoming what most of the other marriages about him were: a dull association of material and social interests held together by ignorance on the one side and hypocrisy on the other. .....In reality they all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs." So, this is where Archer is in life when May's cousin Ellen comes to New York from Paris, fleeing an illustriously-placed but disastrous marriage, and her entrance into New York society is tinged with scandal. When Archer falls in love with Ellen against all his better judgment and to what he knows would be the detriment of everything he deems crucial to his happiness, it's a torturous love that nearly drives him mad. That description may make it sound like a forgettable bit of romance, but forgettable bits of romance don't generally win Pulitzers, and the true heart of this story is about the decisions we make that shape our lives one way or another, and what kind of devastating emotional havoc the `wrong' love can wreak on a person's soul. Archer is forced down an emotionally-tormented path few of us would choose, I think, and in many ways it's both beautiful and tragic to watch his story unfold. I was incredibly moved by it. As mentioned, The Age of Innocence won Wharton the Pulizer Prize for fiction in 1921, making it the first time a woman had ever won the award.

Edith Wharton was (and still is) one of the greatest American authors to have lived. Her ability to capture the the ridiculous of the traditions her society clung to so desperately shows her forward thinking and liberal attitude towards life. The conflict Newland Archer goes through after meeting the Countess, the decision he must make between freedom and tradition is incredible. This book is not a blatant attack on society, but rather it is a foray into the interworkings of a man in a certain place at a certain time who must decide the course of his life; the choice between what is right in his head and what is right in his heart. The countess offers a world where there is the chance of something more, something different, at the expense of leaving his fiance, his family, his whole previous way of life. His struggle with this choice is eartbreaking, as is his decision in the end--and yet it is exactly what should have happened. At the same time, it's also a story of a woman trying to find happiness in a world she does not completely understand, nor perhaps wish to understand. Countess Olenska is not a rebel, she is merely a woman ahead of her time. She desires a life where she makes the decisions, where she can have options beyond those traditionally given to her. Wharton's book is beautifully written and so incredibly natural, she doesn't preach, she doesn't push her agenda. She merely presents the facts as they are, the way life really operated in her time and her New York society and shows how people would truly and honestly react in these situations. Overall, this is one of the greatest books ever written and should be in everyone's library.

The Age of Innocence is about Newland Archer, an indifferent lawyer who is engaged to the prim and proper May Welland but secretly develops the hots for her independent, fiery cousin Ellen Olenska. Their feelings intensify only in bits and pieces, for their stifling social world would never look well upon an engaged man having an affair with a woman of already questionable repute. As they grow closer they are driven further apart, both by custom and by human manipulation, all of which are far from innocent. The Age of Innocence is many things- biting social satire, sharp-edged character study, and a sympathetic observation of one of the most constricted romances in the history of literature. It is also an incredibly entertaining book, with sentence after elegant sentence finely constructing this little world of turn-of-the-century upper-crust New York that is now far gone. It is also a complete work; at its end I felt completely satisfied because nothing was left out, no relevant nuance or character unexplored, its themes illuminated just enough and nothing feeling out of place. From the pomp and circumstance of the beginning, to the desire and betrayal of the middle, to the suitably haunting conclusion, this is simply a perfect book and I couldn't imagine American lit without it. Highly recommended for anyone.

Je fais partie d un club de lecture en anglais. Cette édition est extraordinaire, avec un apparat critique très développé et de nombreuses notes contextuelles explicatives qui enrichissent la lecture. Le rêve...

Wonderful. The perfect antidote to the impoverished text speak of the digital era.

the book is great itself. the supplemental are very well chosen.. highly recommended.