“Age of Innocence” was our most recent read in the Roaring 20s Book Club. The movie with Daniel Day Lewis and Michelle Pfieffer is one of my top ten favorite movies of all time. Tom hosted the book discussion at his house. He has a projection movie set-up so we also screened the movie. It was the perfect way to spend a cold, wet and windy Saturday afternoon.
The book is my favorite of the half dozen or so that we’ve read in the R2OBC. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1921. The author, Edith Wharton, was the first woman to receive that award. Both the story and the writing are transfixing. Wharton turns a phrase elegantly with unexpected witticisms. Having had the benefit of seeing the movie multiple times, I had the voice of the film’s narrator (Joanne Woodward) in my head for the entire read. It made the experience even more engaging.
“Age of Innocence” is a story about New York’s upper class in the 1870s. Newland Archer and May Welland are to be wed. Their union binds two influential families. When May’s cousin, the Countess Olenska, arrives in town, her unconventionality forces Newland to face the social constraints of his narrow world. He does things because he’s supposed to. Society dictates Newland’s actions. The Countess is driven by a more individualistic force. He is charged by the two families to help her conform to their ways. Instead, she broadens his vision. And he ends up falling in love with her.
Wharton’s story enchants with both an old-fashionedness and a timelessness. I was drawn in by both. Her details of life in 1870s NYC are exquisite and pedestrian. The intricacies of the day to day have a beauty and a predictability. I can see how life choices were limited. Even more so than now, family and money were of equal importance. You needed both. If you only had one, you had to marry the other. Marriages were arranged for the mutual benefits of entire families. And society put their seal of approval on the union.
150+ years later, society still tries to define the ‘appropriate‘ life. Fortunately, it’s less and less successful. Marriages aren’t just made up a a man and a woman. Families aren’t just headed by two parents. And marriage is no longer the only option for financial or emotional security. Still, love and gossip have transcended as constants. We all want both, sometimes at toxic levels. And certainly the age of innocence is younger and younger. Each generation of children grow up more worldly than their parents.