Handout 1
Prelim Papers essay outlines and suggested answers
ESSAY QUESTIONS
1.
2.
3.
“This novel is Edith Wharton’s love letter to New York.” How far is this statement an accurate
representation of The Age of Innocence?
“Wharton’s intention is to expose the deficiencies of Old New York.” How far do you agree with
this comment on the novel?
How is the title The Age of Innocence an apt reflection of the novel’s concerns?
AOI AS EDITH WHARTON’S LOVE LETTER TO ONY/ EXPOSING THE
DEFICIENCIES OF ONY
The question to ask yourself here is what you associate with a love letter to a city – memories, nostalgia, a
strong sense of identity and an appreciation of the good things about it. The question is basically asking
you to evaluate whether Wharton’s portrayal on ONY and even her choice of it as a subject is guided by
wholly positive emotions of love and even nostalgia. There are two broad approaches you can take:
Either that it is mostly a love letter as she presents her appreciation of the values of ONY through Ellen,
depicts the homes, customs and rituals of ONY is intricate detail, in order to capture the historical
significance of the period as seen through the setting and also presents it as a period of innocence just
before America as a nation experienced tremendous social and economic change which completely
altered American society. As a counter argument, you need to show that though there are positive
elements, the novel is also a social critique and Wharton uses the three central characters to show how a
restrictive, tribalistic and insular society can cause the stagnation and intellectual development of the
individual.
Or that the novel, from the angle of memory and nostalgia can be seen as love letter but it is, more
significantly, a social critique of an overly restrictive and insular society and its hypocrisy, a novel of
growth from innocence to experience.
The bulleted points below elaborate upon the points underlined above and also provide a few quotations
that you can use to support your arguments. You need to add to these quotes as they are not exhaustive.
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Through the growth of Ellen Olenska and her changing perceptions of ONY, Wharton presents to
us its positive qualities. When Ellen first arrives, she has a simplistic understanding of ONY,
seeing it as being “straight up and down” even when Newland tries to warn her that it is
“labyrinth” and more dangerous than she thinks. As her sense of restriction and dissatisfaction
grow, Ellen sees that New York is a lot more intrusive than she thinks, so much so that she asks
Newland, “Is there nowhere in an American house where one may be by one's self? You're so shy,
and yet you're so public.” However, as the novel progresses, Ellen grows to appreciate and finally
embody the positive qualities of ONY. Unlike Newland, she is able see ONY holistically and
appreciate the security that it bestows on it members – as she says to Newland, all she wants is to
feel “cared for and safe” because she sees that the tribe bestows a degree of support to its
members that she could not find in European culture. As the novel progresses and Ellen also
begins to see that ONY values are worth upholding and holding on to and that “under the dullness
there are things so fine and sensitive and delicate” and make her life in Europe ‘look cheap in
comparison.” Wharton points out to the reader, through Ellen, that the values that ONY upholds,
of honour, family and sacrifice are truly worth upholding and pays tribute to a world where these
values were idealized. Towards the end of the novel, even as Newland grows increasingly
dissatisfied with the ways of his tribe, Ellen is able to make him see that there is value and
goodness where he only sees restriction and imprisonment. Ellen is able to see that sacrifice is
good if it means that others can be happy, to “have given up, to have missed things, so that others
may be saved from disillusionment and misery.” The use of the word “saved” is particularly
telling of the extent of her own suffering in her marriage and her desire to spare May the same
pain. Ellen’s outside perspective on ONY and the way it gives her hope and a sense of purpose is
encapsulated in her lines to Newland, “I shan't be lonely now. I was lonely; I was afraid. But the
Samantha Kamath Prakash
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Handout 1
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Prelim Papers essay outlines and suggested answers
emptiness and the darkness are gone; when I turn back into myself now I'm like a child going at
night into a room where there's always a light.” The italicized “was” draws attention to the
transformation within Ellen as she goes from a disillusioned woman to one with a deep
appreciation of the values that truly matter – those of love and sacrifice. To Wharton, ONY values
are worth upholding because they are what give meaning and purpose to the individual and, as in
the case of Ellen, revive her faith in family. The fact that she uses an outsider to present these
values is significant because it highlights the extent to which Newland himself takes these values
for granted and indeed, devalues them in his pursuit of “exquisite pleasures”. It is not until much
later in his life that Newland is able to see and appreciate what Ellen sees now – that there was
good in “the old ways”.
The novel can also be perceived as a love letter in the sense that it is through her writing of it that
Wharton retains and recaptures her memories of a bygone era. The element of nostalgia is very
strong in the novel and can be interpreted as Wharton’s reminiscing about her own youth. This is
presented most vividly through Wharton’s depiction of ONY’s social rituals such as the wedding
of Newland and May, the intricate details that she presents in her descriptions of the interiors of
houses and opera houses and the setting of the novel itself in New York, with its “ordered rows”
of houses along fifth avenue. The social rituals in the novel are at times trivial such as how,
“Every year on the fifteenth of October Fifth Avenue opened its shutters, unrolled its carpets and
hung up its triple layer of window-curtains” highlighting both the unchanging nature of the ritual
and how deeply something so trivial had become entrenched into common social behavior. But
there are also major social rituals such as the wedding which Wharton presents as almost a
performance, highlighting the attention that was paid to these ceremonies. Wharton’s detailed
descriptions of the numerous rules that surrounded the wedding is presented through her
elaborate and detailed listing of the “bridesmaids' eight bouquets of white lilac and lilies-of-thevalley”, “the gold and sapphire sleeve-links of the eight ushers and the best man's cat's-eye scarfpin” and “the wording of [Archer’s] thanks for the last batch of presents from men friends and exlady-loves”. All of these descriptions suggest that these ceremonies were elaborate social rituals
which carried significance far beyond the mere marriage of two individuals but are in fact, the
glue that held ONY together. Through these elaborate desciptions, Wharton infuses the novel
with a profound sense of history and nostalgia. {add more of your own quotes}
The novel can also be viewed as Wharton’s recapturing of a time of innocence and the old order
in America before the wars changed everything forever. The presentation of the characters in the
novel with their defined lives and routines is a means of presenting a much more ‘innocent’ way
of life, uncorrupted by the ways of the new world that we see at the end of the novel. The order
that governed their social hierarchy as presented in the neat striations of the social pyramid is
also mirrored in the ordered way in which they conducted their lives both in terms of manners
and lifestyle. This is captured through the presentation of the way of life of ONY with its social
season, opera and balls as well as its holidays in places such as Newport and St Augustine as well
as the strict rules of decorum which governed social behavior. This is presented to the reader
right at the start of the novel when which is set during the opera season in New York. Wharton’s
repeated references to the established habits of ONY are presented through lines such as, “what
was or was not "the thing" played a part as important in Newland Archer's New York as the
inscrutable totem terrors that had ruled the destinies of his forefathers thousands of years ago”
where the use of the tribal motif lends a seeming timelessness to Newland’s adherence to the
rules of his tribe. Similarly, the implicit social codes embedded in a simple letter of invitation to
“formal dinner” are decoded for the reader to mean “three extra footmen, two dishes for each
course, and a Roman punch in the middle” reflecting how entrenched and commonly understood
these codes were in ONY. These instances can be contrasted with the final chapter where
established modes of social behavior are already being flouted. Dallas believes in being forthright
in his speech rather than circuitous, asking "What's the use of making mysteries? It only makes
people want to nose 'em out," when told to be more restrained. {add more of your own quotes}
The novel can be viewed as a critique of cultural and intellectual insularity on ONY which stifled
the growth of the individual, a sharp look at the hypocrisies which governed ONY and a criticism
of the rigid and narrow customs that it blindly adhered to. Wharton points the reader to the
cultural insularity of ONY which prevents them from truly understanding those that lie beyond
Samantha Kamath Prakash
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Handout 1
Prelim Papers essay outlines and suggested answers
their tight social circle. Their perception of outsiders is both prejudiced and limited, as seen from
their treatment of Beaufort who will never be anything more than one of ONY’s “pet common
people”, the word “common” indicating the extent of importance given to lineage and family
name in ONY. Ellen too, will never be more than “that Olenska woman” whose “bohemian”
lifestyle and candid manner is too much of a threat to the stability of ONY. This also extends to an
intellectual insularity as those from ONY are presented to be fearful of “people who wrote” in
their own society even as they wholly embrace European art and English writing. The double
standards are highlighted through the character of Ned Winsett who is never able to accomplish
anything in the creative field due to a lack of interest in local writing, leading him to possess the
“sterile bitterness” of a creatively stifled man. Through the outsiders, Wharton criticizes the
insularity of ONY and explores the destructive effects of such insularity on society as a whole.
Wharton is also extremely critical of the hypocrisy that is very evident in the culture of ONY. Even
as they seemingly welcome Ellen into the family, there is a constant curtailment of her freedom,
be it by restricting her attempt at pursuing a divorce, withdrawing financial support when she
refuses to live in a suitably “fashionable” quarters or ever limiting her expressions of sadness in
bid to avoid the “unpleasant” facts of her life. The hypocrisy extends to their inner circles,
highlighting the unequal power relations between men and women where men like Lawrence
Leffferts have the power to mould their wives to their own convenience and keep them in the
dark about affairs and philandering. Newland’s reflection on Lefferts as having “formed a wife
wholly to his convenience”, with the pun on the word “form” is very telling of the unfairness and
hypocrisy that exists in ONY society where women are expected to live up to exacting standards
of purity and innocence but men could have mistresses “on the side”. This hypocrisy also extends
to their treatment of the Beauforts who, in their time of good fortune, have a house that “New
Yorkers were proud to show to foreigners” but when his dishonourable actions are revealed, the
same group of people turn against him in “righteous reprobation”, refusing to countenance his
actions. Wharton is also critical of ONY’s rigid adherence to manners and customs, sometimes to
the point of becoming nothing more than a sum of those customs as in the case of the Van der
Lyudens whose lifelong roles as the “mouthpieces of some remote ancestral authority” are so
confined by their role that they become frozen within it, unable to grow or develop as individuals,
remaining forever in “in a kind of viceregal rigidity”. The ice motif and death motif are used to
describe their containment and stagnation as they remain like “bodies caught in glaciers keep for
years a rosy life-in-death”. Similarly, Wharton also mocks the inability of ONY to communicate
effectively with anyone outside their social circle, emphasizing the way in which manners are a
barrier to open communication. May, for instance, becomes “more uncompromisingly local in her
references” when surrounded with people from other cultures, making her conversation “a chill
to repartee” and hence preventing others from understanding her. Through this episode,
Wharton points us to the dangers of such a rigid adherence to manners which can be destructive
to the development of the individual.
THE TITLE AS AN APT REFLECTION OF THE NOVEL’S CONCERNS
The innocence in the title can be interpreted in the following ways:
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The innocence of the women (refer to my notes)
The innocence of the people of ONY ( their insularity and reluctance to face the unpleasant which
leads to their intellectual and cultural stagnation)
Archer’s own youth as an ‘Age of Innocence’ from which he grows to a stage of experience.
The age of innocence as an ironic title as it seemingly describes an a seemingly innocent group of
people who are honourable and honest but upon a closer look, are far from innocent and driven
by primal, tribalistic instincts.
Samantha Kamath Prakash
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