Watermarks The Age of Innocence: A Portrait of Edith Wharton by Jennifer Furrow

The Age of Innocence "was a story that had grown in [Edith Wharton for] many years" (Kellogg 225). This is evident throughout the novel, as it, at times, reflects her own life. In fact, the novel is "a full portrait of a vanished time" in which Wharton lived and matured in New York (Bell 47). She had intimate knowledge of New York's social customs and the people who adhered to them. Reviewing this book under the analytical microscope brings to light the similarities between Wharton's life and the lives she gives to the characters on the page. Grace Kellogg remarked that "... any novelist, no matter how objective... [or] personally reticent, will on occasion draw from his own inner experience." This proves true of Edith Wharton, and "if one has a nose for scenting out the autobiographical bit (like a pig digging for truffles) one may learn much" (Kellogg 53). Perhaps the principal autobiographical elements of The Age of Innocence are the similarities between characters in the novel and influential people in Wharton's life. In particular, Wharton drew from her good friend, Walter Berry, and especially from herself.

Edith Wharton was extremely close to the society depicted in The Age of Innocence. In fact, Grace Kellogg reports that "a delicate veil of nostalgia hangs... between the author and her remembered scene" (227). Wharton grew up in New York and frequented the same summer resorts, such as Newport, which are so eloquently described in the novel. "The Age of Innocence... is a strenuous act of revivification. In no other of Edith Wharton's novels were the names of the characters so audibly close to those of their originals" (Lewis 430). Consequently, numerous characters in the novel are manifestations of people whom Wharton knew in her own life.

More specifically, Walter Berry, one of Wharton's closest friends and "mentor of her genius," is depicted in the novel (qtd. Kellogg 133) in various characters. The most obvious connection is in the main character, Newland Archer. On the surface, there are a few obvious similarities. For example, Newland Archer is a lawyer and Walter Berry, too, was a lawyer. Also, Berry was characterized as a dilettante (Bell 34); Archer was also "at heart a dilettante" (4). Both Archer and Berry had a keen interest in the literary arts. Wharton wrote that "Berry was born with an exceptionally sensitive literary instinct" (108), and she seemed to give Newland Archer that same quality.

Besides these rudimentary similarities between Walter Berry and Archer, Berry is also portrayed in other minor characters in the novel. Julius Beaufort was "agreeable, handsome, ill-tempered... and witty" and was quite detestable to the Old New York society of The Age of Innocence. These characteristics are indicative of Berry, who was considered "mostly unfavorable" amongst Edith Wharton's peers (qtd. Kellog 278). In addition, Lawrence Lefferts, Count Olenski and Julius Beaufort were all known for their extramarital escapades. Perhaps, through these scandalous men, Wharton was portraying Berry's less desirable quality of being non-committal to any one woman (Kellogg 58). In addition, Wharton gave her main character, Newland Archer, the beautiful New York woman, May Welland, whom he wanted--or thought he wanted. Perhaps this was Wharton's play on her frequent desire to "be like the empty-headed pretty women Berry usually preferred" (Lewis 479).

The most obvious connection between Wharton's life and the novel is the relationship between Newland Archer and Ellen Olenska. Their relationship is comparable to the brief love affair between Wharton and Walter Berry. As Ellen Olenska and Newland Archer shared one moment of passion (128), reportedly, so did Walter Berry and Edith Wharton (Kellogg 60). This romantic transgression would eventually lead to insidious gossip that may have been part of the reason she married Edward Wharton. To extend the similarity, Archer and Ellen would have their "one moment" in the same fashion that Berry and Wharton had only one fleeting night of supposed passion (Kellogg 60). The deep-seated longing that Wharton felt for Walter Berry is apparent in her statements about being separated from him. Wharton said, "I hold the book in my hand and see your name all over the page" (qtd. Kellogg133). This is certainly indicative of the torment she experienced concerning her romantic feelings towards Berry. Wharton depicts her yearning through Newland Archer when he is reading poems in his library: "All through the night he pursued through those enchanted pages the vision of a woman who had the face of Ellen Olenska" (104). Sadly, Berry "felt no romantic passion" for Wharton. In the same fashion that Archer fed off Ellen's unconventional ideas, so Berry used Wharton as "a vicarious fulfillment of a long-held [literary] ambition" (Kellogg 84). Though Wharton may never have verbalized her disappointment at Berry's lack of romantic intentions, "from seeming echoes in her fiction [one can] guess at the depth of her disappointment at the word[s] not spoken" (Lewis 50).

One of the most intriguing autobiographical elements of the novel is how "Edith Wharton divided her own past self between Newland Archer and Ellen Olenska" (Lewis 431). It is apparent that the author infused her Old New York traditionalist views into Newland Archer. Consequently, she created Ellen with an opposing sense of independence from traditional thought. The obvious connection between Edith and Ellen (apart from the similarities in their names) is an unhappy marriage. Ellen fled from Europe "to seek rest and oblivion among her kinsfolk" after leaving her brute of a husband, Count Olenski (45). Wharton, on the other hand, fled from America to England to escape or counterattack the social ostracism she faced in New York after her divorce (Kellogg 205). Wharton rented Stocks, a small home owned by a prominent social figure in England. As Ellen hid behind the Mingott family name, so did Wharton "put herself under the wing of one of England's most conservative hostesses" (205). Grace Kellogg mentions that "Edith's awareness of a divorcee's social status is reflected in a score of her novels" (127). Oddly enough, Wharton's peers whole-heartedly supported her after the divorce from Edward Wharton. For example, Egerton Winthrop, a friend of Wharton's, counseled her by saying that "there was no way out of the misery but the one you took" (qtd. Lewis 336). Perhaps the resistance that Ellen Olenska faced concerning her divorce from the Count was Wharton's perception of how society viewed her own divorce.

Edith Wharton's marriage to Edward Wharton also seems to have found its place in The Age of Innocence. The relationship between Newland Archer and May Welland bears some resemblance to the marriage between Edith and Edward Wharton. It is reported that between Wharton and Edward "the talk was never intellectual and seldom brilliant but it was always easy" (Kellogg 61). This has a striking resemblance to the lack of substance in conversations between Archer and May. Archer concedes, "To let her talk about familiar and simple things was... easiest" (106). Both couples shared an easy-going relationship that did not stem from, nor revolve around, intense romantic passions. For both the fictional couple and the real one, "The relationship between husband and wife appears to have settled into an amicable one" (Lewis 55). That may have been true up until Edward's mental illness and his numerous instances of infidelity, which led to their divorce in 1913. However, May and Archer, as one can see in the epilogue of the novel, did settle into a traditional, and relatively quiet, marriage.

One of the greatest themes in the novel that can be attributed to Wharton's life is a disdain for New York traditions, which she illuminates with a delicate satire. Time and again she alludes to the ridiculous qualities of New York traditions. Though she manifests these ideas in both Ellen and Archer, it is Newland Archer who slowly realizes that New York society is insignificant compared with the rest of the world. For example, when protesting to May about expediting their marriage, Archer says, "We're all as like each other as those dolls cut out of the same folded paper" (62). This would appear to be a satirical jab at the cookie-cutter quality of New York society.

Another theme would be Wharton's personal anguish over reconciling the two warring halves of herself. There seems to be a battle of principles between Ellen and Archer. As he is trying to change his traditional views, Ellen makes "him feel stupidly conventional just when he thought he was flinging convention to the winds" (214). This vacillation is possibly a reenactment of the inner turmoil Wharton felt about her childhood society. On the one hand, she clung to those same traditional values as Archer was trying to shed, and she felt a desire to break free from tradition and follow her own desires as Ellen Olenska does. As we see in the novel, all of Ellen's different ideas lead to her return to Europe after the Newland's going-away party. R.W.B. Lewis postulates that "[Wharton was] dramatizing her own gradual alienation and withdrawal from that world as an act of casting off by society that could neither understand nor contain her" (432).

"Edith Wharton has been charged... with 'loading the dice' against... a pair of unfortunate lovers" and the dice are certainly loaded for Newland Archer and Ellen Olenska (Kellogg 228). Perhaps Wharton does this to put on the page the unfairness she suffered concerning her own love life. The novel is teeming with melancholy and heartbreak--feelings Wharton most likely shared with her characters. The despair she must have felt over her one-sided romance with Walter Berry shows in the last scene of the novel. Newland Archer knows that his fantasy of Ellen Olenska is "more real" than if he actually sees her again after thirty years (269). R.W.B Lewis said that Wharton "still had a romantic vision of some great love that would harness the dormant power within... and harmonize her inner and outer worlds" (49). This vision was probably of Walter Berry, but it is doubtful that he was as much of a man as she had built him up to be (Kellogg 277).

Throughout the novel, one gets the impression that the author was trying to convey the desolation that she felt in her own life. Through failed romances and failed marriages, Wharton illustrates her own frustration over the lack of romance in her life. Using her main character Newland Archer and his thoughts about Ellen Olenska, Edith Wharton leaves us with her own concept of "the composite vision of all that [she] had missed... the flower of life" (258). What "flower of life" could Wharton have been referring to? Perhaps it was her less than desirable marriage or her unrequited love for Walter Berry. In either case, in The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton pours a great deal of herself onto the page. Through characters in the novel, the reader obtains a better understanding for the author and her own torments about an unsatisfactory life.

Previous Essay

Table of Contents

Next Essay