In the novel The Age of Innocence, Newland Archer portrays the struggle between destiny and desires through the high society of New York City. The struggle in this novel uses the high society backdrop to show the limitations that plagued the members living in it. “As critics have uniformly pointed out since the novel’s serialization in The Pictorial Review in 1920, The Age of Innocence is indeed a book about a world bound by convention and straitjacketed by conformity” (Barreca XI). The setting also creates a flakiness that leaves everyone who lives inside blind to how the rest of the world operates. “Other sections of the novel, particularly the description of the New York social rites at the opera or dull parties are obviously satirical in spirit. Here Wharton exposes the limitations and cultural ignorance of what is essentially a provincial world” (Beetz 49). With these limitations and ignorance of the rest of the world the struggle was created.
The society chosen was one of appearance. “Appearance-the appearance of moral probity and social conformity-is all important: 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” (Beetz 48). May was placed in the novel for her appearance. Wharton used May to show a product of society. Ellen, also created in the novel was used for appearance, Wharton created her character to be the sinful one. Ellen’s appearance was against their Puritanical beliefs, and Wharton used that to show how the society ultimately appeared. “On the surface, the society appears to be Puritanical in its response to divorce and unconventional European living arrangements, but as Wharton makes clear, even in the New York of the 1870’s, people chose to ignore social indiscretion or crudity if someone had enough money to buy his way into the society" (Beetz 48). The society of appearance was one Wharton knew greatly, despite the fact the setting of book was written during her parents time period.
The time period Wharton choose was one that she could use her character Ellen to shine out and May to blend in. “In The Age of Innocence, a novel set in the old New York of her youth, Wharton sought to suggest some of those areas in which traditional society in the old New York maintained the ‘old tradition of European culture’ no longer characteristic of the postwar world” (Tuttleton 444). For that reason Wharton chose to write about her parents generation, because hers was becoming too free spirited. “Looking back, Wharton regarded old New York as having preserved an order of civilized values too precious to be forgotten in the age of jazz babies, flappers, and bathtub gin. Writing The Age of Innocence was therefore an act of piety for her, an attempt to atone for her youthful satire on the graceful, ordered civility of her parents’ world” (Tuttleton 444). She found that the best way to portray the struggle would be in a time where freedom was not starting to develop yet.
The setting ultimately ties into the title of the novel The Age of Innocence. The setting was found to be innocent because the people of that time were raised in a naive time period. “Newland Archer lives in what Wharton calls ‘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'"(Beetz 48). Wharton gave the assumption in the beginning of the book that Ellen and Newland where the not he innocent ones, but they were found to be innocent because they were trapped by the society. “Despite their passion, intelligence, and perception, Ellen and Newland are the innocent ones here” (Barreca xx). The straitjacketed society was picked to enhance the struggle already formed between Newland, Ellen, and May.
Ellen was also chosen to become the innocent because she was modeled closely to Wharton herself. “Critics suggest that the moral, social, and intellectual dilemmas that confront central characters Newland Archer and Ellen Olenska in The Age of Innocence mirror those Wharton experienced in her personal and professional lives” (DiMauro 360). Both Wharton and Ellen were strong women of their time. Ellen divorced her husband and so did Wharton. Ellen’s purpose was to question the value of conventions, much as Wharton did throughout her life. “Wharton, who so often in her fiction questioned the value of conventions, celebrates the worth of aristocratic values and rituals in the New York of the 1870s” (McDowell 409). Although Wharton made her book different from her others, this time she leaned toward family. “Family responsibility and loyalty further self-development rather than deny it in this book” (McDowell 409). For that reason the struggle ends with Newland’s destiny overtaking his desires.
The style in which Wharton decided to write, first person, allowed the reader to have questions in their mind of what everyone else truly feels. Everything that the reader observes is through the eyes of Newland Archer and what he perceives, sees and understands, yet does not know what Ellen and may know and think. By doing this Wharton was able to make the reader see the characters through someone else. This causes judgments to be formed, and lack of knowledge created. “In particular, the limitations of what we know and think of Ellen to what Newland thinks and knows gives her reality, artistic distinction, and intensity” (Beach 364). The reason for this approach was to cause the reader to form the same opinions Newland did, to greater understand the position he was in.
Wharton places her two female characters on different sides of the spectrum to prove the theme she was writing about. She used Ellen as already stated to go against the convention of society whereas to prove her point she brought in May, who was a product of those same conventions. “Newland Archer who has questioned his society’s ethos finds himself attracted to Ellen Olenska just when he has announced his engagement to May Welland seemingly docile product of society” (Klawins 270). Ellen caused May to seem lusterless against her, and the difference of childhood and appearance Wharton chose for the two girls left Newland once again with his choice between destiny and desire.
Wharton dabbled with a some symbolism in the way of the characters' names. May’s last name is also symbolic to her representation to the novel, as well as Ellen’s and Newland’s. Ellen’s last name was mysterious and foreign fitting to her place in the novel. At a party May won the archery contest, and that is foreshadowing the fact that May landed the bull's eye in Newland’s life. May’s maiden name was Welland, and it symbolized a well land, or a safe choice. Her name as well as her character symbolizes the easiest path that Newland could take.
Wharton wanted Newland to have an alternative path to life, to show that there was a way out of the high society. “Like Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry James she explored the ambiguities of inner experience and of human behavior as her characters attempt to achieve moral illumination and are inhibited from so doing by social convention” (McDowell 408). That brought forth the theme of doing what feels right in your heart. “Like much of the best American literature of its era, The Age of Innocence suggests that it might not be such a bad thing to follow your instincts” (Klawins 269). Wharton created Newland to fall for her main focus, Ellen. “Newland Archer is one of the palest and least individualized characters ever offered to the public by a distinguished writer of fiction. He is hardly more than a device for projecting a situation and characters much more real than himself” (Beach 365). By causing Newland to become such a shallow character Wharton was able to liven the mystery of Ellen Olenska up. Wharton was able to show the freedom of society through Ellen. “Ellen arouses his interest because, in part, she does not read the script provided by the genteel society in which they live. When for example, Ellen walks across the drawing at a party to talk to Newland, she commits a serious social crime by displaying ownership of her own wishes and showing respect for her own desire” (Barreca XIV).
“What Wharton meant by innocence was partly sexual propriety and financial rectitude of life, a fear of innovation, and a submissiveness to the power of social convention that characterized her parents’ class” (Tuttleton 444). By choosing the preserved world of old New York in the 1870’s, she was able to trap her main character into the choice between destiny and desire. “Privileged by birth, Wharton knew such well-known American families as the Roosevelt’s, Lodgers, Tafts, and Vanderbelts. Although she always enjoyed a mingling with the notable, she reached out to a variety of people, including young writers” (McDowell 410). Wharton similar to Ellen achieved many of her desires, and used Ellen to portray that. Newland was symbolic to destiny because he did not contain the strength to break free of it. Wharton is trying to express in her novel that strength and bravery are required to break through your destiny and into your desire.