Thus, in many ways, the French Cour de Versailles in the 17th century is strangely similar to the New York of the end of 19th century Wharton describes, where the men at the top of society are more preoccupied by their self-sense of importance, so-called reputation that their wealth and social ranks give them, than being truly virtuous, honest, although, at the same time, they want to appear as such to their peers. The world then, to both writers, is one to be unveiled, where one has to unmask the false pretenses to honor, honesty, and to identify, distinguish what is wrong and virtuous under the often malign appearances they can take and which, by custom and lack of self-reflection, people tend to misinterpret and misunderstand, most often willingly among the “important people” as it gives them a comfortable, reassuring vision of themselves and of the society which they belong to.
In short, La Bruyère and Wharton are both preoccupied in their respective work to make their reader see the world as it really is in essence, behind his superficial appearance, behind our blind eyes accustomed to see through a wrong perspective. Here are some passages where this motif appears in the book:
‘The van der Luydens,’ said Archer, feeling himself pompous as he spoke, ‘are the most powerful influence in New York society. Unfortunately – owing to her health – they receive very seldom.'
She unclasped her hands from behind her head, and looked at him meditatively.
‘Isn't that perhaps the reason?’
‘The reason –?’
‘For their great influence; that they make themselves so rare.’
He coloured a little, stared at her – and suddenly felt the penetration of the remark. At a stroke she had pricked the van der Luydens and they collapsed. He laughed, and sacrificed them.
Nastasia brought the tea, with handleless Japanese cups and little covered dishes, placing the tray on a low table.
‘But you'll explain these things to me – you'll tell me all I ought to know,’ Madame Olenska continued, leaning forward to hand him his cup.
‘It's you who are telling me; opening my eyes to things I'd looked at so long that I'd ceased to see them.’ (ch. 9, p. 53)
[…] he was being too deeply drawn into the atmosphere of the room, which was her atmosphere, and to give advice of that sort would have been like telling some one who was bargaining for attar-of-roses in Samarkand that one should always be provided with arctics for a New York winter. New York seemed much farther off than Samarkand, and if they were indeed to help each other she was rendering what might prove the first of their mutual services by making him look at his native city objectively. Viewed thus, as through the wrong end of a telescope, it looked disconcertingly small and distant; but then from Samarkand it would. (ch. 9, p. 53-54)
As he went out into the wintry night, New York again became vast and imminent, and May Welland the loveliest woman in it. He turned into his florist's to send her the daily box of lilies-of-the-valley which, to his confusion, he found he had forgotten that morning. (ch. 9, p. 56)
Well she [the Gorgon] opened my eyes too; it’s a delusion to say that she blinds people. What she does is just the contrary – she fastens their eyelids open, so that they’re never again in the blessed darkness. Isn’t there a Chinese torture like that? There ought to be. Ah, believe me, it’s a miserable little country! (ch. 29, p. 203)
Newland Archer, the protagonist of The Age of Innocence (TAOI later on), is such a man as I just describe above: though, to a certain extent, he is aware of some hypocrisies in the upper class he belongs to, he is still very much a product of it, and shares for the most part its prejudices and values, thus being blind to the falseness of it. As was the case with Lily Bart in THOM who, through the eyes of Selden, was at last able to see the pettiness of the society which she desperately aspires to be a permanent member through a marriage of interest that she, at the end, renounces out of moral, unconscious scruples, pettiness she was so far unaware and which intensely disgusts her upon discovery (see my blog post on THOM), Newland, thanks to Ellen Olenska’s perception of his milieu, also suddenly becomes aware of how his society is morally corrupted, but more importantly, how the life he has lead within it became, to his new eyes, false and insignificant, as if he has not truly lived until now.
Archer wondered how many flaws Lefferts's keen eyes would discover in the ritual of his divinity; then he suddenly recalled that he too had once thought such questions important. The things that had filled his days seemed now like a nursery parody of life, or like the wrangles of mediaeval schoolmen over metaphysical terms that nobody had ever understood. A stormy discussion as to whether the wedding presents should be ‘shown’ had darkened the last hours before the wedding; and it seemed inconceivable to Archer that grown-up people should work themselves into a state of agitation over such trifles, and that the matter should have been decided (in the negative) by Mrs. Welland's saying, with indignant tears: ‘I should as soon turn the reporters loose in my house.’ Yet there was a time when Archer had had definite and rather aggressive opinions on all such problems, and when everything concerning the manners and customs of his little tribe had seemed to him fraught with world-wide significance.
‘And all the while, I suppose,’ he thought, ‘real people were living somewhere, and real things happening to them…’ (ch. 19, p. 127)
Since then there had been no farther communication between them, and he had built up within himself a kind of sanctuary in which she throned among his secret thoughts and longings. Little by little it became the scene of his real life, of his only rational activities; thither he brought the books he read, the ideas and feelings which nourished him, his judgments and his visions. Outside it, in the scene of his actual life, he moved with a growing sense of unreality and insufficiency, blundering against familiar prejudices and traditional points of view as an absent–minded man goes on bumping into the furniture of his own room. Absent—that was what he was: so absent from everything most densely real and near to those about him that it sometimes startled him to find they still imagined he was there. (ch. 26, p. 184)
However,
Newland’s new discovered awareness does not initiate a complete change in how he concretely lives. As with what is actually happening in real life, there is a
significant gap between one’s awareness of the falsehood of the society he
lives in, and its actual effects on the way he will live from now on with this new
awareness. As for Lily Bart, Newland Archer is a torn individual between what
he truly aspires and what his society expects him to be and act. But to the
difference of Lily, who ultimately, despite a great deal of hesitations and
interior turmoil, decides to live rightly according to her own principles at
the expense of poverty and leading her to tragic fate, Newland is to be
considered more trapped in the society he intimately rejects, as he decided
nonetheless to go on with his engagement to May Welland, and even hasten it, as
if he was unconsciously afraid of the new perspective, of the new life he could
lead with Ellen, even though it was the only way for him to be truly fulfilled
in his life.
One could
see it as some form of cowardice, but isn’t it a normal human weakness, as it
asks one a tremendous amount of courage and strength of character to radically
change and abandon what he is used to, what he believes to be right, for a
complete new set of values, still to be determined precisely, overnight ? The
regrets of Archer, the monotonous life he will lead after Ellen’s definitive
departure to Europe, largely compensate to my eyes his cowardice towards Ellen
and May, forsaking the former though she is the one he truly loves, and
marrying the latter although he had the opportunity to cancel their engagement
since May has quickly understood Archer’s haste to his fear of giving in to the
temptation he feels towards Ellen. Archer’s lot, considered as a whole, does
not end in the abrupt, tragic way of Lily’s in THOM, but it may be a more pathetic, heartbreaking one, as, though
he lives through, it is a lifeless life, devoid of most of what he truly
aspires, whereas Lily, at the end of life, has found some sort of interior
peace with herself and the poverty she lives in, and by burning the letters
that would have restore her social position through blackmail, and paying back
the debts she owned to Trenor. Here are some excerpts from the end of the book
illustrating Archer’s regrets over his missed life:
When he thought of Ellen Olenska it was abstractly, serenely, as one might think of some imaginary beloved in a book or a picture: she had become the composite vision of all that he had missed. That vision, faint and tenuous as it was, had kept him from thinking of other women. (ch. 34, p. 243)
Since her [May’s] death, nearly two years before, there had been no reason for his continuing in the same routine. His children had urged him to travel. […] But Archer had found himself held fast by habit, by memories, by a sudden startled shrinking from new things. Now, as he reviewed his past, he saw into what a deep rut he had sunk. (ch. 34, p. 246)
[…] a mere grey speck of a man compared with the ruthless magnificent fellow he had dreamed of being… (ch. 34, p. 249)
TAOI is
a more delicate, compassionate work than THOM,
where Wharton's satirical tone is much more aggressive towards the upper
society of New York she obviously and strongly despised, as she repeatedly
compared their members as repulsive insects. The satire of the society is of
course still present in TAOI and Wharton as
ruthless as she ever was, but her chief concern here is her main characters’
feelings, Archer’s and Ellen’s ones, while May is also an intriguing character
due to the uncertainty we are left with regarding her true feelings and the
extent of her actual control over Archer, who completely misreads her as an
innocent and harmless being.
Both Archer and Ellen are tragic
figures, even though they do not die in a violent way as often expected in a
tragedy, since they are lead by the circumstances to be separated from each
other for the rest of their lives, though they are truly in love with each
other. Archer is the one to be blamed most for their missed love relationship,
as he decided to marry May though he fell in love with Ellen, without being
fully aware of it until it was too late for him to cancel it. Ellen, on her
side, has made the choice not to marry Archer too, out of consideration towards May
and her family, who gave her some sort of protection and helped her to
integrate New York high society despite her scandalous departure from her
husband’s home in Europe. Indeed, May’s family has been supporting to her since
her return to New York (after a more than ten years absence in American soil),
especially Mrs Manson Mingott, or Old Catherine (née Spicer), the powerful and
influential Matriarch of the Mingott family, who, despite her monstrous
obesity, is nonetheless the most sympathetic and interesting character outside
of the three main characters, since her temperament is similar to both Archer
and Ellen, her favourite relatives for this reason. Ellen, though she is seen
as a scandalous person for wanting a divorce from her husband (in an ironic reverse
of American values, supposedly more liberal than European ones), is a strictly
moral woman: she refuses to harm those who, she supposes, have been good to
her, especially May, and thus refuses Archer’s last minute proposal. If the
term of innocence, that appears in the title, were to be applied in its
definition to one specific character, it would be mostly suited to Ellen who,
since her return from Europe, has endeavoured to not cause any unnecessary harm,
and who has showed a genuine kindness and compassion to others: towards Ned
Winsett’s disabled wife who lives in her neighborhood of her first American
residence, to her ruined aunt Medora Manson at the end of the novel who
accompanies her in Europe, or to Mrs Beaufort and her daughter when the
Beauforts became pariahs following Julius Beaufort’s bankruptcy. She also
ultimately refuses to engage in any sort of sexual relationship with Archer,
though their relationship is filled with a strong sense of sensuality
throughout the novel, out of respect for May, but also for herself. The key for
her motivation is given by herself, in her declaration of love to Archer, whom
she loves because he understood her unhappiness and strongly opposed any return
to her husband:
But you knew; you understood; you had felt the world outside tugging at one with all its golden hands – and yet you hated the things it asks of one; you hated happiness bought by disloyalty and cruelty and indifference. That was what I’d never known before – and it’s better than anything I’ve known. (ch. 18, p. 122)
Ellen strikes Archer for her lack of affectations, her honesty on all matters, and her frank, direct language, not refusing to employ “unpleasant” words that describe the reality. It is through her intermediary that Archer manages to perceive a whole new way of living, and more than just being sensuously attracted to her, he really is because he admires how she stands on her moral stances, and how she lives according to them, quitting her husband when she realizes she couldn’t be happy with him no matter what financial compromise could be found. She also stands her ground when most of her allowance from her family is cut off, and would rather live in poverty, but true to herself, than under the chains of New York prejudices or those of her husband.
‘Is it your idea, then, that I should live with you as your mistress – since I can’t be your wife?’ she asked.
The crudeness of the question startled him: the word was one that women of his class fought shy of, even when their talk fitted closest about the topic. He noticed that Madame Olenska pronounced it as if it had a recognised place in her vocabulary, and he wondered if it had been used familiarly in her presence in the horrible life she had fled from. (ch. 29, p. 203)
Compared to Ellen’s, May’s personality is quite the opposite. I personally don’t like her, but she is nonetheless a fascinating character, much more than what Archer thinks she is. Since TAOI is primarily told through Archer’s eyes, and that we don’t have access to the other characters’ thoughts the way we do with him, May could be misinterpreted as a lesser figure if you follow Archer’s narrow vision of her. The latter constantly associates her with a virgin, pure, innocent figure (in particular the virgin goddess Diana), with the white colour predominating in her choice of clothes and the flowers associated to her, the lilies-of-the-valley.
Archer saw May Welland entering with her mother. In her dress of white and silver, with a wreath of silver blossoms in her hair, the tall girl looked like a Diana just alight from the chase. (ch. 8, p. 46)
Newland leaned back in his chair and smiled at her. She looker handsomer and more Diana-like than ever. The moist English air seemed to have deepened the bloom of her cheeks and softened the slight hardness of her virginal features… (ch. 20, p. 135)
On the
other side, Ellen is often dressed in vivid colors, red in particular, associated
to yellow roses, and there is a sensual, erotic tension that aroused constantly
between her and Archer, symbolized by the fire of her drawing-room. It is
interesting to notice that, according to those descriptions and their symbolism,
it would seem that May incarnates the notion of innocence, while Ellen would be
seen as one of temptation and sin. The novel is filled with erotic tension
between Archer and Ellen: beside
the traditional motif of the flame, the atmosphere of Ellen's drawing-room, and later on, her hands plays a strong part in it. The following excerpts are good examples of Wharton's precise use of visual descriptions:
Madame Olenska’s pale and serious face appealed to his fancy as suited to the occasion and to her unhappy situation; but the way her dress (which has no tucker) sloped away from her thin shoulders shocked and troubled him. He hated to think of May Welland’s being exposed to the influence of a young woman so careless to the dictates of Taste. (ch. 2, p. 11)
But since he had come he meant to wait; and he sank into a chair and stretched his feet to the logs.
It was odd to have summoned him in that way, and then forgotten him; but Archer felt more curious than mortified. The atmosphere of the room was so different from any he had ever breathed that self-consciousness vanished in the sense of adventure. He had been before in drawing-rooms hung with red damask, with pictures "of the Italian school"; what struck him was the way in which Medora Manson's shabby hired house, with its blighted background of pampas grass and Rogers statuettes, had, by a turn of the hand, and the skilful use of a few properties, been transformed into something intimate, ‘foreign,’ subtly suggestive of old romantic scenes and sentiments. He tried to analyse the trick, to find a clue to it in the way the chairs and tables were grouped, in the fact that only two Jacqueminot roses (of which nobody ever bought less than a dozen) had been placed in the slender vase at his elbow, and in the vague pervading perfume that was not what one put on handkerchiefs, but rather like the scent of some far-off bazaar, a smell made up of Turkish coffee and ambergris and dried roses. (ch. 9, p. 50)
A flame darted from the logs and she bent over the fire, stretching her thin hands so close to it that a faint halo shone about the oval nails. The light touched to russet the rings of dark hair escaping from her braids, and made her pale face paler. (ch. 9, p. 54)
As Archer entered he was smiling and looking down on his hostess, who sat on a sofa placed at right angles to the chimney. A table banked with flowers formed a screen behind it, and against the orchids and azaleas which the young man recognised as tributes from the Beaufort hot-houses, Madame Olenska sat half-reclined, her head propped on a hand and her wide sleeve leaving the arm bare to the elbow. It was usual for ladies who received in the evenings to wear what were called ‘simple dinner dresses’: a close-fitting armour of whale-boned silk, slightly open in the neck, with lace ruffles filling in the crack, and tight sleeves with a flounce uncovering just enough wrist to show an Etruscan gold bracelet or a velvet band. But Madame Olenska, heedless of tradition, was attired in a long robe of red velvet bordered about the chin and down the front with glossy black fur. Archer remembered, on his last visit to Paris, seeing a portrait by the new painter, Carolus Duran, whose pictures were the sensation of the Salon, in which the lady wore one of these bold sheath-like robes with her chin nestling in fur. There was something perverse and provocative in the notion of fur worn in the evening in a heated drawing-room, and in the combination of a muffled throat and bare arms; but the effect was undeniably pleasing. (ch. 12, p. 74)
He was not sure that he wanted to see the Countess Olenska again; but ever since he had looked at her from the path above the bay he had wanted, irrationally and indescribably, to see the place she was living in, and to follow the movements of her imagined figure as he had watched the real one in the summer-house. The longing was with him day and night, an incessant undefinable craving, like the sudden whim of a sick man for food or drink once tasted and long since forgotten. He could not see beyond the craving, or picture what it might lead to, for he was not conscious of any wish to speak to Madame Olenska or to hear her voice. He simply felt that if he could carry away the vision of the spot of earth she walked on, and the way the sky and sea enclosed it, the rest of the world might seem less empty. (ch. 22, p. 156)
Her hand remained in his, and as the carriage lurched across the gang-plank onto the ferry he bent over, unbuttoned her tight brown glove, and kissed her palm as if had kissed a relic. (ch. 29, p. 200)
Madame Olenska put her hand on his arm, and he noticed that the hand was ungloved, and remembered how he had kept his eyes fixed on it the evening that he had sat with her in the little Twenty-third Street drawing-room. All the beauty that had forsaken her face seemed to have taken refuge in the long pale fingers and faintly dimpled knuckles in his sleeve, and he said to himself: “If it were only to see her hand again I should have to follow her –.” (ch. 33, p. 234)
But if we look at Ellen's and May's inner respective personalities, I am more inclined to think that they are the opposite of what they look like from an outside point of view. As I said earlier, Ellen, despite her controversial departure from Europe, her “scandalous” manners as viewed by the New York upper society, can at last be considered an innocent figure in view to her inflexible moral values, and her trying her best to prevent causing any harm to anyone by her actions. May, on the contrary, is first perceived, from an outsider and naïve point of view, as she is by Archer, as an innocent woman, but she turns out to be much more complex and Machiavellian than she seems to be. Archer marries her more because it is the most appropriated pairing for him in the eyes of the New York society he belongs to, because he feels she won’t cause him any sort of troubles, and that he will be free to pursue his artistic interests he has little intention to share with her. But more importantly, he greatly underestimates her capacity of reading and understanding him: he will only find out, very late in the novel, that May could see through his secrets all the time, and that she has been plotting behind his back (or at least complicit to) to keep him away from the conversations and decisions of the family on what needs to be done about Ellen. Her true motivations throughout the novel largely remain unclear: though she appears to me to rejoice cruelly on Ellen’s final departure, I can’t pronounce myself definitely on her intentions when she told Archer she would be fine if he decided to cancel his engagement to her earlier in the novel, when they meet at St Augustine. Did she mean it sincerely or was it another scheme of her? There are many grey zones regarding May’s true motivations, and Wharton’s deliberate obscurity on her is a good choice and contributes to make her more interesting than if we were to know her interior thoughts, as it would certainly be the case in a George Eliot’s novel. Here is May’s final word after Ellen’s last evening, where I personally perceive some cruelty on May's part, for which she ironically chose to organize her first large dinner as Mrs Archer, and after she announces to her husband that she was pregnant :
He asked abruptly: ‘Have you told any one else?’
‘Only Mamma and your mother.’ She paused, and then added hurriedly, the blood flushing up to her forehead: ‘That is – and Ellen. You know I told you we’d had a long talk one afternoon – and how dear she was to me.’
‘Ah –‘ said Archer, his heart stopping.
He felt that his wife was watching him intently. ‘Did you mind my telling her first, Newland?’
‘Mind? Why would I?’ He made a last effort to collect himself.
‘But that was a fortnight ago, wasn’t it? I thought you said you weren’t sure till today.’
Her colour burned deeper, but she held his gaze. ‘No; I wasn’t sure then – but I told her I was. And you see I was right!’ she exclaimed, her blue eyes wet with victory. (ch. 33, p. 240-241)
May’s apparent simplicity manages to fool both Archer and Ellen. She is much more aware of what is going on around her, in particular between her husband Archer and her cousin Ellen. She seems to have been a major influence, or at least an integral part, on New York high society’s disapproving attitude towards them, though we do not know to which extent. She, contrary to Ellen, is in perfect symbiosis with her society and its values, expectations, and expects nothing more from life than what is allowed by the social conventions. Her perfect ease and accommodation with them, her lack of interest for everything that is beyond her circle, is reflected on her aversion towards travelling (or when she is “forced” to travel, to do anything outside the main tourist attractions and things similar to her New York life, such as expensive shops, theatre, restaurants etc.) or her symbolic refuse, or disapproval, over opening windows. May embodies to the extreme her milieu’s values and manners: the most interesting and significant aspect to me is New York’s society refusal to talk openly of “unpleasant” things, as if their denial in words would suffice to deny its reality. Such things would undermine the vision, the perception that they have of themselves, as honest, honourable, and we could also say “innocent” people. This key term of the title could in this case be seen as ironic, as their innocence is based on a lie that they try to protect at all costs, while Ellen surprises Archer because she precisely refuses to yield to such hypocrisy.
He answered gently: "I understand. But just at first don't let go of your old friends' hands: I mean the older women, your Granny Mingott, Mrs. Welland, Mrs van der Luyden. They like and admire you – they want to help you."
She shook her head and sighed. "Oh, I know – I know! But on condition that they don't hear anything unpleasant. Aunt Welland put it in those very words when I tried... Does no one want to know the truth here, Mr. Archer? The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend!" She lifted her hands to her face, and he saw her thin shoulders shaken by a sob. (ch. 9, p. 55)‘Does no one cry here, either? I suppose there's no need to, in heaven,’ she said, straightening her loosened braids with a laugh, and bending over the tea-kettle. (ch. 9, p. 55)
He remembered what she had told him of Mrs Welland's request to be spared whatever was ‘unpleasant’ in her history, and winced at the thought that it was perhaps this attitude of mind which kept the New York air so pure. "Are we only Pharisees after all?" he wondered, puzzled by the effort to reconcile his instinctive disgust at human vileness with his equally instinctive pity for human frailty.
For the first time he perceived how elementary his own principles had always been. He passed for a young man who had not been afraid of risks, and he knew that his secret love-affair with poor silly Mrs. Thorley Rushworth had not been too secret to invest him with a becoming air of adventure. (ch. 11, p. 68)
But in reality travelling interested her even less than he had expected. She regarded it (once her clothes were ordered) as merely an enlarged opportunity for walking, riding, swimming, and trying her hand at the fascinating new game of lawn tennis; and when they finally got back to London (where they were to spend a fortnight while he ordered his clothes) she no longer concealed the eagerness with which she looked forward to sailing. (ch. 20, p. 136)
She [May] had spent her poetry and romance on their short courting: the function was exhausted because the need was past. Now she was simply ripening into a copy of her mother, and mysteriously, by the very process, trying to turn him a Mr Welland. (ch. 30, p. 207)
We have then an interesting reversal of values, where Ellen is certainly the most “innocent” character of all though she does not look like it at all, while May, who in apparence seems the most “innocent” may serve for Wharton as an extreme embodiment of the New York high society hypocrisy and cynical values. Unlike Archer and Ellen at the end, May cannot see the “real life” they see, and therefore cannot miss it as they did. From her point of view, I assume her marriage and her life wasn’t the failure that Archer felt it was.
To conclude then, TAOI shares with THOM the visual motif seemingly characteristic of Wharton, used to symbolize her characters’ (new) self-consciousness of the pettiness, and therefore the falseness, of the life they had lived. It is like they were blind to the shortcomings, vices of their society and can suddenly see it, and this new awareness is the catalyst of their interior turmoil, between continuing their life as they have lived it (yielding then to society), or changing it radically, to lead a new, “real life” in accordance to their inner being and aspirations. However, TAOI differs from THOM as it has a strong, poignant melancholic tone, which climaxes in its ending. Archer, ultimately, was able to see, or to have a sense of what a “real life” would be, but he did not get the courage to embrace it when he could have, reaching an old age filled with regrets over his “missed” life with Ellen.
P-S : I also particularly appreciate in TAOI Wharton's way to represent her characters' interactions, in particular how the silence, the unsaid things plays a strong part, and how they can communicate or misunderstand each other through what is not said. See Di's article on the subject here, and also her other insightful articles on the book from which I have drawn some inspiration. I also took some insights from Himadri's article here, regarding in particular the multiple meanings we can apply to the "innocence" word in the title, and for May's ambiguity.
P-S-S (20/08/2020) : Having now watched the film adaptation by Martin Scorsese (1993), I enjoyed how it was faithful to the tone of the novel. The characters' difficulties to communicate with each other are well rendered through the actors' play, never really looking at each other, and the frequent use of "Bergman shots". The sensual tone is visually perceptible with the warm colors, and the emphasis is rightly placed upon the hand motif, often filmed through many close-up shots. By contrast, May's scenes are dominated by the white color, associated with virginity and innocence from Archer's point of view.
