The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (1920)

A member of the New York aristocracy marries one woman but loves another.

Classics Review: The Age of Innocence won the Pulitzer Prize for literature in 1921 for Edith Wharton (1862-1937), which seems odd as somehow I don't think of classics as winning literary prizes. Set in the 1870s (Middlemarch is a new book), I also realized that I know little of American history and society between 1870 and 1920. The Age of Innocence reminded me of one of those science fiction novels in which the author creates and describes an alien civilization, its customs and lifestyle, in a way that is credible and comprehensible. Wharton's New York City aristocracy is strange but believable and intricately described. The society is conformist to an extreme degree. "He had long given up trying to disengage her real self from the shape into which tradition and training had molded her." One is allowed to see art but not to live it for fear of embarrassing or shaming the family. Where one does what everyone else believes to be correct. "There were moments when he felt as if he were being buried alive under his future." The story of someone who can appreciate poetry but cannot write it. Wharton presents a host of intriguing and sometimes diabolical characters. All is told with a gentle humor that can still bite, ironic and sardonic, but with heart above all. The author realizes that selfishly hurting someone kind or innocent is no virtue, and she still finds romance in a world where love doesn't come first. Wharton lets us see this complex, foreign society clearly. We understand it even as it seems frightening. She manages to build the tension unbearably, making us fear any act that will shatter this alien world, making us care about something that we don't believe should even exist. The Age of Innocence is a rich, immediate and propulsive book. A tale of the insular, blueblood wealthy, precisely the book that any democrat should abhor, but somehow Wharton makes us see that they're still people despite their pedigree of flaws. Written immediately after the First World War there are underton

es of the changes from that time -- which might make a good college thesis. At one point a male character says, "Women ought to be as free as we are." Although set shortly after the American Civil War, that conflict is never mentioned. Also a 1993 film with Michelle Pfeiffer, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Winona Ryder, directed by Martin Scorsese.  [5★]