A Hieroglyphic World

The Age of Innocence 

by Edith Wharton

“In reality they all lived in 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.”   ― Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence




The Age of Innocence is the twelfth novel published by Edith Wharton, winning for her the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for Literature. The story is set in upper-class New York City in the 1870s. It centers on the impending marriage of an upper-class couple, Newland Archer and May Welland. And the introduction of a woman, Ellen Olenska, plagued by scandal whose presence threatens their happiness. Though the novel questions the assumptions and morals of 1870s' New York society, it never devolves into an outright condemnation of the institution. In fact, Wharton considered this novel an "apology" for her earlier, more brutal and critical novel, The House of Mirth.

Apology it may be, but it still has biting passages and moments of silent despair for the primary characters of Newland and Ellen. And there is the sacrifice of artistic, romantic impulses for family duty and societal respectability. Newland Archer, a young lawyer from one of New York's best families, thinks he is in love with the exotic Countess Ellen Olenska and even entertains the thought of leaving his wife for her, but when he learns that his wife May is pregnant, he abandons all hope of love and happiness and decides to stay with May.

The difficulty of genuine human communication in the upper strata of society is an important theme in the Archer plot. 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." Most of the important personal communications between Archer and his wife are left unsaid. Many times Archer imagines what she is saying to him (or more complicated yet what she thinks he is saying to her), but of course Archer may be reading the hieroglyphics wrong. Because so little that is felt is actually expressed, Archer at times appears to be having an internal dialogue with himself.

Wharton's attention to the mores of the upper class includes details based on her own experience. But her insights into the psychology of the characters, especially Newland and Ellen as noted above, were what I found most interesting. The regrets of an aging man for what might have been have seldom been limned as well as in Miss Wharton's story.

Critics praised her novel The Age of Innocence most highly among all her works. Set in New York of the 1870s, it displays the sometimes rigid customs of New York’s wealthy elite and the difficulties that its members sometimes have in departing from these customs in order to pursue desire that is outside their bounds. It was lauded for its accurate portrayal of how the 19th-century East Coast American upper class lived, and this, combined with the social tragedy, earned Wharton a Pulitzer Prize — the first Pulitzer awarded to a woman. Edith Wharton was 58 years old at publication; she lived in that world, and saw it change dramatically by the end of World War I. The title may be read as an ironic comment on the polished outward manners of New York society, when compared to its inward machinations. This is the best of her novels in my estimation, although the bittersweet The House of Mirth is my personal favorite.

Two Favorite Novels

The House of Mirth 
by Edith Wharton


“She was so evidently the victim of the civilization which had produced her, that the links of her bracelet seemed like manacles chaining her to her fate.”   ― Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth


Today is the anniversary of the birth of  Edith Wharton,  a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer.   Wharton combined her insider's view of America's privileged classes with a brilliant, natural wit to write incisive novels and short stories of social and psychological insight. 

She wrote in a style called social realism. Writers associated with social realism range from Mark Twain to Henry James, from William Dean Howells to Sinclair Lewis. Literary realism, like all styles of literature arose out of a social moment, a historical context, and its proponents rarely agreed on what constituted realism. William Dean Howells was influential because as an editor he wanted his colleagues to write of the "smiling aspects of life". This was not the approach of Edith Wharton in The House of Mirth which, although it is realistic in its depiction of society, it is closer to tragedy than comedy. While not as naturalistic as the novels of Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, or Frank Norris she is not willing to gloss over the dark side of the life of the elite. Wharton's closest ally among the realists was Henry James. There is a famous story of literary collaboration and advice here as with many writers. When Henry James read Wharton’s novel The Valley of Indecision, he wrote to her his praise of it, but then wandered around with his characteristically wandering prose to get to the point that she should confine herself in her subject matter to New York. He wrote, "Do New York! The first-hand account is precious." She did so for the most part with great success for the rest of her career.

The House of Mirth is usually viewed as a novel of New York society manners, which it is. The heroine is Lily Bart, an impoverished socialite, who lives off a small inheritance and her Aunt Julia’s generosity. She travels with the elite of New York society by being charming and beautiful; something she finds increasingly more difficult the older she gets. But the novel is also an example of a modern, secular vision of alienation in which Lily Bart faces an inability to reconcile her nature with the world around her.
"A world in which such things could be seemed a miserable place to Lily Bart but then she had never been able to understand the laws of a universe which was so ready to leave her out of its calculation."(p 271)

For Lily the tension increases until it becomes too great to manage. She does not realize that the elite crowd are not her friends. Her downfall lies in some poor choices and a misunderstanding of her situation. In spite of her difficulty in understanding the world around her I find Lily a sympathetic heroine. Her missed opportunities remind me of Philip Carey in Maugham's Of Human Bondage who seemed to always disappoint in his choices. The classical beauty of Wharton's prose which resembles that of her friend, Henry James, with fewer recondite patches, makes this book appealing to read. One of her better novels, I would recommend this to readers who enjoy Howells and James.

The Age of Innocence 
by Edith Wharton


“In reality they all lived in 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.”   ― Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence


The Age of Innocence is the twelfth novel published by Edith Wharton, winning for her the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for Literature. The story is set in upper-class New York City in the 1870s. It centers on the impending marriage of an upper-class couple, Newland Archer and May Welland. And the introduction of a woman, Ellen Olenska, plagued by scandal whose presence threatens their happiness. Though the novel questions the assumptions and morals of 1870s' New York society, it never devolves into an outright condemnation of the institution. In fact, Wharton considered this novel an "apology" for her earlier, more brutal and critical novel, The House of Mirth. Wharton's attention to the mores of the upper class includes details based on her own experience. But her insights into the psychology of the characters, especially Newland and Ellen were what I found most interesting. The regrets of an aging man for what might have been have seldom been limned as well as in Miss Wharton's story.

Critics praised her novel The Age of Innocence most highly among all her works. Set in New York of the 1870s, it displays the sometimes rigid customs of New York’s wealthy elite and the difficulties that its members sometimes have in departing from these customs in order to pursue desire that is outside their bounds. It was lauded for its accurate portrayal of how the 19th-century East Coast American upper class lived, and this, combined with the social tragedy, earned Wharton a Pulitzer Prize — the first Pulitzer awarded to a woman. Edith Wharton was 58 years old at publication; she lived in that world, and saw it change dramatically by the end of World War I. The title may be read as an ironic comment on the polished outward manners of New York society, when compared to its inward machinations. This is the best of her novels in my estimation, although the bittersweet The House of Mirth is my personal favorite.


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Music and Literature

Part One

Opera in Literature

“They played at hearts as other children might play at ball; only, as it was really their two hearts that they flung to and fro, they had to be very, very handy to catch them, each time, without hurting them.”   ― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

I have always loved music as well as literature.  These two art forms intersect in many ways, two of which I would like to discuss.  First is the presence of music in novels.  A notable example  can be found in the opening pages of Edith Wharton's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Age of Innocence.  This is heralded by the first sentence of the novel:
"On an January evening of the early seventies, Christine Nilson was singing in Faust at the Academy of Music in New York."  This setting is used to introduce the protagonist of the novel, Newland Archer, and provides the narrator with a way to highlight his dilettantism since "thinking over a pleasure to come often gave him a subtler satisfaction than its realization."   
Also important to the story is the Opera itself and the aria that is being sung which foreshadows themes that will be important as the novel develops.  It is this use of music, Gounod's opera in particular, that provides some of the depth of meaning for which, in this case, Edith Wharton is known.

This is merely one example of which many can be found.  Two of my favorite authors, Thomas Mann and Marcel Proust, use music effectively in their novels.   In Mann's case his novel Doctor Faustus is imbued with and depends upon the immersion in music and its effect on Adrian Leverkuhn.  One of Proust's many characters  from In Search of Lost Time is Vinteuil, a composer and violinist of note whose famous sonata takes on the importance of a character unto itself.


The Age of Innocence  is set in upper-class New York City in the 1870s.  It centers on the  impending marriage of an upper-class couple, Newland Archer and May Welland.  And the introduction of a woman, Ellen Olenska, plagued by scandal whose presence threatens their happiness. Though the novel questions the assumptions and morals of 1870s' New York society, it never devolves into an outright condemnation of the institution. In fact, Wharton considered this novel an "apology" for her earlier, more brutal and critical novel, The House of Mirth. Wharton's attention to the mores of the upper class includes details based on her own experience.  But her insights into the psychology of the characters, especial Newland and Ellen were what I found most interesting.  The attitudes of society towards Ellen and the regrets of an aging man for what might have been have seldom been limned as well as in Miss Wharton's story.   The novel was lauded for its accurate portrayal of how the 19th-century East Coast American upper class lived, and this, combined with the social tragedy, earned Wharton a Pulitzer Prize — the first Pulitzer awarded to a woman. Edith Wharton was 58 years old at publication; she lived in that world, and saw it change dramatically by the end of World War I. The title may be read as an ironic comment on the polished outward manners of New York society, when compared to its inward machinations.  This is the best of her novels in my estimation, although the bittersweet The House of Mirth is my personal favorite.

(To be continued)

New York Society

Old New York 
by Edith Wharton

“The idea that reading is a moral quality has unhappily led many conscientious persons to renounce their innocuous dalliance with light literature for more strenuous intercourse. These are the persons who "make it a rule to read.”  ― Edith Wharton

This is a collection of four stories centered on New York. It includes "False Dawn", "The Old Maid", "The Spark", and "New Year's Day". In "False Dawn" Wharton deplores the materialism and philistinism of the wealthy, dull people among whom she had grown up. "The Spark" is primarily a character sketch while "New Year's Day" is another critique of the insensitivity of Society. However, of the four novellas, my favorite is "The Old Maid". In it the beauty of Edith Wharton's writing is demonstrated as well as in any of her many novels and stories. The story chronicles the complex relationship between cousins who join together to hide the origins of an orphan. Not only the prose style, but the structure and the depiction of human relationships is exquisite. The entire collection which provides a good introduction to the work of Edith Wharton, is worth reading and rereading.

Old New York by Edith Wharton.  Scribners, 1995 (1924)

She Had Everything

The Custom of the Country 

by Edith Wharton

"she had everything she wanted, but she still felt, at times, that there were other things she might want if she knew about them." (The Custom of the Country, p 362)


Published in 1913, two years after Ethan Frome, but in gestation since 1907, The Custom of the Country is a novel that combines the tradition of the 'money' novel with Wharton's customary depiction of New York society and, in this case, also Parisian society. Undine Spragg is a beautiful, domineering, and spoiled young woman from somewhere in the Midwest who enters this society with the baggage of one divorce already behind her. Wharton's satirical prose envelopes Undine, her parents, and the New York social crowd, as Undine attempts to join it in her effort to get ahead. Never satisfied with her lot in life (sometimes anxious and always observant of those around her imagining what they expect from her), she is impatient and makes mistakes including marrying Ralph Marvell whose family is pedigreed but impecunious. Her attempts to live in a lifestyle which she considers worthy of her grand ambition quickly leads to difficulties that engulf the marriage. Her story continues with financial intrigue on the part of her first husband, who has also migrated to New York from the Midwest for greater financial opportunities. Undine in the meantime lives in Europe chasing after a Prince before settling on a marriage to Count Raymond de Chelles. However, her all-consuming greed leads to the end of that marriage; while further financial dealings bring vast wealth to Elmer Moffat, her first husband who has become more and more interesting to her throughout the story.

Undine is one of Edith Wharton's greatest creations, who resembles Thackeray's Becky Sharp, a heroine from an earlier age. With her reliance on men of questionable financial character and the increased rate of change in society in the new century Undine devastates the social landscape before her as its representatives are shown to have feet of clay. A theme that courses through each of Undine's unsuccessful marriages is the battle between the traditions of the old families -- Marvel, Van Degen, and de Chelles -- and the modern world to which Undine so desperately wants to belong:  "she merely felt the impossibility of breaking through the mysterious web of traditions, conventions, prohibitions that enclosed her in their impenetrable network." (p 316)

Through all of this she remains consistently unattractive and  I found myself unable to generate any sympathy for her character, unlike my experience reading about Wharton's other leading ladies (Lily Bart in The House of Mirth and Ellen Olenska in The Age of Innocence).  In its structure the novel covers new ground for Wharton with the introduction of a journalistic narrator, Mrs Heany, in the second half of the book. The result is a more modern novel than her other great works. The story ultimately is one of a self-made woman who, while lacking moral character, is able to create a world through her ability to use the people around her for her material advantage. The novel is one in which satire is omnipresent and the result is a brittle yet brilliant achievement.


The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton. The Modern Library, New York. 2001 (1913)



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