The Age of Innocence--Edith Wharton [6]
Yet it is to her credit that Ellen, as manifested in her reluctance to forfeit the lessons she has suffered to learn, is one of the few characters to show original thought; she is one of the few women to defend her beliefs even as she declares herself willing to submit to the social script. She is the puzzle society must solve, and the white-waistcoated men are particularly eager to figure out the appropriate configuration. Their female counterparts, however, are less eager to come to Ellen’s aid.
Her grandmother, Mrs. Manson Mingott, is the only woman representing an earlier generation who merits relatively unmitigated admiration. Mrs. Mingott, however, is more of a disembodied, archetypal fairy-godmother figure than a developed character. It is significant that she has a great deal of genuine affection for Ellen, and that she recognizes something of herself in the younger woman. She resolves to rescue Ellen from the ill-natured raillery of those who would judge her harshly, in part because Mrs. Mingott can herself encompass, like Ellen, both understanding and rejection of society’s rituals and ceremonies. With her age and her social stature (and sheer physical presence) Mrs. Mingott can say what others are forced to disguise. Only Mrs. Mingott, for example, can articulate the secret hidden but known by all: that Newland and Ellen should be together. ‘‘It’s a pity she didn’t marry you; I always told her so,’’ she laughingly but ‘‘querulously’’ tells Newland. ‘‘It would have spared me all this worry.’’
Yet the reason that Newland and Ellen cannot make a life for themselves has much more to do with their characters than their circumstances. It is not really May that keeps them apart, and it is this complexity of analysis that makes The Age of Innocence more than the mere portrait of an age. In fact, Wharton gives us in The Age of Innocence her ‘‘Portrait of a Gentleman’’ in much the same way that Henry James had given us, in 1881, his Portrait of a Lady. Both novels revolve around young Americans who, miserably married, long for what they believe are the emotional comforts of another life. James’s Isabel Archer, with her reluctance to abandon her commitments no matter how meaningless their significance, could be an older sister to Wharton’s Newland Archer, with his unaccountable loyalty to a world where ‘‘a dull association of material and social interests [were] held together by ignorance on the one side and hypocrisy on the other.’’ Where James’s Isabel Archer marries a man who viciously ignores her, Wharton’s Newland Archer marries a woman he viciously ignores. Why don’t they leave these unhappy unions? Isabel Archer comments to a friend who suggests that she extricate herself from her bleak relationship with husband Gilbert Osmond: ‘‘I’m extremely struck . . . with the off-hand way in which you speak of a woman’s leaving her husband. It’s easy to see you’ve never had one!’’ Newland Archer, although apparently wishing to extricate himself from the suffocation of his marriage, nevertheless makes a similar choice in remaining with his wife, May.
Wharton identifies the seductions of ease, of habit, of stasis as the real dynamic behind Archer’s inability to leave and make a life for himself with his adored Countess Olenska. Unlike Ellen, Newland does not have within him the strength to defy the social system. It is not his integrity that prevents him from making a life with Ellen; it is his weakness. ‘‘Archer had reverted to all his old inherited ideas about marriage. It was less trouble to conform with the tradition and treat May exactly as all his friends treated their wives. . . .’’ Wharton’s treatment of Newland’s passion is less than respectful, focusing to a great extent on his reluctance to consummate his desire for Ellen. ‘‘He had fancied himself not only nerved for this plunge but eager to take it,’’ the narrator notes, adding, ‘‘Yet his first feeling on hearing that the course of events was changed had been one of relief.’’ Later on we learn that ‘‘for a man sick with unsatisfied love, and parting