The Age of Innocence--Edith Wharton [7]
Wharton positions Newland Archer, Hamlet-like, in his inability to make good on his vision of himself. Why doesn’t he act? What prevents him from fulfilling his wishes? It’s not that Newland has never been part of an adulterous liaison. ‘‘There was nothing unknown or unfamiliar in the path he was presumably to tread,’’ Wharton reminds us, calling up the image of the discarded mistress of Newland’s earlier youth. So why is adultery different now? ‘‘[W]hen he had trodden it before it was as a free man, who was accountable to no one for his actions, and could lend himself with an amused detachment to the game of precautions and prevarications, concealments and compliances, that the part required.’’ Seeing the matter in a new light, ‘‘his part in it seemed singularly diminished. It was, in fact, that which, with a secret fatuity, he had watched Mrs. Thorley Rushworth play toward a fond and unperceiving husband: a smiling, bantering, humoring, watchful and incessant lie.’’
Newland is relieved of the responsibility of both the affair and its aftermath by his wife, May, who, by telling Ellen that she and Newland are expecting their first child, prevents Ellen from beginning an affair with Newland in earnest. Appearing to be innocent, May is instead ingenious; although she seems self-effacing and is often accused of being vague, May is more astute and insightful, not to mention determined and dangerous to his love for Ellen, than Newland imagines possible for a woman of her position. Wharton constructs a sexual economy presided over by women: Ellen and May decide between them who will end up with Newland—it’s not Newland and Beaufort deciding who will get Ellen, but Ellen and May deciding who will get Newland. It is perhaps May’s greatest achievement that she wins him, and it is perhaps the greatest favor she could possibly have done for Newland.
Newland’s inability to act on his desires will be more than problematic for both characters; with increasing frequency and emphasis as the novel progresses, we see that both acquiescence and refusal prove in some measure disastrous for all of those involved. Especially dangerousis the fact that he regards both women as creatures who do not act, but who are acted upon. This is a grave error on Newland’s part. Newland’s family name is Archer, but we recall that it is May who hits the bull’s-eye in the archery contest at Newport. Archer is, in effect, the target: It is the male character that functions at the center of a social and sexual exchange.
May has, throughout the novel, been a convenience for Newland, and not only because she keeps his household running. She becomes the screen onto which he projects all of his own petty concerns and narrow beliefs: She is the repository for all he wishes to discard from his own personality but which he nevertheless needs to cling to. She becomes his nicer self, his better half— better insofar as she assumes all the responsibility for convention and so he can do all the radical stuff himself. Onto Ellen, Newland projects his desire for the exotic; onto May, he projects his need for the domestic. It’s not that these two women are really that far apart, but Newland needs to see them as diametrically opposed; they represent his own conflicted desires. Both want the same thing: to be accepted into society, to feel safe, and to have Newland as the central male figure in their sexual and romantic lives.
The Age of Innocence does not take place in the garden of Eden; Wharton’s treatment of a lost world does not make us mourn the passing of the days when those who considered overthrowing convention were reminded, by way of warning, that they were not creatures of free will but rather held ‘‘prisoner in the center of an armed camp.’’ The guards use as their artillery protocol and precedence. Innocence does not ensure emotional safety any more than marriage ensures a match between equals; the innocent figure can, in the long run, be dangerous