Appearances can be deceiving as this superb classic novel reveals...Newland Archer has the perfect life rich young and good looking, a member in excellent standing of New York's High Society of 1871 during the Golden Age. These people feel not like prisoners, but brave members of a group keeping back the barbarians at the gate. Newland is engaged to a beautiful charming girl May Welland also in the exclusive association, who loves him. But then her mysterious cousin arrives from Europe, Countess Ellen Olenska married to a brute a Polish nobleman who repeatedly degrades her, showing contempt for their marriage by parading lowly women in front of the Countess. Not trying to hide his transgressions, letting the world know it. The fleeing woman is a childhood playmate of Mr. Archer, and he can still remember her as she, he. First seeing the fugitive again at the Opera, with his future bride and family in their box. May loves her cousin and Ellen, loves May... The Countess causes quite a stir with the audience, men look approvingly at the attractive lady, women more critical. Poor Ellen as the relatives call her, living with an unconventional grandmother Mrs. Manson Mingott so obese she needs help to get up, nevertheless the lady is the head of the family and people listen to, even though she has strange ways then again very rich but... stingy. There is an unstated powerful attraction between Archer and Ellen, still duty prevents anything unsavory from happening besides Newland, believes in the proper way of doing things. A self described dilettante who goes through the motions of being a lawyer, in an office where he has little to do. Archer lives with his widowed mother Mrs. Adeline Archer, she is forever saying that everything is changing for the worse in the city and spinster sister Janey, they look so alike the two could be sisters, both depend on each other for companionship. He's a secret fanatic a bookworm receiving the latest editions from London, staying in a room reading that's when the gentleman is happy. Mr. Archer has no close friends the only person he can feel comfortable with, be himself is Ned Winsett a penniless struggling journalist, but of the lower class with a sick wife. Newland wants his wedding to happen earlier than is the established custom, hoping temptations will end if he is married to May. Even traveling to St.Augustine, Florida, on a surprise visit, where May is vacationing with her family for that purpose, his boss is not elated. Mr. Archer is wrong , clearly the gentleman loves the Countess and she returns the sentiment. Boorish banker Julius Beaufort vastly wealthy, an uncouth foreigner ( married to an influential and quite proper lady a New
York society woman) with a propensity to break all the rules, is chasing the skittish Ellen she needs to get away. They meet clandestinely in Boston the Countess and Archer; away from the prying eyes of everyone, the two hope just to hold each other... At a family gathering in Newport, Rhode Island, Newland is told to fetch Ellen, he goes down to the beach sees her on the pier, passionately stares for a long time and retreats back to the house, it would not be proper he thinks. An elegy saturates the whole book, from the first page to the last.

رواية كلاسيكية هادئة ذات دراما رومانسية كئيبة محببة للنفس، تليق بليالي الشتاء الباردة كروحٍ لم تذق من طعم الحب سوى مرارة فراق الحبيب الأول والأخير، الحبيب الذي إن فات أوان التمسك به صار كابوسًا يؤرق ليالي لا تمرّ، جرحًا لا يندمل، وسرابًا لا تصل إليه مهما ركضت طوال عمرك. رواية ما أن تهمّ في الحديث عن تفاصيلها حتى تستسخف كلامك، لأنك ستقلل منها حتمًا، ورغمًا عنك سيبدو كلامك معبرًا عن تقليديتها لا أكثر، فهي ببساطة رواية تقليدية بالفعل، لكنها تقدم مثالًا حيًا ونابضًا بالحب والألم عن كيف تصنع من العادي شيء غيرعادي، ساحر واستثنائي، لا يشعر به إلا من عاشه بقلبه، ولا يتقن الحديث عنه أفضل من الساحر نفسه.

تمت

4.5

“You're so shy, and yet you're so public. I always feel as if I were in the convent again—or on the stage, before a dreadfully polite audience that never applauds.”

Gracious God, what a masterpiece.

I know that this novel has been played often by Takarazuka Ballet,the all-female Japanese musical theater troupe,so it must be more of a sugary,insipid typical love triangle.Yes,it is a love story,but it is much more than that.

The main plot is a tragic love story,but with the conflict of values and ethics in life and society.I'd say this is the strong and beautiful point of this classic.Through the culture clash between Europe and America (here I mean New York),and the rise and fall of the then old families,the charcters are forced to adjust and readjust to their changing life,stick to the old values or must accept new ones.How painful the process and how dreadful the fate must be!
Most values depicted here are almost universal,and can apply in modern times,so thier decisions are all the more touching.

This great work is a modern bittersweet story at the mercy of ethics and morals we share today and different times.

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n  “I mean: how shall I explain? I—it’s always so. Each time you happen to me all over again.”n

A few months ago I read Edith Wharton's novella, Summer. Although I thought its obliqueness to be rather fascinating, I was frustrated by its relatively short length, and thought that the characters would have benefitted from having some more depth. The Age of Innocence, by comparison, is a much more detailed story, one that focused on a cast of interesting characters, who regardless of their likability, struck me as incredibly realistic. Through their words, mannerism, and motivations, Wharton makes her characters into fully formed individuals.

Newland Archer is one of the novel's central figures. Archer is a gentleman lawyer who will soon announce his favourable marriage to the young May Welland. All is seemingly well until May's cousin returns to America to escape from an inauspicious marriage to a Polish Count. Rumours and gossip abound, and to begin with Archer is merely vexed by the attention that his social circle seems to paying to her. Yet, he soon becomes intrigued by the way in which Countess Ellen Olenska seems either oblivious or uncaring of the rules of civility that dictated New York during the 1870s.

For the majority of the narrative Newland Archer and Countess Ellen Olenska exhibit great restraint over their attraction and romantic feelings for one another. Their relationship is one that is punctuated by periods of tenderness, broodiness, fascination, and abnegation. There are stretches of time in which they hardly see one another, and yet they remain quietly devoted to the other.
Archer, through the tumultuous passion he harbours towards Countess Olenska, seeks to escape, if not transcend, from the artificiality and limitations he perceives within his society. Countess Olenska becomes his objet petit a, that is an unattainable object of desire, who he desperately longs for perhaps because he knows that a future with her would be impossible. It is the very act of longing for her that allows him to envision a future free of all that he finds wanting in May Welland his actual fiancee.

It is the very forbidden nature of his feelings for Countess Olenska that seems to inflame his passion for her. He assigns to her the role of ‘beloved other’, regarding their ‘affair’ as an inescapable outcome of their ‘true love’.
Alienated by the majority of her relatives, regarded as 'other', Countess Olenska is lonely and unhappy. I admired both her strengths and her weaknesses, and found her to be on of the few characters to actually have dignity. Even in America, in other continent from the Count, she seems unable to escape from the shadow of their unhappy marriage. In Archer she finds an ally of sorts, yet, her experiences prevent her from falling into old patterns.
Archer, on the other hand, attempts to escape from the strictures imposed on him by his family, acquaintances, and New York’s ‘polite’ society, by engaging in an illicit affair which if made public would likely ruin his reputation and career. In his feelings for Countess Olenska, Archer experiences a romantic love untethered by concepts of duty and tradition; while his engagement with May is dictated by notions of propriety and decorum, Archer believes that his relationship with Countess Olenska is unaffected by the social constraints and rituals that otherwise mar his existence.
Archer’s interactions with Countess Olenska provide him with a taste of freedom: while his conversations with the naive and sheltered May are interspersed with platitudes and empty phrases, Archer’s exchanges with Countess Olenska—even when consisting of a couple of words—seem to carry depths of meaning. Her language, as well as her very glances and expressions, are loaded with ‘real’ emotions, emotions which Archer believes to be absent in May. His fiancee's personality seems to him a blank slate, one that he ought to fill.

In spite of his dishonesty readers will find it difficult to condemn or judge Archer. Tired of the formulaic dynamics of his world, burdened by ennui and disenchantment, Archer feels truly awake and alive when he is in the proximity of Countess Olenska. He grows jealous of men such as Julius Beaufort and often makes unfavourable comparison between Countess and May.
The difficulties Archer and the Countess experience are often a result of their own preoccupation with one another. They always perceive something or someone to be in the way of a possible future together (May, Count Olenski, the Mingotts, the scandal itself).
As the narrative progresses we begin to see that Archer’s impression of the falsehoods within his society and of other people’s character may not be as clear-cut as he thinks. For example, Archer believes that May’s ‘ingenuousness almost amounted to a gift of divination’. Her later actions however suggests that her ‘intuitions’ may be more deliberate than accidental.
The novel examines the way in which desire and happiness are obstructed and influenced by social conventions and notions of duty (what Archer wants for himself vs. what society wants for Archer). Yet, Wharton doesn’t suggest that a union between Archer and Countess Olenska would have a harmonious outcome.
It is the very fact that their romance is ‘doomed’, weighed down by denial, guilt, and regret, that makes it all the more ‘sublime’, it is the pain that accompanies their unfulfilled love makes it all the more vivid.
While Archer’s relationship to May seems to consist of perfunctory speeches (ones which, much to Archer’s displeasure, echo those between May’s own parents), his interactions with Countess Olenska are often ‘clandestine’, which is why they leave such a lasting impression on him. If urgency and secrecy no longer enveloped their meetings, would Archer feel the same passion for the Countess?
In one of the very first pages we are told that Archer was “at heart a dilettante, and thinking over a pleasure to come often gave him a subtler satisfaction than its realisation”. Paradoxically, Archer draws more pleasure from the act of yearning, for something or someone, than from having or experiencing that which he yearns for. In other words, the idea of a future union with the Countess seems to Archer better than an actual union with her. This deferral of his own satisfaction brings about a painful sort of happiness—what could be described as jouissance, that is a ‘backhanded enjoyment’—as it is the very act of longing for the Countess that enables him to entertain the idea that a true and meaningful union can be possible. However, later on in the narrative, Archer seems to want to break free from this self-sabotaging (that is of finding fulfilment in the perpetuation of his non-fulfilment).
The narrative, and the characters themselves, seems to have a certain foreknowledge regarding the outcome of this affair. Still, even if we know what their romance will lead to, we still feel invested in their relationship and it is up to the reader to decided whether Archer and the Countess are victims of their time and circumstances or whether they are the ones responsible for their own misfortune.

Wharton's rendition of 1870s New York is a strikingly nostalgic one. Yet, in spite of the wistful tone the narrative has towards this Gilded Age, Archer’s story critiques the way in which the customs of his time perpetuated this ideal of a ‘pure’ bride, one whose innocence was, if not performed, carefully fabricated by those around her.

n  “Untrained human nature was not frank and innocent; it was full of the twists and defences of an instinctive guile. And he felt himself oppressed by this creation of factitious purity, so cunningly manufactured by a conspiracy of mothers and aunts and grandmothers and long-dead ancestresses, because it was supposed to be what he wanted, what he had a right to, in order that he might exercise his lordly pleasure in smashing it like an image made of snow.”n

Wharton’s commentary on class and gender emphasised the way in which individuals were restricted by the time’s social norms. The story also presents us with a compelling interplay of duty and desire, of hope and dissatisfaction, and of passion and indifference. The contrast between American and European values seems to be embodied by the two women in Archer’s life: May (as the American ideal) and Countess Olenska (as the worldly, if not ‘exotic’, European).

While there are countless of literary works featuring alienated heroes and ill-fated lovers, The Age of Innocence can offer its readers with a particularly piercing narrative that is written in Wharton’s carefully elaborated prose. Her elegant writing style perfectly lends itself to the ironic and serious tones of her story. The very words Wharton chooses seem to possess a contemplative quality that capture with painful clarity Archer’s feelings for the Countess.
This was an incredibly poignant novel that I will definitely be revisiting again (my heart has to recover first).

“Each time you happen to me all over again.”

Imagine that person you love most in this world, right within your grasp, but somehow out of reach. An invisible thin wall keeping you apart. Apart but not away from each other. Together yet not with each other. This is the worst form of torture, a torture of invisible chains and soundless screams. Constantly seeing each other, constantly being reminded of what cannot be. Constantly falling in love yet constantly falling apart. The urge, the love, the longing constantly growing, engulfing you until you cannot bear to live. Every part of your body numb and unaware of the realities around you. Because for you, only the pain you feel is real. The only truth you know is that everything is a lie.

Edith Wharton paints a very delicate picture that resonates elegiac waves and enraptures its readers to the very bone. One can't help but succumb to this level of desire, of emotion and empathize because of the atmosphere that Wharton has created. Her prose is crisp, straight and true. One might say that her prose is a reflection of her New York socialite self. (Wharton was born with quite a few gazillion silver spoons stuck somewhere on her buttocks.) Aside from that, with such a dazzling foray of words, she evoked such emotion in me that I was afraid I might like her Facebook page at some point. So with that in mind, I vowed to refrain from using Facebook until I've finished reading this book. Well, it worked fine for me. On another note, I was really impressed with her depiction of the 1870s New York. Based on a little research I did, her canvas of the place was just spot on splendid.

"It was the spirit of it -- the spirit of the exquisite romantic pain. The idea that the mere touching of a woman's hand would suffice. The idea that seeing her across the room would keep him alive for another year."

That sort of a relationship, that unique communication between two people savagely drawn to the other like moth to a flame is of a different level than all the other types of communication. This communication between them is that of the deepest kind. A communication that needs not one of the five senses. This communication of feeling, of intense knowing, of mutual understanding, this unity of the mind, this shared consciousness is the effect of a love that knows no bounds, strengthened to an insane proportion by the fact that it was never meant to be.

“The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend!”

"What's the use? You gave me my glimpse of a real life, and at the same moment you asked me to go on with a sham one."

But what really struck me the most was that irony that these two people enlightened to be different from the “pretend people”, who revile them and mockingly laugh at their trained innocence and hapless practices were to be subjected to a pretend relationship as well. “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.” They that were above that “Innocence” were cruelly placed upon a circumstance in which they have to feign Innocence as well, as the only way to sustain their love for each other. “I can't love you unless I give you up.” This has led me to believe that such innocence can only be a result of circumstances beyond their powers. That altogether this Innocence is merely through the progression of unstoppable forces not necessarily known to the person it affects. Such is also the case with the New York Society. These people did not choose to succumb to this veiled innocence, it was mercilessly hurled at them. They were raised in these circumstances, in a society where conformity is the norm and to question this conformity would be self-abdication. Thus, these people will die by this code.

This Age of Innocence reflects a view in which Newland Archer is also an innocent victim. He thinks his wife too much of an “innocent being” that he is surprised in the end and utterly moved when he finds out that she is not so innocent at all. And the lifting of this veil seemed a wake–up call to him at the very end, when he was about to meet the Countess Olenska with his son, that he realizes that he has lost this innocence. She had become the symbol of everything that could have been, all his hopes and dreams. She was the unreachable star. In the end, he was afraid that all that sustained his love was that invisible shackle, that sense of longing, that feigned innocence. And that the innocence was all that kept him to Ellen, and without it, he cannot bear to face her.

"And you'll sit beside me, and we'll look, not at visions, but at realities."

"I don't know what you mean by realities. The only reality to me is this."

The dream has become a reality and the reality a dream.

"'It's more real to me here than if I went up,' he suddenly heard himself say; and the fear lest that last shadow of reality should lose its edge kept him rooted to his seat as the minutes succeeded each other."

Perfection. But not quite as perfect as House of Mirth.

Oh, that ending! I won't forget that very soon.

It's been years since I saw the movie but Michelle Pfeiffer and Daniel Day Lewis were the images in mind while listening to this novel. Ditto the last scene with DDL/Archer on the bench outside of Madame Olenska's house not daring to go up. One of the best and saddest endings I've ever read.

I listened to the audio book narrated to perfection by David Horowitz.

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton is a classic masterpiece. I have listened to it on Audible narrated by Maureen Howard.
The age of Innocence is a story about 1920 s high society life. A man that already is engaged to a young and beautiful lady May. Everything is quite well for the young couple until mysterious Countess Olenska who happens to be who is a cousin to May.
Later the plot is about how two love birds count every single meeting that used to bring joy and a butterfly in the stomach and with time everything has changed but love stayed.

Edith Wharton won the 3rd Pulitzer prize (and is thus the first woman winner) for this wonderful story of life in post-Civil War New York City, during the Golden Age. We are in the middle of a love triangle in which Newland is trying to decide between boring propriety with his fiancé/bride May or torrid adventure with the Comtess Olinsky. Sometimes the melodrama was distracting from the more interesting descriptions of this old pre-industrial New York which I really appreciated.

My rating of all the Pulitzer Winners: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...

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بی‌نظیر!

[editado em 4.3.2024 para revisão ortográfica]

A Idade da Inocência, The age of Innocence, é o nome de uma pintura do final do século XVIII do artista britânico Sir Joshua Reynolds https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/...
E foi esse o título que Edith Wharton ironicamente elegeu para retratar a alta sociedade de Nova Iorque no último terço do século XIX, uma tribo que vivia num mundo fechado alheio a mudanças, numa hipocrisia e superficialidade tacitamente aceites pelos seus membros, que receavam mais o escândalo do que a doença; de acordo com o velho código juntavam-se numa corrida tribal elegante, total e cordialmente cúmplice, resolutamente determinados a fingir uns aos outros que de nada suspeitavam numa dissimulação mútua.
Newland Archer, advogado e de família tradicional, que, apesar de se considerar de ideias cosmopolitas agradece aos céus ser nova-iorquino e estar prestes a casar com alguém da sua espécie, May Welland:
«Archer tinha voltado a todas as suas ideias herdadas sobre o casamento. Dava menos trabalho aceitar a tradição (...) Não valia a pena tentar emancipar uma esposa que não tinha a menor noção de que não era livre.»

Mas eis que aparece a condessa Ellen Olenska, prima da sua noiva, e separada de um conde europeu, uma mulher diferente de todas, por quem Archer se apaixona.
Ellen habituada à Europa de costumes liberais tinha a generosidade negligente e a extravagância das pessoas habituadas a grandes fortunas e indiferentes ao dinheiro e podia passar sem muitas coisas que a família considerava indispensáveis, torna-se um alvo a abater, ou seja, ser eliminada da tribo.
Inteligentemente, Edith Wharton usa a perspectiva de Archer e a de um narrador opinativo permitindo assim uma crítica feroz a essa sociedade, nomeadamente ao papel da mulher visto como inferior.

Conseguirá Archer rebelar-se contra o dever que lhe exigiam ou não passará de um vencido da vida incapaz de contrariar o seu destino? Inocentes – uso a palavra num tom irónico – daqueles que pensam que as suas verdades têm um valor mais importante do que as do mundo fora da sua tribo.

«Agora ao rever o passado, viu em que sulco profundo tinha mergulhado. O pior de cumprir um dever é que aparentemente não dava para fazer mais nada. Pelo menos era a opinião que os homens da sua geração tinham. As divisões constantes entre o certo e o errado, honesto e desonesto, o respeitável e o reverso, tinham deixado pouco espaço para o imprevisível.»

« - Mas eu só tenho 57 anos – e depois afastou-se. Para esses sonhos de Verão era demasiado tarde, mas não para uma colheita calma de amizade, de camaradagem na tranquilidade serena da proximidade.»

Em minha opinião, a autora tem algumas semelhanças com Henry James, mas a língua mais afiada.

Εναλλακτικοί τίτλοι για αυτό το βιβλίο θα μπορούσαν να είναι:
"Τα χρόνια της πλήξης"
"Ο ορισμός του Φλώρου σε 424 σελίδες"
"Ωδή στη Κρυοκωλίαση"

Αξιοπρεπής γραφή αλλά το περιεχόμενο είναι α-νυ-πό-φο-ρο! Γι' αυτό και η βαθμολογία μου ίσως είναι άδικη. Οι μακροσκελείς περιγράφες των menú αριστοκρατικών γευμάτων, οι φλύαρες λεπτομέρειες για κάθε λογής διακοσμητικό αντικείμενο, οι αναλύσεις της αρχιτεκτονικής άποψης ιδιωτικών κτισμάτων και οι κριτικές ενδυματολογικών επιλογών μα κυρίως η μόνιμη μετάφραση όλων αυτών σε πόντους κοινωνικής καταξίωσης, οδήγησαν το νευρικό μου σύστημα στα άκρα. Σε αυτό συνέβαλε και ο κεντρικός ήρωας, τον οποίο θα χαρακτηρίσω επιεικώς βλάκα, με τη διάθεση του και τη κοσμοθεωρία του να αλλάζουν από παράγραφο σε παράγραφο χωρίς πειστικά αίτια.
Λάθος μου να το διαβάσω από πείσμα με το σκεπτικό ότι είναι ένα πολύ εύκολο βιβλίο, και όταν το κατάλαβα ήταν πλέον αργά, είχα προχωρήσει πολύ. Το μόνο του ενδιαφέρον κατ'εμέ είναι η σκιαγράφηση της κοινωνίας εκείνης της εποχής, καθώς και η επαναδιαπίστωση του βαθμού ηλιθιότητας που μας προκαλούν καταπιεστικές κοινωνικές κατασκευές υποκρισίας τις οποίες εμείς οι ίδιοι δημιουργούμε, υπηρετούμε και συντηρούμε, δίνοντας τους απλώς άλλες μορφές στο πέρασμα των χρόνων. ❣