Grizzly @ Adams

American Lit II: Talk about family values — here’s Edith Wharton, in The Age of Innocence, on the farewell dinner Newland and May host for Ellen Olenska: “There were certain things that had to be done, and if done at all, done handsomely and thoroughly; and one of these, in the old New York code, was the tribal rally around a kinswoman about to be eliminated from the tribe.” At this point, Newland doesn’t know the half of it.

But as the evening wears on he’s sure going to find out! Chapter 33 is dedicated to his gradual awakening to a number of unpleasant facts, among them just how completely he has underestimated his wife. And the reader, perhaps, begins to understand just how hard society makes it for one to be a truly free individual, even if one does happen to be a wealthy white male aristocrat living in the Sweet Land of Liberty.

By chapter’s end Newland will know that his family, conspiring to save May’s marriage by exiling that troublemaking countess, Ellen, has played him like a chump. The final image, before the novel fast-forwards 26 years, is of Newland looking up at May “with a sick stare” of realization while May looks down at him with “blue eyes wet with victory.”

Game over. Society 1, Individual 0.

As Newland sits down to dinner that evening he is aware that he is engaged in a “deadly silent game,” but at first he believes “the trumps were still in his hands.” What a dope! Why would he think such a thing? Because he’s the man of the house? You can easily imagine Wharton at her typewriter, tapping out this chapter and snickering about the way men think they’re in charge.

A few pages later, Wharton allows the light to begin to dawn over the benighted landscape of Newland’s understanding:

As his glance travelled from one placid well-fed face to another he saw all the harmless-looking people engaged upon May’s canvas-backs as a band of dumb conspirators…. He guessed himself to have been, for months, the centre of countless silently observing eyes and patiently listening ears; he understood that, by means as yet unknown to him, the separation between himself and the partner of his guilt had been achieved, and that now the whole tribe had rallied about his wife on the tacit assumption that nobody knew anything…. Archer felt like a prisoner in the centre of an armed camp.

Newland winds up disillusioned, trapped, forever dispossessed of his One True Love, and with his “inner devils” laughing at him. As May says, “It did go off beautifully, didn’t it?” Wharton’s humor is subtle, but it’s wicked.

Your assignment today is to compare and contrast The Age of Innocence and O Pioneers! Let’s see how many similarities we can find, and how many differences. (Don’t neglect the obvious — e.g., they’re both novels.) Bonus points if you indicate which novel you think is better and explain why.

P.S. The scene in Martin Scorsese’s film adaptation of The Age of Innocence where May triumphs over Newland is so nice we had to watch it twice. If you’d like to watch it a third time, you’ll find it here.