The Seasonal Reading Challenge discussion

This is the discussion thread for the Fall 2022 Group ReadThe Age of Innocence in the category Gutenberg Classic. Please post your comments here. This thread is not restricted to those choosing this book for task 20.10, feel free to join in the discussion. Warning- spoilers ahead!

The requirement for task 20.10: You must participate in the book's discussion thread below with at least one post about the contents of the book or your reaction to the book after you have read the book.

Andy P.
Here are my comments on the Age of Innocence
This book is the American version of a novel set in England during the Victorian era. An American woman during the late 19th century or Early 20th century really had her life planned for her. The consequences of not adhering to "the rules" were not anything I would have wished on an enemy, let alone myself. Though I look around myself today and am happy to be one of the old folks. It is interesting to see how people react to pressures society puts on various segments of the population both those who choose to follow the rules and those that will do almost anything to avoid following them.

Age of Innocence is a book where nothing really happens, as both main characters are paragons of rectitude, though their sordid-minded friends and family all assume the worse.

The clash of a woman looking for freedom with the strictures of New York society, and her eventual adherence to them even against her heart's preference was interesting, and I wish we'd had her view point rather than the rather annoying Newland Archer.

Cat wrote: "Age of Innocence is a book where nothing really happens, as both main characters are paragons of rectitude, though their sordid-minded friends and family all assume the worse."

I think I would agree that this is a book where nothing really happens! I found it very slow - to be honest it was a slog to get through it ... I think it's one of those books that would have been perceived very differently in the 1920s to the present day and one which would be completely different if we heard May's voice (and/or Ellens) as well as that of Newland Archer

Amy B

Ha, Newland Archer was assimilated into the Borg. Anyway, yeah, a book that on the surface feels like nothing happens because everyone is so repressed. Its almost hard to evaluate it from the point of view of 2022 given society is so different now, which is one of the points I think it tries to make in the last chapter, with the introduction of Newland's eldest son and his modern ideas. With the melancholy ending, I was torn between thinking that it was sad that Newland ended up being such a product of his environment and the frustrating feeling that he got what he deserved.

I found The Age of Innocence slow and a touch tedious for the first couple chapters, but once I got into the flow of the language and got to know the characters, it clipped along fairly quickly.

This book was about a man who was deeply mired in 19th century New York high society of which we often hear from the woman's perspective; I thought it refreshing to hear from the man's perspective. He was simultaneously a tragic and a noble character.

He married the wrong girl (as to his heart) for the right (societal and familial duty) reasons.

The right girl, who was his fiancee's cousin, awakened in him true emotions, including a deep kindness that inspired an intellectual honesty that dared to challenge the rigid social niceties in favor of an individual's circumstances. In fact, he became engaged suddenly in an attempt to garner social favor by enjoining both families in support of the cousin, who had just escaped a bad marriage and was being publicly shunned.

Unfortunately he couldn't jettison his engagement in favor of the cousin without exposing all three of them to the same public shame, and their families would likely be humiliated. So society and family duty wins out over love.

After a year or so of slightly numb marriage, some flirtation with his true love, and contemplating ways out of his supposed mistake, he finds out his wife is pregnant and devotes himself to his family completely.

Many years later, as a widower with grown children, we find out that his wife knew all along about the sacrifice he made for his family, but never let on. His son sets up a meeting with his long lost love, which he fails to attend, preferring his imagination of her to any possible reality. This was the only time in the book at which I was really and truly disappointed with our hero.

I think that it may have been a better ending to the book with something to the effect of "he slowly ascended the five flights of stairs to her apartment" which would have shown him to be less cowardly, but left the rest of the encounter to our imagination.

I love the option of having the opportunity to read the classics for this challenge. It's a genre that I normally don't just pick up and read if I have a choice. I was excited to see that Edith Wharton was selected as I have read other books by her and really liked them. Although I liked this one, it definitely isn't my favorite by her.

Like many of you have already stated, the pacing was rather slow and often rather dull. I also agree that NOTHING really happens. But, it did pick up enough to keep me interested to finish. The author did an excellent job describing the upper class citizens of NYC at that time. I was a little disappointed in that story line was really predictable after the first few chapters.

For a love story, I had hoped for a little more love, passion, zest, enthusiasm and I just didn't get that. Even though shunning was something that happened during that time, I would've liked to have seen the story to have taken the forbidden path where love over ruled family/societal standards and obligations.

That ending left me wondering WHY...ughhh... along with other questions. Not the type of ending I would've have chosen, but you don't always get the HEA lol My overall rating for this book is 3 stars.

LOL I was looking at the author information to see if I could use this book for a challenge task in another group--and maybe the reason I like this author is because she died on my birthday--EEK!!!

I enjoy many of the classics, but I hadn't read The Age of Innocence before this. I thought Wharton did a good job pulling the reader into life in upper class New York, and the bits of humor kept the beginning lively. The contrast between likable Newland and the stuffiness of his society was well done. Newland reminded me of a teenager, torn between childhood and adulthood and wanting to be part of both at once. He had the intellect to see some of the emptiness of his life but couldn't ever make the decision to break from it or confront it.

Initially I was frustrated by Countess Olenska's personality. I wasn't sure if she was being sincere when she talked about wanting to return to NY society or if she was being more sarcastic. I finally felt like I understood her better at the end of part one. She turned out to be the most insightful and honest of the characters in the book.

Communicating, or not, is really a theme of this, as is the idea of actions contrasting with speech. I enjoyed watching for those times characters' actions told a different story than their words. The powerlessness of women is shown in many ways, and I thought it would have been interesting to read the story from May's point of view, as she manages to hold no real power and yet manipulate things a great deal for her own ends. The situation with the Beauforts shows the rottenness and hypocrisy of society on several levels, but I couldn't help but feel that May personified it on an individual level.

The ending was interesting, and a bit jarring. I generally prefer endings that give you an answer one way of the other. When Newland walked away without seeing Olenska again, it left me hanging. But that was fitting, as that's pretty much how he handled everything throughout the book. He had shown himself to be a man who had reservations about his life but never took a strong stand. He wanted the Countess but refused to be with her, in any way. He always chose society's expectations over the hardships of reality. In that way he suffered, too, but never actually got anything in life that he wanted. So the ending fit the book perfectly.

This book was a slog for me. I think it was the author's style, rather than the plot. I didn't feel that nothing was happening. Rather, it was that the tone never changed. At the halfway point I had to decide whether to go on with it since it wasn't holding my interest, but I decided to keep going.