The Age of Innocence
First published 1920 · English · 320 pages
- Novels
- Love and romance
Set in the New York high society of the 1870s, this novel follows Newland Archer, a young lawyer engaged to the conventional and charming May Welland. His settled expectations are unsettled by the arrival of May's cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska, who has left a disastrous European marriage and who ignores local customs. As Newland is drawn to her, he must weigh personal longing against family duty and social approval. Wharton writes with irony and tenderness about a world governed by unspoken rules. It is a portrait of a vanished society and a study of the price of conformity.
Quotes
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;
Each time you happen to me all over again.
An unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences.