‘The Age of Innocence’ by Edith Wharton

I seldom use the word 'exquisite' unless I am being sarcastic, but with regards to Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence I am going to have to make an exception. First published in 1920, this gorgeously constructed novel tells the story of Newland Archer, a wealthy and worldly young lawyer whose betrothal to the perfectly lovely May Welland is thrown into turmoil by the surprise arrival of her cousin Countess Olenska, an enigmatic and unorthodox presence. Set against the glittering backdrop of late nineteenth-century New York - a setting all too familiar to the author - it is both a timeless story of ill-fated love and a privileged peek into a wildly different past.

Perhaps the most wondrous thing about The Age of Innocence is Wharton's prose style, for it is fluid and elegant and yet not inaccessibly haughty or hard to follow. Her writing's obvious beauty is also studded with a subtle, self-effacing wit; Wharton was clearly not afraid of sending up some of her generation's more questionable practices, particularly those of the idle rich. An especially memorable example of this is when a handful of society doyennes are earnestly discussing the necessity of stashing one's 'Paris dresses' away for a season or two so as not to appear ahead of the fashion. The very tone of this sequence makes clear Wharton's bemusement at such customs.

And yet, for a novel nearing its centenary, The Age of Innocence is not at all passe and indeed many of Wharton's ideas remain relevant even now. Yes, it may no longer take five days of sailing on board the Mauretania to get from New York to Paris, and no longer is this particular voyage reserved exclusively for the upper echelons, but the classic love triangle itself remains largely unaltered, as do the moral implications of such situations. I also find myself nodding in agreement with many of the book's sentiments, which is a first for me whilst reading a book of such an advanced age. I even found myself having to pause on occasion in order to transcribe certain descriptions because I found them so affecting.

It is my opinion that The Age of Innocence is one of those seminal novels that everyone ought to read at least once during their tenure on this fair green planet. It is that rare achievement - a book that can, in one passage, spirit you back to a bygone era when the distinction between old and new money was as important as that between rich and poor, and yet it still succeeds in being applicable to today's starkly different world.

This piece was originally published on alisonlaurabell.tumblr.com in October 2011.