The Age of Innocence: Chapter 1

Setting the stage with visibility and scandal: "I didn't think the Mingotts would have tried it on."

Welcome to Week 1 of our slow read of Edith Wharton’s 1920 novel, The Age of Innocence, a novel that Professor and author Arielle Zibrak deems “the most underrated highly rated novel in the history of American letters,” and which is “regularly cited as a favorite text by present-day authors including Ta-Nehisi Coates, Roxane Gay, and Beth Nguyen.”¹

If you have yet to start the book, please visit the introductory post.

In today’s essay, we’re kicking things off with a close reading of chapter 1, which includes:

• A brief summary

• A list of important cultural references

• A sentence analysis

• My favorite quotes

I’m so freakin’ excited!!!!!!

Let’s go!

A brief summary

There is a lot of stage setting in chapter 1 — and not just up on the opera’s stage. There are lot of people who are watching each other as much (if not more than) they are watching the on-stage performance, and much of the action of the chapter happens silently — in the space between gazes or across the opera venue, and inside Newland Ar…