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 Archer’s mind.

“An Evening at the Royal Theatre” by Paul Gustav Fischer (~1888)

Here’s a quick breakdown of what happens in the first chapter, with the characters we meet this week in bold.

• It’s a cold winter’s night in a warm yet “shabby” Old New York institution, The Academy of Music

• Newland Archer arrives fashionably, intentionally, perfectly late

• Newland briefly watches the “Daisy Song” performance on the stage, then looks across the venue to the Mingotts’ opera box and lays his eyes on his betrothed, May Welland, “a young girl in white with eyes ecstatically fixed on the stage-lovers”

  • Newland is wearing a gardenia; May is wearing one, too. Awwwww!

• Newland starts tumbling down a rabbit-hole of thoughts: mostly fantasizing about how he’ll mould May, a naive young woman, into his perfect partner; he feels “a tender reverence for her abysmal purity” (lol)

• Newland’s extremely deep and detailed fantasy is interrupted by two men — Lawrence Lefferts and Sillerton Jackson — who have spied a mystery woman joining the women in the Mingott box

  • Mystery woman is wearing dark blue velvet (a rather exotic and sexy choice for this time period) and an “old-fashioned” clasp on her dress (a surprising detail for her otherwise modern dress)

• Sillerton Jackson — this society’s resident expert on family gossip and social scandal — literally twists his mustache and says: “I didn’t think the Mingotts would have tried it on.”

What’s in an opera box?

Maureen E. Montgomery explains that “Attending the opera … was a key social activity that helped define those who were members of the inner circle.”²

So: we’re planted in a scene of high cultural importance. Those in attendance perceive of themselves, and each other, as the top brass of New York society after the Civil War. These are the wealthiest families with the most to gain as the first extravagant millionaires emerge — in fact, the society present in the opera house would have been the same group from which the Rockefellers, Carnegies, and Vanderbilts would emerge.

What’s more, the Academy of Music was a rather intimate venue — significantly smaller than the enormous music halls that would be built to accommodate growing populations later in the century. The text even calls the music hall “shabby,” pointing to its dated, and cozy, appearance.

And fun fact: these opera boxes were often owned by a single Old New York family. You couldn’t just buy a ticket to the opera and get a box seat. No way. The only way to get a highly prized seat within an opera box at this time was to be a family member, or to be engaged to a family member, or to have some kind of important business dealing taking place with the family that would warrant your attendance.

The family that owned the box, in other words, would have to want to be seen with you in their company for you to get a seat. (This is why a mysterious woman’s arrival — in a seat next to May Welland — is such a surprise.)

“The Ball” by James Tissot (1878)

The 1870s are right on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution and the emergence of those growing, modernizing forces that would alter the city forever — but we only know that from our 21st century perspective. Newland, Sillerton Jackson, the Mingotts: none of them know the significance of the historical moment they reside in; for them, it is the present.

Wharton makes it our present, too. She plants us inside these intimate opera boxes, right next to Newland Archer and even visiting his innermost thoughts, to observe this unique, intentionally small subset of the wealthy and powerful, on the cusp of profound social and cultural change. This intimate perspective with the most powerful members of Old New York invites us to look back at the tiniest details and minutae of a lost moment in time — to notice who sang in the opera that night, the color of the lilies on May’s lap, the specific species of flowers in the men’s buttonholes — and to get caught up in the atmospheric realities of that moment.

If you’re wanting to deepen your close reading practice, this is where you could turn these observations into questions:

• Why is this perspective the right one for this story?

• What’s the difference between the narrator and Newland’s inner monologue? (We slip pretty seamlessly between both…)

• What’s the effect of starting a novel with a stage performance?

• Where does Wharton want us to “look” in this chapter? How do you know?

Image from an old postcard; New York, circa 1870

We can (and I think, should) wonder more on why Wharton crafts her narrative this way as we read.

All the action of chapter 1 unfolds while a performance takes place on stage, which hardly any of the important New Yorkers in the crowd seem to pay attention to. And yet, we should. It’s Faust on the stage, after all — that infamous story of a man who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures.

I can’t help but wonder if Newland Archer will be our erudite, yet dissatisfied “dilettante” in pursuit of experiences impossibly distant in this navel-gazing social group — if he, like Faust, will sell his soul in exchange for pleasure and knowledge. Who is the devil? What’s for sale?

…Won’t it be interesting to see what happens?

Making myself a map

To keep track of all that gazing and staring action in chapter 1, I made a little linear track of what happens in the chapter, as well as a super-hasty illustration of the center stage, Newland’s box, and the Mingott box.

The arrows messily indicate the sight-lines running across the venue as Newland looks at the stage, then looks at May, then looks at the mystery woman.

Illustrating the scene — even in a haphazard way, like this — starts to give us a map of the energies the novel opens with. As I drew the lines back and forth across each evolution in the chapter, I was struck by the way we start on stage with Christine Nilsson and then watch all the energy — including our own gaze — shift from the performance on the stage to the drama taking place in the social sphere. (#7, which is cut off in the photo, says “I didn’t think the Mingotts would have tried it on.”)

What do I gain from this map? I can clearly see where Wharton wants me to look.

The true star of the evening doesn’t seem to be the gifted soprano singing on stage, but the mysterious young woman who has arrived in sensual velvet, disrupting an otherwise typical evening at the opera, in January, in New York City, sometime in the 1870s.

After taking it all in, I’m left with a few big questions — not the least of which is: who is this mysterious woman?! Also, why is there such tension about her arrival? Why is Sillerton Jackson so surprised? What have the Mingotts “tried on?”

“Private Opera Box” Albert Guillaume (1873 - 1942)

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Closely reading the first sentence

To start unpacking these questions and reading into the tensions introduced in this first chapter…let’s closely read the first sentence of the novel together, shall we?

I’ll be following the sentence reading activity I sent out earlier this week, and I’m eager to know what you discovered if you completed the activity yourself.

An invitation to please remember:

“Criticism is not some inscrutable, mysterious process. It’s just a matter of: 1) noticing ourselves responding to a work of art, moment by moment, and 2) getting better at articulating that response.”

—George Saunders

Here are the basic annotations I’m using:

And here’s my digital annotation of the first sentence:

Now that I’ve made this visual map for myself, I can start to ask questions or dig deeper into what I’m seeing here.

• An emphasis on time and culture/the arts (yellow and blue)

• How tight is the realism here?

  • Was Christine Nilsson a real singer? Was the Academy of Music a real place? (Yes, and yes!)

• Why is the year not exactly determined?

  • The 1870s is right after the Civil War has ended…and when wealth starts to explode in the North

  • Why doesn’t the specific year matter? (Perhaps because this book is about “the age” of a certain society, or an era, rather than about a specific year?)

Scholar Stephen Orgel’s introduction in my version of the novel helps contextualize the opening chapter, which seems very much dedicated to placing us within a specific moment in history:

“Wharton took particular care with her allusions to cultural events….Wharton had a researcher checking such references at the Yale and New York Public Libraries and they give the novel a very precise time scheme.” —Stephen Orgel

We learn a whole lot about 1870s New York in chapter 1, and we also learn a lot about Newland Archer. Here are some of the key cultural and character contexts that are worth noticing as we embark on the next few chapters:

ON THE CULTURE

• The novel was written in 1920, but it is set in 1870: giving Wharton a chance to take a longview at the culture she, herself, grew up in

• New York is changing, thanks to the influx of new money and new families: “New York, for this society, is still centered on Washington Square, though the more affluent are beginning to move further north” — as new neighborhoods emerge and become fashionable (Olgen)

• Divorce is verboten in Old New York society: “To admit that marriage might be a reversible step was to fatally weaken the institution on which these tightly knit, much intermarried families depended” (Olgen) — in this society, marriage, and martial connections, are the ultimate power

• Despite that, male promiscuity is a given: We learn in chapter 1 that Newland has recently ended an affair with a married woman to take his own engagement more seriously; yet women’s sexuality and affairs, at this time, produce nothing but scandal (recall Lily’s precarious sexual position in The House of Mirth) — yes this is a plainly stupid (although not that surprising) double-standard and yes it will come up a lot in this novel, tuck it into your pocket as we keep reading

ON NEWLAND ARCHER

In chapter one, we learn the following facts about our central (so far) character:

• Newland is a good boy who follows his mom’s rules about smoking in the house and his society’s rules about showing up fashionably late to the opera

• Newland is a dilettante, which is a kinder way of saying that he’s a dabbler, an amateur — someone who takes interest in arts and culture without any real commitment to understanding them; Newland’s interest in the arts echoes his privilege as being leisure class, but he seems ignorant of this privilege thus far

• In fact, Newland perceives himself to be far superior to the other men of his society: “he had probably read more, thought more, and even seen a good deal more of the word, than any other man of the number,” and because he’s a dilettante, he believes this makes him more important and more intelligent than all the other men in his set

• Newland is engaged to a well-positioned young woman who he perceives to be a beautiful, naive fool; he envisions his role in their relationship as teacher, mentor, and guide. Newland believes his role as husband is to open May’s eyes to the larger cultural world beyond the safe little bubble of their closed social system, which implies that Newland also believes he is intellectually superior to May

In chapter 1 we are invited to see the macro and the micro: the society and its subject; the social machine and the product (people) it creates.

And thanks to Wharton’s signature tone — of wit, sarcasm, and scathingly tight prose — we’re also invited to see the cracks in the paint.

As we continue reading, I’m so eager to learn your thoughts on Newland and May, as well as the society they’re set to “inherit” as the upcoming class of young Old New Yorkers.

A brief close reading

I’m really drawn to the fact that the novel starts on a stage, and then shifts our attention to the off-stage drama that is unfolding. It’s clear the people in the audience are more interested in each other than they are in the opera; that the opera is a place to be seen rather than to see art.

Perhaps this is a novel, then, about social performances, playing your role, and putting on a good show for everyone around you.

I’m also struck by the fact that May Welland’s eyes are glued to the performance while everyone around her seems to be looking at each other. May, with her blonde hair and pure white dress, gazes on the stage as Nilsson performs a song about love in a blonde wig and a white dress. Life imitates art.

Newland’s imagination blurs the line between what he’s read in novels and the realities of his future with May. He fantasizes about their future together in what feels like a really stereotypical and reductive way. He views May as both naive and virginal — her “abysmal purity” is the exact state she has been raised to occupy, and Newland has been raised to believe it is his responsibility to import meaning and culture into what he assumes is her very empty head. Art inspires life.

And just as Wharton lays this supremely fertile ground of art, performance, marriage, and social traditions, it is all interrupted by the arrival of another woman who is dressed all wrong for the occasion and who (it seems) needs no introduction to everyone else in the box seats.

Perhaps, then, this novel is also about the blurry lines between art and life — of what happens when the action on center stage becomes far less interesting than what happens off-stage.

This is a story of unexpected arrivals and untested fantasies.

What a fantastic tease as an opening. Wharton sets us up, as readers, to wonder about the clean lines of narrative and the much messier lines of reality. Before Newland can enjoy his deep fantasy life with an imagined May, there are the men beside him, interrupting his runaway train of thought with real life. All those Old New Yorkers who arrived in pursuit of another typical night at the opera have had their evening interrupted by an unexpected woman.

• How does her late arrival imbue the mystery woman with power?

• If everyone is always watching each other in this society, how can you tell authenticity from social performance?

My favorite sentence(s)

This week, my favorite sentences were about Newland and his mindset. I’m fascinated by the depths to which Wharton plants us in the psyche of this young man who is a perfect rule follower with a huge imagination and detailed fantasies, a man who is self-aware enough to play his part and yet “content to hold his view without analyzing it,” because it is socially accepted.

“…thinking over a pleasure to come often gave him a subtler satisfaction
than its realization.”

“How this miracle of fire and ice was to be created, and to sustain itself in a harsh world, he had never taken the time to think out; but he was content to hold his view without analyzing it, since he knew it was that of all the carefully-brushed, white-waistcoated, buttonhole-flowered gentlemen who succeeded each other in the club box, exchanged friendly greetings with him, and turned their opera-glasses critically on the circle of ladies who were the product of the system.”

After completing the chapter for this week, I found myself slack-jawed, again, for the millionth time, at Wharton’s ability to give us such a dazzlingly clear picture of this particular moment — and this specific man — in just a few pages. And stunned even more at how she balances that depth with the melodramatic fun of a mystery woman in an opera box and a social scandal!

I can’t wait to dive into the next chapters with you all.

And now I’m so eager to learn what your favorite sentences were!

For you:

A few additional readings:

How the 1870s smelled in New York // A history of the mansions on 5th Avenue // The Last Vanderbilt Stronghold // An amazingly detailed timeline of changes in New York in the 1870s // A look at the fashion of the 1870s // A Pinterest board of Age of Innocence imagery (made by yours truly!) //

Up next:

• For next Wednesday, read chapters 2, 3, 4, and 5! (Full schedule here)

• Ask your questions about the novel here and I’ll answer them in the next reading guide

• Use this Google Docs notes outline to help you take notes each week — make a copy or print it out for handwritten notes (alternately: copy the questions into your own notebook to collect your notes in a single place!)

Happy reading! 📚

Now, meet me in the comments

…and tell me all about your experience of reading chapter one! Share your favorite sentences, your questions, and your ideas about what will happen next.

If you’re nervous about posting a public comment, you can always send me a DM to let me know how your reading experience is going. I’d love to hear from you.

1. From Arielle Zebra’s Introduction to The Age Of Innocence: New Centenary Essays, 2020.

2. From Displaying Women: Spectacles of Leisure in Edith Wharton's New York