The Age of Innocence: Chapters 15-18
"Now, why in the world didn't you marry my little Ellen?"
Welcome to another week of our slow read of Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence.
First: A sunny warm welcome to the handful of new readers who have joined in and are getting caught up. I’m so glad you’re here and can’t wait to see what you add to the conversation!
This week, I’ve been so struck by the force of Wharton’s prose — and the meticulous way she builds connections between people and lets very real layers of tension build and brew and bubble for over 100 pages before finally bringing us to this week’s rounds of confessions (both feigned and real)!
And then…at the end of chapter 18…we come to the end of Book 1, on one hell of cliffhanger. And it is hellish: we learn that Archer feels that Ellen’s eccentric aunt has arrived fresh from a visit to make a deal with the Devil, Ellen’s notoriously estranged husband, the Count Olenski.
A few notes on this week’s guide —
In a departure from weeks past, I’m focusing in on the amazing comments from you, dear readers. I wanted to pull out some of the key commentary I see coming out of the conversation there, which you are all leading with your signature aplomb each week as I put my feet up and enjoy the insights.
I’ve connected some of your brilliant ideas into categories under the themes we’re tracking each week, in an effort to help you map these ideas back to the wider topics we’ve identified together so far — and to see some of the shared readings we’re doing together.
(This is always one of the funnest bits of taking a literature class in person, right? It can be so difficult to replicate online. But you all are crushing it in the comments and I can only imagine how fun it’d be to discuss the novel in a classroom together!)
Of course, I’m adding my own commentary and close readings along the way.
So let’s get into it.
A brief summary
Get back into this week’s reading with an audio summary of this week’s chapters.
Here’s a quick breakdown of what happens in the first chapter, with the characters we meet this week in bold.
Chapter 15
Dying to know what she is “running away from,” Newland visits the countryside where Ellen is away for the weekend
They enjoy a quiet moment in the van der Luyden’s country home until Beaufort crashes the party
Newland unpacks his new books — among them, a book of strange poetry he saw in Ellen’s house
Whether he’s actually sick or just sick of life, Newland departs for Florida to see May
“The taste of the usual was like cinders in his mouth, and there were moments when he felt as if he were being buried alive under his future.”
Chapter 16
Newland visits May and her family in Florida and they have an awkwaaaaaard reunion
May’s mother thanks Newland for helping Ellen decide to drop her pursuit of divorce; Newland seethes inwardly
May wonders at Newland’s eagerness to move up their wedding date, and bluntly asks him if there’s someone else driving his desire to marry her so quickly
Newland vows to give May the honesty and individuality in their love she seems to invite while completely avoiding naming Ellen as the true reason behind his eagerness to speed their wedding
“Here was the truth, here was reality, here was the life that belonged to him.”
Chapter 17
Newland hears that Ellen has visited his mother and sister while he was away
Ellen later tells Newland she visited because she was worried that he was ill
Newland emphasizes his belief that these two women are “not alike”
Granny Mingott asks Newland why he didn’t marry Ellen
(This is such an intense scene, no?)
Newland goes to see Ellen before she goes to another party and he discovers that she’s having a gathering of her own (which she didn’t tell him about…)
Ellen’s aunt, Ned Winsett, and Dr. Carver are Ellen’s guests
Dr. Carver is a mystic or medium, dabbling in the psychic arts of mesmerism and spiritualism (a VERY fun topic of this time period to research!)
Ellen’s aunt is best friends with Ellen’s estranged husband, and she tells Archer that the Count wants Ellen back
We get a glimpse, through the aunt, of all the wealth and comfort Ellen has given up
It strikes me that, for someone more materialistic than Ellen, this offer might be quite compelling…
“No, no; not one of them wants to be different; they’re as scared of it as the small-pox.”
Chapter 18
Ellen orders her housekeeper to take the ornate bouquet the Count shipped to her house to the Winsetts — because she does not want them
For my readers following the “flower” theme: what do you make of this!?
We’re reminded of Ellen’s “apparent incapacity for surprise”
Newland clearly states he doesn’t mean to marry anyone but May despite caring deeply for Ellen
Newland tells Ellen he would’ve married her; Ellen retorts that his actions have made that plainly impossible
He is rushing his engagement to May and he convinced Ellen not to divorce, so, um, Ellen is not wrong but Newland is baffled
They have a long, wandering, emotional fight about what might be possible for them to have together
Just as it starts to get, uh, heated, the housekeeper returns with a telegram from May — whose parents have, inexplicably, agreed to move up the wedding date (!!!!!!!!!)
The note is yellow…just like Newland’s roses!
Newland goes home in shock and asks Janey to confirm the wedding date — and realizes he’ll be married in less than a month
“But you are the woman I would have married if it had been possible for either of us.”
Was your jaw on the floor throughout chapter 18? I feel like my jaw is on the FLOOR every single time I read this chapter. It’s such a brilliant back-and-forth between Newland and Ellen as their true feelings finally come into the open and Newland realizes how he’s dug his own proverbial grave here.
A few things I am wondering at the end of Book 1:
Did Newland know he was digging this tidy little grave for his dreams? How conscious was he of the consequences of his rushing things with May?
Was May’s clearheadedness and frank demeanor during her confrontation with Newland a characteristic trait of hers, and we just saw it for the first time?Or will it really be, as Newland suspects, a rare occurrence?
Whyyyyyy does Ellen love Newland? I get why Newland loves her and is drawn to her…but do we have enough evidence in the text for understanding why Ellen would be so into Newland?
What strikes me this week
If The House of Mirth is a novel preoccupied with the consequences of female indecision — Lily Bart’s vacillations on the marriage market of Old New York — then The Age of Innocence is a novel preoccupied with the consequences of male indecision, and Newland Archer’s vacillations, on that same marriage market thirty years prior.
This prompts an important question:
What does it mean to read these novels as stories of indecision, or an inability to act?
Plot is, in many ways, defined by what happens, or by action more broadly. And so most stories are propelled forward in meaning and resonance by what happens.
And yet, in this novel, as in The House of Mirth, we see that less is happening in the wider plot-driven world of relationships between characters than what is happening inside individual characters.
(Though, because it’s Edith Wharton, even the tiniest happenings — like the daily delivery of white lilies to May, or a nameless and unplanned order of yellow roses — tend to have layer upon layer of meaning attached to them.)
But, as I discuss in this weeks’s audio guide, if we were to summarize everything that happened in Book 1, in terms of really plot-heavy actions or events, there wasn’t much:
Newland Archer announced his engagement to May Welland early
Newland Archer started falling in love with someone else
Newland Archer pushed up his wedding date to May Welland
Newland Archer wishes he hadn’t done that
Throw in a few dinner parties and balls, and all that delicious building of the social world — and all the nuances that have pushed May and Ellen apart — and what we have is really a novel of indecision, of things that cannot happen, and things that should not happen.
So what does that mean for the plot? What kind of story is this?
Another question that arises from this comparison to The House of Mirth is about gender:
How critical are the differences in experience for Newland and Lily? Does it matter that Newland has a different experience than Lily does, despite so many similarities between their characteristic indecisiveness?
(They feel existentially important to me, as does the wider question of gendered experience on a rigorously regulated marriage market!)
And speaking of gendered differences on the marriage market: this week, we see May Welland bringing a “womanly stature and dignity,” “despairing clearness,” and “quiet lucidity” as she bluntly questions Newland’s changes in behavior since their engagement announcement.
She even addresses his assumptions about her naivety: “You mustn’t think that a girl knows as little as her parents imagine. One hears and one notices — one has one’s feelings and ideas.”
So despite everything Newland would have us believe thus far, this week we see May Welland insist on her individuality and self-awareness in this moment — and give Newland a chance to recognize her as someone who, like him, has a rich interiority of observations and reflections, of “feelings and ideas” that never get shared externally.
It seems clear that May Welland is not a Kentucky cage-fish without eyes.
But Newland is too stunned by this change in her typical demeanor — a “frankness” that cuts through the layers of performance and duty that they’re used to trafficking in together — to respond to her in any real way. And so, despite May’s offering of a window for honest disclosure, Newland insists on versioning the truth for her and leaving Ellen out of his answers entirely.
My question, as a reader, is: Does Newland consciously know he’s not mentioning Ellen in this conversation? And by that, I mean to ask: Does Newland know he’s so in love with Ellen already that May can tell something is distracting and worrying him to such a degree that he’d defy decorum by rushing their wedding date to “settle the question” of his status?
We know he feels “inexpressible relief” that May seems concerned about his old love affair with that married woman who left him a bit bereft; but does he recognize that this relief is shaded by May’s apparent ignorance of Ellen’s effects on him?
How well does Newland know himself?
How well does May know Newland?
And what does Ellen know about them both?
Your thematic readings
Reading over ya’ll’s fantastic commentary the last few weeks, there have been moments I’ve leapt out of my chair or stood happily stunned in the pasta aisle at the grocery store reading your incredible ideas.
So, as a way of structuring the themes for this week’s chapters, I wanted to look back at your comments and build on them — thematically.
As a reminder, here are the key themes we’ve identified as a group, thus far. (If you have more to add, please do in this week’s comments!) I’ve added a few new ones in bold, at the end of the list.
Performance and visibility
“Harshness” and violence
Anxiety
Conformity vs. individuality
Nostalgia/“The Past”
Flowers
Opposites (young/old, dark/light, sharp/dull)
References to the exotic or unfamiliar
Old vs. New, in terms of cultural customs
Safety and “home”
Surprise and boredom
Reality vs. Fantasy
Emotions as complicated or contradictory
The tension of opposites
As so many of you have noticed, one of the key themes of this novel is the tension that arises from seeming opposites — especially the opposition Newland feels (and has perhaps created?) between Ellen and May.
Here’s what you’ve said:
“I love how when he's just been with Ellen, he wants to return to the world that May represents; and when he thinks about or spends time with May, doing all the respectably encoded things, he wants the freedom he imagines he would have in Ellen's world. He is his very own inner pinball wizard--and I also love how the flippers inside him are so often his own jealousy.” —Abbie Anderson
Similarly:
“[Newland] also vacillates between wanting to be close to [Ellen], but not taking part in her affairs. Make up your mind, man!” —Yelena
Another reader summed this same tension up brilliantly by describing the way Newland seems to be creating a pros and cons list about marrying May — and this reader does some elegant close reading along the way:
“I made a running list of Newland’s pros and cons as he considers his future with May. Here are just some. The pros include May’s beauty and his pride of possession…Another pro is her constancy, ‘that was the kind of answer he would like always to be sure of his wife’s making.’
The cons are many but might be categorized as boredom: ‘Sameness-sameness!’; ‘the whole of New York is dying of inanition’; ‘over many of (the young men in his office) the green mould of the perfunctory was already perceptibly spreading. It made Archer shiver to think it might be spreading over him too.’ Another con can be categorized as Archer’s chafing at expectations: it’s expected for him to stay and work when May and her family go to Florida, yet he arrives late at the office perceiving ‘it made no difference whatever to anyone’; he was roused by ‘what the clan thought they had a right to extract from him as a prospective son-in-law’; he tells Janey he doesn’t care a ‘brass farthing’ about ‘Family.’” —Maryann
In this week’s chapters we get so much more information about both women that can help us dig into Newland’s belief that the two are “not alike” in any way.
How is May more assertive than Newland assumed?
How is Ellen more traditional than Newland assumed?
How does each woman live up to, or reassert, Newland’s (or society’s) expectations of her?
How does each woman break from those same expectations?
I’m so in love with the way Wharton takes the set patterns from the first 16 chapters and starts to turn them on their heads. We get May Welland being super assertive and blunt about Newland’s lovers and past relationships. We get Ellen being strikingly traditional in her desire to keep Newland and May safe from scandal. And…then we get Newland, who mostly sticks to the script we’ve known so far. Or does he?
Conformity and individuality
What’s in a name? One reader has noticed how naming conventions for Ellen seem to tell us a bit about how she’s being perceived:
“When referred to as the countess Olenska she sounds foreign and mysterious which others her - especially on the page - even though she is also still Ellen from an Old New York society family who grew up with Newland.” —Natalie McGlocklin
Another reader is keying into the effects of Newland’s constructions about these women — and how it conforms to the narratives he knows from his upbringing:
“Exactly like he did with May, he's constructing an image of Ellen that isn't necessary true. He can't reconcile a woman he likes so much with the unforgivable sin of adultery and divorce, so he's painting a pretty picture where Ellen is never a willing actor, always the poor victim of circumstances, of the promiscuous society she found herself in, of her unlucky star, you name it. He's stripping her of any agency in her own life.” —Ellie
This reading could fit into the above category, about the two women as opposites. But I like putting it under the theme of conformity and individuality, because Ellie is so right: Newland — perhaps quite ignorant of what he’s doing — is stripping both women of their individuality. He is forcing his conception of them both to conform to social expectations, and finds himself stunned when either of them departs from the constructions he has crafted.
This reading also makes me want to add another theme to our running list: the tension (another tension!) between reality and fantasy, or reality and the constructions or stories people tell themselves about reality. Of course, these lines are never easy to draw; Wharton’s work with Newland, in this week’s readings, reveal more and more the “messy middle” he finds himself confronting.
Messy feelings for messy situations
Ellie also noted the messinesss of these tensions Newland is experiencing:
“Newland is a fascinating voice, not exactly likeable but disarmingly earnest - he's not self aware enough to fully admit when he's in the wrong. I find it really funny how he has a big big crush on Ellen and is calling it with every other name, both unable and unwilling to accept it. I love that his feelings are messy and complicated.” —Ellie
I’ve added “emotions” to our running list of themes because I think we’re all starting to clue into the way this novel is taking a very black-and-white thinker — Newland Archer — and showing what happens when he is plunged into the grey. And to be clear: I don’t believe the grey is Ellen, but rather his own reckoning with the fact that real life doesn’t fit into easy narratives or categories.
Newland is confronting a love, within himself, that doesn’t align to his own constructed notion of what love should be. And these emotions, as a result, are throwing his world on its head: showing him that perhaps all his definitions — for marriage, love, sex, joy, security — are nothing but false when they are black and white.
Questions abound
A few readers are also asking some excellent questions that I wanted to position from the perspective of a literary scholar.
One reader is making great comparisons between Newland Archer and the men in Dostoevsky’s Anna Karenina — and thusly introduced a beautiful question about intertextuality in her comment:
“The main idea I’m tracking today is the men’s expectations for women falling short of reality. (But is that truly reality, or the men’s flawed gaze and assumption of blankness in their women?)…How many women have been abandoned, discarded, or devalued because their men had not the eyes to truly see them?” —Dana Staples
I don’t have an answer; I’m not sure the question is readily answerable — but I do think it’s a beautiful question that this novel, and Anna, and many other novels pose more broadly. It’s the kind of philosophical or structural question that someone like Michel Foucault may have asked, if he’d ever really dug into questions about women’s experiences. This is the type of closely reading question that could inspire an intertextuality study, led by a broader feminist reading of silences in history.
Another worthwhile pondering comes in wondering about Newland’s perspective and how widely it was shared at the time. This is exactly the type of closely reading question that could inspire a historical study on the social moment of the novel, and might lean on cultural analysis via things like diaries, letters, and even artifacts like advertisements and newspaper articles, to unpack:
“I'm not wholly familiar with the history of marriage and elite members of society moving from marrying for status to marrying for love (though of course, they do still marry for status today as well), but I wonder how much of Newland's thoughts were echoed in society at large at the time (both the setting of the novel and Wharton's time of writing).” —Kate
If you’ve ever wondered how you could take your own questions or observations and turn them into wider stories, these are two excellent examples from your fellow readers. Through a combination of close reading and study of things like cultural documents, historical research, and other scholarly perspectives, we might arrive at very rich answers — or additional questions — very much worth our energy.
My favorite quote(s) this week
There are so many good moments this week. In terms of craft and prose, I love the vivid scene in which Newland watches Ellen run across a snow-laden field: “his gaze delighted by the flash of the red meteor against the snow,” which renders Ellen a kind of cosmic force, a “meteor” in his sky, a flash of the impossibly far away becoming, for a moment, so close.
Much there to closely read, indeed. Especially when we think about our central characters as residing in a kind of “centrifugal dance,” which is a phrase Wharton uses at the end of The House of Mirth to describe the relationship between people in Old New York Society. Ellen as a “meteor” seems to compound the power of this metaphor, putting all these social bodies into dizzying proximity, orbiting one another at a kind of breakneck pace that is constantly threatening to spin out of control…
I’ve also been contemplating the title a lot this week, and so this amazing line from chapter 16 struck me —
“Ah, no, he did not want May to have that kind of innocence, the innocence that seals the mind against imagination and the heart against experience!”
I love the way the novel is exploring the implications of “innocence,” and how—once again—Newland seems to project his own fears out onto May. The idea of innocence itself may very well deserve a spot on our list of themes.
On close reading
I believe this is the perfect week for me to tell you one of my all-time favorite, most succinct observations about Newland Archer, which comes from a Wharton scholar named Emily Orlando:
“Archer is not a close reader, and Wharton’s women continually expose him as such. Ellen Olenska and May Welland succeed in collapsing his readings of them and, what is more, they read him more accurately than he reads himself.”
Next week, I’ll dive much more into this idea. But I’d love to get your take on it, first, as we jump into the comments this week. Have at it!
For you:
A few additional readings:
A podcast episode about Edith Wharton's New York and The Gilded Age // A Pinterest board of Age of Innocence imagery (made by yours truly!) // Browse the Edith Wharton Society website // A delightful and short bio of Wharton by a fiction writer // A fantastic blog series about marriage customs in the 19th century // A few snapshots from one writer’s visit to Wharton’s historic Lenox home
Up next:
For next Wednesday, read chapters 19, 20, and 21 (Full schedule here)
Ask your questions about the novel here and I’ll answer them in an upcoming reading guide
Use this Google Docs notes outline to help you take notes each week
Ready for Book 2?! Happy reading! 📚
I highlighted one of the same quotes you did:
"The taste of the usual was like cinders in his mouth, and there were moments when he felt as if he were being buried alive under his future." It makes me wonder that anyone could write that without having felt it in some way and I am looking forward to reading Wharton's biography and learning more about her.
In these chapters, Newland is acting rashly. He leaves the country in a fit of jealousy when Beaufort appears. He then rouses himself from his funk and heads for May in St Augustine. There he is in turn soothed, surprised, and ultimately disappointed by her. May seems to have grasped that something is off with Newland, but seems to think (or at least indicates that she thinks) it is related to his past affair. It seems to me that she is really hinting at Ellen and giving him an out, but maybe I'm projecting. When Newland assures her "there is no pledge there", she is relieved, but he is disappointed "It was evident that the effort of speaking had been much greater than her studied composure betrayed, and that at his first word of reassurance she had dropped back into the usual." Does Newland underestimate May? His descriptions of her: "youthful limpidity", "vacant serenity". - Is that really May? At that meeting with Ellen on his return to NY, Newland admits that May thinks he wants"to marry her at once to get away from "someone that I care for more". May stays a mystery only revealed through Newland's ideas about her.
That scene in chapter 18 does reveal the real Ellen. She is resolved to the fate that has been contrived for her, whereas Newland seems so naive - "We've no right to lie to other people or to ourselves...do you see me marrying May after this?" Ellen now has the read on NY society and sees that any chance they had has passed, a knowledge sealed by the arrival of the telegram announcing permission to marry May immediately. What might have been different if Beaufort had not shown up to break up that meeting at the Patroon's old house?
The scene with "Granny" Mingott is chilling, the puppet master herself taunting Newland, "why in the world didn't you marry my little Ellen?"
I absolutely gasped throughout chapter 18. Just one long gasp.
I'm struck by Wharton's decision to have May, seemingly out of nowhere, give Newland a way out by asking if he loves someone else. She admits she's noticed he's been acting differently, but it's as if she willing to let him go (I think this is what he tells Ellen), even after all the public steps they've taken in this process. It's fascinating in terms of May's character (is she being kind or somehow "dutiful" or is she not serious?) but also for the position in which it puts Newland. Suddenly he's given a pathway to follow his desire, but he blames Ellen's marriage for continuing to block the way (a block he so earnestly recommended). He seems to go back and forth between wanting Ellen and making sure he cannot have her, like he'd rather live with the frustrated desire than to destroy the Society life he thinks he hates but to which he continues to show loyalty. I think Newland WANTS to think he'd have the courage to break with Society's expectations, but is relieved that he "cannot." So this passionate outburst allows him to be honest in some ways, but he's safe in knowing it can only go up to a point. He's trapped (by design). He's the guy in the hotdog suit saying "we're all trying to find the guy who did this!"
And to answer your question, I think Ellen loves Newland because he is the only person who has shown any real attention or capacity for listening to her, besides Beaufort (who I'm guessing doesn't "get" her at all). Newland sees her in a way a doofus like Beaufort can't. AND there's a safety in it because he's engaged to her cousin, it's out of reach. Whereas with Beaufort, even if he treats her well, she's only just another mistress, a position drastically lower than what she (ostensibly) means to Newland. Wharton is using Beaufort as a foil to make Newland seem kinder, wiser, more respectful, more "real" re: his perception of her.
One more thing...the "red meteor against the snow" shows Wharton dipping into some the imagery she used so effectively in Ethan Frome.