The Age of Innocence

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The Age of Innocence
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The Age of Innocence

• There are only three or four American novelists
  who can be thought of as major--and Edith
  Wharton is one.
  --Gore Vidal
• The Age of Innocence is one of the few really
  first-class works of fiction to win the Pulitzer
  Prize. (It won in 1921.)
• 
  --RWB Lewis

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Major Themes

• The Individual vs. Society
• Desire vs. Duty
• Proprietorship and Wealth
• Innocence and Guilt
• Feigned Innocence/Concealed Guilt
• Being Polite vs. Telling the Truth
• Reality

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Wharton and the Novel

• Archer as autobiographical?
• Wharton herself a member (victim?) of Old New
  York society
• The long gaze back across the ruins of time

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Wharton and the Novel, Cont.

• Wharton wrote AOI almost as an aside, a respite
  from what she considered her real, more important
  creative work.
• She recalls in her autobiography, A Backward
  Glance, that her work on The Age of Innocence
  began in 1917, as she mourned the devastating
  consequences and losses of the war years. "I
  wanted to put into words," Wharton says, "the
  years of the war, as I had lived them in
  Paris...in all their fantastic heights and depths
  of self-devotion and ardour, of pessimism,
  triviality and selfishness."

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Wharton and the Novel, Cont.

• The book Wharton really wanted to write was to be
  called A Son at the Front.
• "But before I could...begin to deal objectively
  with the stored-up emotions of those years,"
  Wharton continues, "I had to get away from the
  present altogether.... I found a momentary escape
  in going back to my childish memories of a
  long-vanished America, and wrote The Age of
  Innocence.
• Originally conceived under the working title "Old
  New York

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Wharton and the Novel, cont.

• Wharton herself professed surprise that a novel
  so concerned with the minutiae of an already
  faded era was such a success.
• She admits in A Backward Glance that she had
  secretly agreed with the response to the book of
  her lifelong friend and companion Walter Berry.
• "Yes, it's good," Berry had said. "But of course
  you and I are the only people who will ever read
  it. We are the last people left who can remember
  New York and Newport as they were then, and
  nobody else will be interested."

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Wharton and the Novel, cont.

• The Age of Innocence represents the last stage of
  Whartons literary career.
• Wharton at her best when recalling the vanished
  social era.
• Only in the wake of WWI did Wharton begin to
  think of the New York society that shed been
  born into as Old New York.
• This shift is best illustrated in the character
  of Dallas.

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A Novel of Memories

• New York Opera houses, Washington Square,
  Central Park, the new Metropolitan Museum
• New Jersey Pennsylvania Terminus
• Newport the summer extension of New York
• Wharton remarked to her sister that she knew
  everything about the novel
• Wharton wrote what she knew.

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The Mount
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Aerial View of The Mount
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The Dining Room
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The Drawing Room
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Corridor
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I wanted a home of my own.
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Innocence Whats in a Name

• Comedy or Tragedy?
• Who is guilty and who is innocent?
• Is Innocence a pun on the Corruption of Old New
  York Society?
• Is Wharton Referring to her own Innocence?
• Innocence vs. Experience

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Characteristics of Comedy

• Aims to amuse
• Exposes limitations and trifles, often among
  societal groups.
• Usually deals with light drama
• Usually has a happy ending
• Features clowns, jokes, puns, wit
• Comedies of manners, errors, etc., (Shakespeare,
  Jane Austen, etc.)

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Comedy, cont.

• Strives to evoke smiles and laughter
• Wit and humor are employed
• Deals with people in their human state,
  restrained and often made difficult by their
  limitations
• Arises from some recognition of incongruity of
  speech, action, or character revelation.

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Characteristics of Tragedy

• Arouses emotions of pity and fear
• Produces in audience a catharsis of these
  emotions.
• Features a tragic hero, who is of noble
  character, struggles with an unalterable destiny,
  and possesses a tragic flaw.
• Protagonist is brought from happiness to misery.
• Tragic hero faces his destiny with courage and
  nobility of spirit.
• Usually ends unhappily, often with death.

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Tragedy, cont.

• Recounts an important and causally related series
  of events in the life of a person of significance
• What constitutes significance for the tragic hero
  is answered in each age by the concept of
  significance or importance held by that age.
• Events culminate in an unhappy catastrophe, the
  whole treated with great dignity and seriousness.

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Tragedy, cont.

• Emphasizes the significance of a choice made by
  the protagonist.
• Hamartia the error, frailty, mistaken judgment,
  or misstep through which the fortunes of the
  tragic hero are reversed.
• Aristotle It is their characters that give men
  their quality, but their doings that make them
  happy or the opposite.
• Ibsen concept of Middle Class tragedy, growing
  out of social problems/issues.

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The Gilded Age

• Mark Twain coined the term gilded age to
  represent late 19th-century America, meaning
  glittering on the surface, but rotten underneath.
• His book of the same name made fun of government
  officials, who were seen as mere figure heads in
  a time of great individual wealth, when America
  was ruled by tycoons rather than politicians.

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The Gilded Age A Tale of Today (1873)

• A novel by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
• Explores political and economic corruption in the
  United States.
• The central characters are tied together in a
  government railroad bribery scheme.
• Depicts an American society that, despite its
  appearance of promise and prosperity, is riddled
  with corruption and scandal.

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Preface to The Gilded Age A Tale of Today

• This book was not written for private circulation
  among friends it was not written to cheer and
  instruct a diseased relative of the authors it
  was not thrown off during intervals of wearing
  labor to amuse an idle hour. It was not written
  for any of these reasons, and therefore it is
  submitted without the usual apologies.

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Preface, cont

• It will be seen that it deals with an entirely
  ideal state of societyand the chief
  embarrassment of the writers in this realm of the
  imagination has been the want of illustrative
  examples. In a State where there is no fever of
  speculation, no inflamed desire for sudden
  wealth,where the poor are all simple-minded and
  contented, and the rich are all honest and
  generous, where society is in a condition of
  primitive purity and politics is the occupation
  of only the capable and the patriotic, there are
  necessarily no materials for such a history as we
  have constructed out of an ideal commonwealth.

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America in the Gilded Age

• The growth of industry and a wave of immigrants
  marked this period in American history.
• The production of iron and steel rose
  dramatically
• western resources like lumber, gold, and silver
  increased the demand for improved transportation.
  

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Americas Gilded Age, Cont.

• Modern Americas formative period, when an
  agrarian society of small producers was
  transformed into an urban society dominated by
  industrial corporations.
• The creation of a modern industrial economy and a
  national transportation and communication
  network.
• The corporation became the dominant form of
  business organization.
• A managerial revolution transformed business
  operations.

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Americas Industrial Age

• Industrial Revolution brought about rapid
  economic change in America.
• Railroad development boomed as trains moved goods
  from the resource-rich West to the East.
• Steel and oil were in great demand.
• John D. Rockefeller (in oil) and Andrew Carnegie
  (in steel), were known as robber barons
  (opportunists who got rich through ruthless
  business deals).
• Emphasis was very much on the individual.

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Spirit of Individuality

• AOI set in 1870s, just after the American
  Romantic Period and the American Civil War
• Individualism the most significant Romantic
  theme
• William Blake Songs of Innocence and Experience
• Thoreau Transcendentalism Walden
• Walt Whitman Song of Myself
• Wordsworth/Coleridge Lyrical Ballads
• Womens suffrage

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Individuality, cont.

• Darwins Origin of the Species Focus on
  Individual, Survival of the Fittest
• Locus of authority moved from the church
  (creation) to the self (evolution)
• Period witnessed the rise and professionalization
  of science, which seemed to conflict with
  religion.

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Individuality, cont.

• Meaning was imposed individually, for
  institutions and dogmas seemed to possess little
  truth.
• Reaction against the materialistic educational
  theories of Locke and rationalism.
• Truth more a matter of intuition and imagination
  than logic and reason.
• Result was a more organic view, which viewed the
  world more as dynamic and living.

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Effects of Civil War

• American Civil War had brought about significant
  change was fought on grounds of the individual
• Souths right to its own country and
  government Confederate States of America
• States rights to their own government
• Anti-Slavery All men are created equal

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Effects of Civil War, cont.

• North made wealthy due to need for railroads,
  weaponry, steel, etc.
• South crippled, as agrarian society gave way to
  industrialism, the center of which was the North
  with its factories and steel mills.
• Robber Barons flourished, taking advantage of
  the cultural shift and national need.

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The Vanderbilts

• Vanderbilt family prominent among robber
  barons railroad tycoons
• Van der Luydens probably based on Vanderbilts
• Wharton and her family were friendly with the
  Vanderbilts, as they belonged to the same social
  class.
• Whartons name on the register at Biltmore House

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Biltmore House
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Politics in the Gilded Age

• The Forgotten Presidents Ulysses S. Grant,
  Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield, Chester
  Arthur, Grover Cleveland, and Benjamin Harrison
• Americans today have trouble remembering their
  names, what they did for the country, or even in
  which era they served.
• Historians have suggested that these Gilded Age
  presidents were unexciting because Americans
  wanted to avoid bold politicians who might ruin
  the delicate peace established after the Civil
  War.

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Shades of Individuality Chautauqua

• Theodore Roosevelt called it "the most American
  thing in America,"
• Woodrow Wilson described it during World War I
  as an "integral part of the national defense,"
• William Jennings Bryan deemed it a "potent human
  factor in molding the mind of the nation."
• Conversely, Sinclair Lewis derided it as
  "nothing but wind and chaff and...the laughter of
  yokels.

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Chautauqua, cont.

• William James found it "depressing from its
  mediocrity."
• Critic Gregory Mason dismissed it as "infinitely
  easier than trying to think."
• However Chautauqua was characterized, it elicited
  strong reactions and emotions.

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What was Chautauqua?

• A summer camp for families that promised
  "education and uplift
• Founded in 1874 by a businessman and a Methodist
  minister.
• Began in western New York state on Lake
  Chautauqua.
• Originally focused on training Sunday school
  teachers, but quickly expanded to offer
  correspondence degrees in the United States.

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Chautauqua, cont.

• In less than a decade, independent Chautauquas,
  often called assemblies, sprang up across the
  country beside lakes and in groves of trees.
• The goal of the Circuit Chautauquas was to
  offer challenging, informational, and
  inspirational stimulation to rural and
  small-town America.

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What Chautauqua Offered

• A chance for the community to gather for three
  to seven days to enjoy a course of lectures, see
  classic plays and hear a variety of music from
  Metropolitan Opera stars to glee clubs.
• Many saw their first movies in the Circuit tents.
  
• Circuit Chautauqua experience was critical in
  stimulating thought and discussion on important
  political, social and cultural issues of the day.

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Characters in the Age of Innocence

• Archer Straight as an Arrow? Tragic hero? New
  Land?
• Mr Welland Hypochondriac Extraordinaire clown?
• Beaufort The Robber Baron
• Dr Carver Circuit Speaker Chautauqua
• May Welland Diana, the huntress, goddess of
  fertility? The height of spring?
• Old New York The Gargon?

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Characters, cont.

• Ellen variant of Helen?
• Dallas variant of Pallas, god of wisdom?
  (Father of Athena, goddess of wisdom archaic
  winged god) what his father longed to be? The
  child is the father of the man?
• Fanny Beaufort? The new Ellen?
• New New York, as seen through Dallas