sumptuous Golden Age of Old New York, a time when society people “dreaded scandal more than disease.”
This is Newland Archer’s world as he prepares to marry the beautiful but conventional May Welland. But when the mysterious Countess Ellen Olenska returns to New York after a disastrous marriage, Archer falls deeply in love with her. Torn between duty and passion, Archer struggles to make a decision that will either courageously define his life—or mercilessly destroy it."
A truly mesmerising and brilliant book. Easily one of my favourite books...ever.
The inhabitants of this hothouse of New York society is built on wealth, life is lavish, easy and comfortably cushioned, but this world may just as well have been covered in a blanket of cobwebs, as the lives are so sedate and uneventfully dull, despite their opulent surroundings, they appear colourless and motionless. Wharton fills the book with heavy and intricate descriptions that make you feel as oppressed by status and things as the characters are.
It is ultimately a tragic tale that Wharton weaves, and yes, as with a lot of classic fiction based around love, it's told with air of melancholy because this love is one that doesn't really get off the ground. For Newland Archer, the leading male character, there is an imagining of an alternative existence to the one that convention has pressed upon him, he has built within himself a kind of sanctuary for his secret thoughts and longings. Within these walls are his bride to be, May Welland and Countess Olenska, who would change his whole world.
Archer is a perfect product of Old New York, a member of one of the most prominent, historic families. He is engaged to the young, beautiful, and equally impeccably bred May Welland, who is sweet sweet-natured but naive. After twelve years away returns the Countess Ellen Olenska, May’s cousin, who through no fault of her own upsets the balance of Newland's life. She is beautiful, vivacious and intelligent, whose long period of living in more liberal European surroundings has made her innocent of the nonsensical, unspoken rules of the society she has reentered, and incapable of maintaining the shallow facade of her female relatives. Newland feels a life of quiet misery lies ahead, and despairs over Olenska as they grow closer and closer, because he is forced, by his own realisation, to know how Ellen will be treated if she dares to divorce her husband, and advises against it, even though he is devoured by love for her.
Wharton mesmerises with the sheer depth of emotion, pain, and frustration bearing down on Newland's shoulders. Yet much of the romance seems to by symbolic. Both Newland and Countess Olenska represent something to the other. To Newland, Olenska represents a freedom from restraints and convention that is constantly bearing down on him and suffocationg his life of any meaning. To Olenska, Newland represents her idealised comforting fantasy of the chivalrous New Yorker. They cannot be together, not only because of societies condemnation, but because if they acted on their desires the spell that each had woven around the other would snap. This this romance becomes so much more important then merely a personal experience. It is emblematic of the changes of society and the inner conflict of our own ideals.
It's as important as it is beautifully written. Wharton casts an eye over the New York society, both disdainful and affectionate. There are truly, as strange as it sounds, laugh out loud moments in this book. Where Wharton's razor sharp wit and brilliant command of the English languages cuts through human foibles in a highly amusing way.
Incorporating issues of female emancipation into the story, never has the idea of a woman enslaved by marriage and convention seemed so unattractive from a male perspective. Newland Archer is full of modernity and the call of new ideas, while is still often trapped in the same traditions and stuffy morality.
It's hard to read the ending of this book without feeling emotional, but the exact emotion may differ with your interpretation. Ambiguity reigns supreme as this novel finds its close and even the coldest of unromantics will surely have their hearts pulled along. One of my favourite tragic love affairs.
Age Rating 14+ Nothing out of the ordinary and the language is surprisingly accessible for the time period.
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