The Age of Innocence

The Age of Innocence (unabridged) by Edith Wharton. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, 1997. [ED. Glenn Mott. Dover Thrift Editions]

This book was originally published in 1920.

Two ideas stand out to me from reading this book:

1) This is a story of a man who got married to someone that he realized was exactly the same as everyone else in New York society when he met her cousin, the Countess Olenska. He fell in love with the countess because, as in the end, he said of her, “Lovely? I don’t know. She was different” (230).

His son replied, “Ah—there you have it! That’s what it always comes to, doesn’t it? When she comes, she’s different—and one doesn’t know why” (230-231).

When I read that, it occurred to me that the reason I fell in love with the man that I married was because I felt that he was different, and different in a good way. I still feel that way about him, and have always thought that even if my feelings for him fade or die, I’ll still like him because of who he is: he’s different.

2) This is also the story of the same man who found joy and self-respect after he choose to give up the countess and be faithful to his wife and children. Though he had also had to live with the regret of marrying someone who kept his horizons narrow because of her own blindness to the possibilities in life (and lack of imagination and the inability to grow as a person), and of never again seeing the woman he thought was different and felt passionately about, he had really mourned for his wife later in life when she passed away. It seems that he had developed a love for her by choosing to love her. His thought ultimately was, “Their long years together had shown him that it did not so much matter if marriage was a dull duty, as long as it kept the dignity of a duty: lapsing from that, it became a mere battle of ugly appetites” (225).

This idea is also given in John 15:10-11:

“If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.”