The
Blind Self-Destruction of Romanticism and Character
in “The Age of Innocence”
Edith
Wharton’s “The Age of Innocence” is a tale of the blind self-destruction of romanticism
in a realist class society. In the 19th and early 20th
century the themes of romanticism and realism are being combined and played
with in literary works. With completely different notions, realist and romantic
characters clash and wage war until the finale. This usually ends with the
romantic’s blind self-destruction for someone he loves or an idea to which they
feel impassioned. Such is the case with Newland Archer who, despite his beliefs
of being knowledgably beyond society, in the end cannot contend with his realist
wife.
Through
the story is the running theme of Faust. We
first meet Newland Archer at an opera’s production of Faust. Like this
character, Archer prides himself on being an intellectual scholar tired of the
dystopian society he lives in. He initially views May Welland, his eventual
wife, as an innocent life that he can initiate into his world of what he considers
the realities and familiarize her with the great literatures read by a Switzerland
lake so that she could develop an intellectual wit to hold her own amongst the
married woman and attract male attention before playfully discouraging it. He
has wildly romantic notions of sweeping his wife off her feet for private
literary readings and playful flirtations, of being her savior from her old
ways and teaching her to become worldly in knowledge.
All of his plans
are laid ready until the mesmerizing Ellen returns to town and she is
everything that May is not. She has separated from her Polish husband, taken up
a paramour with secret rendezvous in European apartment flats. She is the Helen
of Troy, the Aphrodite to his Faust. With Ellen, he is at first shocked at her
nerve but soon finds it endearing and passionate. Like Faust, he makes a deal
with his devil for knowledge and worldly pleasures. She is more than he could
ever create May to be.
While Archer is
distracted chasing Ellen, May is left to her own devices. He doesn’t see how
she is becoming a perfect society lady, growing colder and more calculating
each day. Enamored by his romantic ideas, he believes May is a blank slate that
he can set aside and simply pick back up later to continue her growth. But she
is not as innocent as he believes. Archer is unknowingly grooming his demise. He
loathes the New York society for their treatment of Ellen and new ideas. He has
intellectual curiosity and seeks passion but lacks the intensity that drives
Faust to actually experience the great damnation or redemption of classical or
Goethe’s Faust. He becomes roped to the very idea that he despises but lacks
the strength and passion to break free of May’s hold.
Archer, too
emboldened with his passion, unsuspectingly allows himself to be reeled back in
and tethered like an unruly dog. His own desire and pursuit for romanticism has
created the very thing that could hold him back. Left to her devices, May
becomes increasingly aristocratic forming to the ideals of the surrounding society.
This illuminates the relationship between literary themes. The ideas of
romanticism and realism cannot exist without the other. But neither can they
both exist together. Romantic characters cannot contend in a realist society.
Their notions of love and life cannot fit into the strict parameters of
realism. On a character level, this novel represents the ability for blind self-destruction
and illustrates the outcome of societal conformity and destruction of dreams
and, eventually, of the self. In the end Archer couldn’t bear to meet Ellen,
the girl whom, years before, he would have given his life.
