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 19^th and early 20^th 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.