Why this book

In 1921, this novel made Edith Wharton the first woman ever to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. She wrote it looking back at the vanished world of her childhood — an elegy for a society that ruled by ritual, and was destroyed by it.

The Story

The year is 1870s New York. At the opera sits Newland Archer, a proper young lawyer, newly and happily engaged to the lovely, innocent May Welland. His future is settled, respectable, and entirely predictable — therefore he believes himself perfectly content.

But that evening a stranger enters the box: Countess Ellen Olenska, May's cousin, returned from Europe after fleeing a cruel husband. The whole opera house stiffens at her daring dress and easy manner, therefore Newland feels the room turn cold with quiet judgment.

Society has already decided to punish Ellen for leaving her marriage, no matter the reason. Invitations are quietly refused, backs are turned. But Newland, sensing the cruelty of it, urges his own powerful family to stand publicly beside her instead.

Therefore the mighty van der Luydens host a dinner honoring Ellen, and the tribe reluctantly closes ranks. Newland even hastens the announcement of his engagement to May, hoping the news will steady the family and shield the countess from spreading gossip.

Ellen wishes to divorce her husband, Count Olenski, and be truly free. But the family dreads the scandal a divorce would drag through the newspapers, therefore they turn to Newland, the trusted lawyer, to talk her gently out of it.

Newland goes to Ellen meaning to defend the family's honor. But sitting with her, hearing how the world has wounded her, he finds himself defending her instead — then, against his own heart, gently advising her to give up the divorce.

She agrees, for his sake and the family's. But something has shifted in him. Talking with Ellen, Newland sees how narrow and airless his settled life truly is, therefore the innocent May begins to feel less like a bride than a beautiful trap.

Frightened by his own feelings, Newland travels to May in Florida and begs her to marry sooner. Clear-eyed, she asks whether he is running from someone else. He denies it, therefore, trusting him completely, she keeps to the family's slow, proper timetable.

Newland returns and pushes harder against the delay. But it is Ellen herself, unwilling to be the ruin of his happiness, who quietly persuades May's family to let the wedding come at once. Therefore Newland marries May, and the door seems to close forever.

On their honeymoon in Europe and after, Newland plays the perfect husband. But May's gentle, unchanging goodness begins to suffocate him. She sees only what she is meant to see, therefore he feels married to the whole watching tribe, not to one living woman.

Months later, near Newport, Ellen reappears in Newland's life. He goes to her, aching. Standing at the end of a wooden pier, he watches her at the shore's edge and swears he will not speak unless she turns to face him. But she never turns.

Still, they cannot stay apart. Meeting again, Newland finally confesses that he loves her, that May's airless world is slowly killing him. Ellen loves him too — but she will not let their happiness be built on the wound it would give innocent May.

He pleads for some place where they can simply belong to each other. As Wharton wrote, he tells her, 'Each time you happen to me all over again.' But Ellen answers, sadly, that such a place does not exist for people like them.

They bargain for one thing only: that Newland may come to her, once, before she leaves. But even as they cling to that single meeting, the tribe is already tightening its silent net around them both, therefore their small hope is quietly doomed.

May, who has watched everything with her mild, untroubled eyes, moves without ever raising her voice. She lets the family decide that Ellen must return to Europe, and arranges for the choice to seem Ellen's own — a farewell wrapped softly in kindness.

Therefore the Archers give a grand dinner in Ellen's honor. Smiling and gracious, the whole of New York gathers to see her off. But slowly Newland understands the truth: every guest believes he and Ellen were lovers, and this dinner is their execution.

He sees now that the tribe has known all along, judged in silence, and closed around him without a single word of accusation. He is bound hand and foot by good manners, therefore escape is impossible; the cage was never locked, yet he cannot leave it.

After the guests go, May tells Newland her news: she is expecting a child. She adds that she confided it to Ellen two weeks ago, before it was even certain. Therefore Newland understands that May, so quietly, has already won everything.

Ellen sails for Paris and does not return. Newland stays, and lets the current of ordinary life carry him along. He becomes a good husband, a good father, a respected man — but the door he never opened stands always at the edge of his mind.

Twenty-six years pass. May dies, gentle to the very end, having never once named the thing between them. Newland is old now, his children grown, his world remade by a faster, freer age. And still Ellen lives, in Paris, alone.

His son takes him to Paris and reveals a secret: May, on her deathbed, said his father was a man who gave up the thing he most wanted for his family. Therefore the son has arranged for them both to call on the Countess Olenska.

They come to Ellen's building at dusk. The son climbs the stairs. But Newland sits alone on a bench below her lighted window, and cannot bring himself to go up to the woman he has loved, in silence, for thirty long years.

For a while he watches the window, imagining her as she once was. Then, telling himself the memory is more real than she could ever be now, he rises. But instead of climbing the stairs, he turns and walks slowly back to his hotel, alone.

What it means

The age of innocence was never truly innocent. Wharton shows a society so afraid of feeling that it dressed cowardice as duty and called renunciation virtue. Newland's tragedy is that he obeyed — and mistook the safe, unlived life for the noble one.

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