In Claudia Pierpont’s essay on both the life and writing style of Edith Wharton, I found the observations made about the author to be very accurate upon observing the prose and themes of Wharton’s twelfth novel The Age of Innocence. The novel itself focuses on the relationship that socially prominent lawyer Newland Archer has with his socialite fiancee and wife May, and the love he has for her exotic and alluring cousin, Ellen. While ostensibly the novel is a very sad and occasionally ironically funny novel about a man caught between two paths in love and life, the novel as a whole focuses more on the hypocrisies and shallowness of high-class society during the Gilded Age. I feel that Pierpont addresses these themes in her writing by discussing the themes present in Wharton’s other works as well as the life experiences of the author. She also discusses the prose of the author, which I found to correspond to her work’s themes, the constraints that Wharton experienced within society, and in her views on writing styles.
One aspect of The Age of Innocence that I found noteworthy was the theme of the dissolution of marriage and relationships, which is present in Wharton’s other works. Pierpont highlights that this occurred in the author’s personal life, as she experienced both abandonment by suitors and divorce. The description of the high-society in the novel is also certainly very detailed and elaborate. The familiarity that the author had with the Gilded Age came from her high-class upbringing in New York City, and therefore Wharton can criticize it so well. In terms of style, I found Pierpont’s mention of Wharton’s disdain for the experimental prose (especially stream of consciousness) found in such authors’ work as that of James Joyce to be very interesting. Wharton hated the way that these authors would attempt to make their overall style unique, instead preferring a very straightforward and direct writing style. This connects with the themes present in her work in terms of being “boxed in” in a oftentimes judgmental society, as one could argue that the themes of conformity are very important in the plot of her novels. Wharton probably disliked experimental prose because she felt it distracted from characters, which she felt was the main focus of novels. On a side note not associated with the Pierpont analysis, I found some of the major themes of The Age of Innocence to coincide with those of American Psycho, in terms of people being very shallow and focusing on the appearances of others. Both novels are also critiques of the problems inherent in high-class and wealthy societies, which shows the commonality of some of the issues addressed in literature. Overall, Pierpont’s analysis is both interesting and important to address because it shows how an author’s work can be so greatly influenced by the intricacies of her environment, and then have those influences be reflected explicitly in her work, which creates a rather “meta” effect.
