The Age of Innocence is a quintessential novel criticizing the practices and society of the Gilded age, while at the same time playing out as a modern book that showcases the more human side of the practices at hand. The book focuses on the story of Newland Archer and his high class fiancee May. Through the plot, Archer develops feelings for his wife’s exotic cousin Ellen, and attempts to create repeated trysts with her. In Claudia Pierpoint’s writing, she also picks up on the critical nature of the Edith Wharton’s piece, and how it displays the hypocrisy of the time period where men must place familial duty above love and women are almost naught but gifts to be sold off to the right families and people. Furthermore, Claudia also creates parallels between the plot of the piece and the events of Edith Wharton’s life at the time. At the time of the writing, Edith was rather disillusioned with the concrete practices of marriage and the rigid social standards set in place after abandonment from suitors and her own divorce. Through Edith’s writing, that disillusionment can be seen from the point where May become irrelevant to Archer as he pursues her cousin Ellen. Perhaps one of the most interesting points Pierpoint made, however, is on that of Edith’s straightforward writing style. Many novelists at the time were experimenting with “experimental prose” in an attempt to make their own writing style unique. As can be seen with the Age of Innocence, Edith prefers a very direct and straightforward method of writing, most likely to bring attention towards her characters, whose nuances drive the plot forward in unexpected ways. It almost seemed hypocritical of Edith to criticize these novelists trying to break the mold, as her novels both crash against the conformist nature of society at the time.

Overall, Pierpoint’s analysis of The age of Innocence juxtaposed against the personal events of Edith Wharton’s life at the time make for an extremely compelling and well supported composition. Between her spot on description of the critical nature of the novel against the Gilded age, an area of society that Edith was well acquainted with, or her dissemination of Edith’s straightforward prose, it can be said with confidence that Pierpoint understood Edith’s writing style, as well as the message she was sending.

I was particularly intrigued by the first chapter of Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. Wharton lays out the setting with such fluidity and elegance, talking about the extravagance of the New York City “high-life” and using a very descriptive writing style. Written from a third-person perspective, the biography is very objective and also has very strong narrative qualities. Wharton uses a very delightful and humorous tone, especially when remarking upon Mrs. Manson Mingott’s “monstrous obesity” in addition to criticizing societal expectations/norms. Wharton’s establishment of the setting in the first chapter provides the reader with a strong sense of the time period and the attitude/mindset present in that particular time period. She also uses phrase quotations very liberally, which conveys a slightly sarcastic attitude. For example, Wharton writes, “But, in the first place, New York was a metropolis, and perfectly aware that in metropolises it was ‘not the thing’ to arrive early at the opera; and what was or was not ‘the thing’ played a part as important in Newland Archer’s New York as the inscrutable totem terrors that had ruled the destinies of his forefathers thousands of years ago.” In this context, her use of quotations to describe what is socially acceptable illustrates Wharton’s sarcastic criticism of the time period.

I believe that Claudia Pierpont accurately analyzes Edith Wharton’s writing style in The Age of Innocence. In her biography of Wharton from American Rhapsody, Pierpont spends a lot of time discussing Claudia’s personal life. She describes, in great detail, how Wharton grew up, what her childhood was like, what illnesses she was suffering from during the publications of each of her literary works, etc. Pierpont observes that Claudia’s upperclass upbringing is not very characteristic of “the life of a writer.” She also talks about the time in Wharton’s life when she suffered from hysteria and how her experiences shaped her writing when she got better.

In Claudia Roth Pierpont’s novel, American Rhapsody, she discusses Edith Wharton in her first chapter. Her analysis on the particularly fruitful and successful 19th Century writer who lived “hardly a writer’s life at all” contained a significant amount of criticism in contrast to the abundance of praise she received during her lifetime and well past her death.  Despite the fact that her opinions may be regarded “in the minority”, Pierpont makes an array of valid points regarding Wharton’s writing upon reading The Age of Innocence.

The Age of Innocence was a piece written by Wharton late in her life at a time when she was already an author held in high regard. The way she writes transports the reader to a time much different from ours today where New York societal norms and ethics reigned supreme and dictated the lives of all those involved, especially the rich and wealthy who were put up to these standards and looked up to to maintain this lifestyle. It describes Count Olenksa, a woman who left her sad marriage and abusive husband in Europe and scandalously returns to her home of New York. The protagonist, Newland Archer comes from a less regarded (comparative to the Mingotts) family according to New York society and falls in love with Count Olenska despite being engaged to her cousin. The way Pierpont analyzes Wharton’s writing by drawing from her past experiences makes sense in this case. Wharton was abandoned by two suitors at a young age and left to marry into a loveless, “disastrous”, emotionless marriage; similar to Count Olenska. Her experience living in this high-class society is portrayed quite accurately in The Age of Innocence. 

Overall, Pierpont did understand Wharton’s mature writing style as she breaks down the way she develops her works in conjunction with her life events (divorce, abandonment). Wharton’s writing is heavily influenced by her past living in rigid high-class society. Ironically, because of this, Pierpont declares that Wharton is not a feminist despite the way she portrayed women in an unconventional light.

In Claudia Roth Pierpont’s novel American Rhapsody, she makes some interesting and valid point on her analysis of Edith Wharton and her work The Age of Innocence. Pierpont goes on to describe the early life and childhood of Wharton, and how she grew up as a socialite being forced to follow society’s expectation of the upper rank in 1800s New York City. Wharton was unconventional in many ways, including her views and thinking on marriage. She believed courtship was a waste of time and adultery was something to not be frowned upon, which was very unusual for a woman in her time and class. Having experienced these ideas herself, adultery and corrupt marriage seem to be a recurring theme in her novels as stated by Claudia. In addition, Edith Wharton uses “negative heroes” to be protagonists in her novel, as seen in The Age of Innocence, where the main character goes back and forth between two women in which he struggles to find happiness but commits sins throughout the process.

Claudia Pierpont points out Edith Wharton’s literal writing style, describing it as satirical with dark context and deeper thinking. This appears to be true from my perspective as well, since Wharton writes novels based on her negative experiences growing up in the environment that she did. As someone who was expected to follow certain morales that she did not exactly agree with, she incorporated that into her writing and adds humor, almost as if she was making fun of the standards of society and mocking them. She also disagrees with what in her time was considered to be a modern style of writing, and goes against the conventional way by being more self reflective and asking herself questions not necessarily targeted towards the reader. It feels as if she is analyzing her own thoughts as she writes her work. I believe Claudia Pierpont gave a fairly accurate description of Edith Wharton’s reasoning style of writing for The Age of Innocence.

The Age of Innocence is written in third-person perspective, but it is easy to forget that it is third-person. The thoughts and attitudes of Edith Wharton are felt throughout the initial chapters of The Age of Innocence. Edith Wharton is clearly someone who pays very close attention to social structures. For example, in the first chapter Newland Archer appears to be a rogue from the social norm. He enters the opera fashionably late, for reasons that even the narrator has trouble justifying. He can be described as cosmopolitan, being aware “that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences”, rather than being a “chosen [specimen] of old New York gentility.” But, as soon as Newland Archer begins talking about his future fiancee, “he contemplated her absorbed young face with a thrill of possessorship in which pride in his own masculine initiation was mingled with a tender reverence for her abysmal purity.” His immediate reaction is to return to the old New York gentility narrative on marriage, by treating his future wife like an object that must be presented before everyone else. This is just from the first chapter of her novel. In the following chapters, Edith Wharton goes on to discuss more and more social structures, especially within the confines of a marriage. Having read another novel by Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, I am aware of Wharton’s ability and tendency to describe the subtleties of societal structures within a marriage. In Ethan Frome, the main plot line was between the strained marriage of Zeena and Ethan Frome, as well as Ethan’s desire to return to normalcy, which lead him to fall in love with Zeena’s cousin, Mattie. As Wharton writes, her emotion is palpable and distinctishable, so much so that it is easy to assume that these stories are very personal to her.

I do believe that Claudia Roth Pierpont did accurately identify Edith Wharton’s writing style. Pierpont argues that Wharton’s style of writing was heavily influenced by her past. Wharton was born and grew up in a very aristocratic family in New York, where at least appearing to societal norms was mandatory. But one thing that Edith Wharton did that defied societal norms was her marriage, which she blamed her mother for. Wharton claimed that her marriage was an “‘inconceivable thing’” and lived in celibacy (14). It is easy to see how her marriage has influenced her writing. For example, in The Age of Innocence, Wharton focuses on the Newland Archer’s relationship with May Welland, but also highlights that Archer’s decision to marry is conformity to the New York gentility that he claims that he is not part of. Wharton wrote Ethan Frome because of a “fear of being buried alive, in the snows of massachusetts, with a husband to whom her only remaining emotional tie was pity and whose behavior was increasingly unbalanced”(28). Pierpont also argues that Wharton tends to analyze the undertones of society. Pierpont states that “readers are apt to be struck with the exposure of far-more-everyday varieties of horror” (14). In Edith Wharton’s short story “Beatrice Palmato”, Pierpont recognizes that some of the horrors that are exposed are “moral cowardice; being unloved or unloving; making rational compromises in order to live and discovering that one has reasoned one’s life away; and enduring unendurable loneliness”(14). Overall Pierpont is able to accurately identify and describe Edith Wharton’s writing style.

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.

I particularly enjoyed reading The Age of Innocence because Edith Wharton writes with fluidity and a great attention to detail.  One of my favorite aspects of Wharton’s writing, besides her eloquent and elaborate syntax, is her ability to describe everything in great detail without making her work seem mundane and uninteresting. Her style of writing makes the story not only easy to follow but also enjoyable for the reader. Likewise, the reader is also able to relate to the storyline because it encases topics that are all too familiar: love, a failing marriage, society, and New York City. With the style of writing as well as the themes in The Age of Innocence, I can’t help but think back to when I read The Great Gatsby and Anna Karenina, with all three works sharing striking similarities.

In the beginning of American Rhapsody, Claudia Pierpont discusses Edith Wharton’s work. The information in her essay about Wharton’s life gives the reader a much clearer and more genuine view when reading The Age of Innocence.  One thing that stood out to me the most in the essay, was the statement that Wharton thought marriage to be awful and divorce to be even worse. The reason that I was so struck by this part is that Wharton’s view on marriage is so unconventional especially for a woman during her time and even in this day in age. By including this information in her essay, Pierpont gave me a new perspective on Wharton and made me understand her choice of storyline even more. So, I agree with Pierpont’s views on Wharton’s work, especially when she describes it as slightly feminist because a woman decides to take a stand against society’s standards.

In American Rhapsody by Claudia Roth Pierpont, Claudia illustrates Wharton’s background, her works of literature and how they both intertwine to produce books that are now part of American classics. She executes a nearly impeccable job of not only categorizing Wharton’s writing style, but also demonstrating the influence that Wharton’s personal beliefs and background and how that infiltrated her writings.

Many of Claudia’s interpretations of Wharton are shown in Wharton’s writings such as in one of her most renowned books called The Age of Innocence that won the Pulitzer Award for “representing the wholesome American life”. Claudia believed that Wharton’s intentions for this book was meant to be satirical since Wharton wanted to prevent her readers from confining within the bounds of traditions and customs while simultaneously raising awareness and breaking the social stereotype by putting your personal happiness before social norm. This was clearly shown in the book when Newland was attracted to the unpredictable and mysterious countess Ellen but he was engaged to the reserved and detached May. Since divorce was considered taboo, the social standard was for Newland to go on with his life as planned before he met Ellen. Newland knew and kept his duty so instead of pursuing his personal happiness, he decided to suppress it by giving in to societal expectations on how a person should act at this place and time. Claudia believed that Wharton was very well aware of the social standards so she decide to cleverly frame her writings into satires that indirectly attack this very notion and initiate a calling for an immediate change. Claudia thought that Wharton was very good at “showing the deforming effects of social history on the human female by scrutinizing the dreadful methods that she has been constrained to use to obtain trivial things that she has been taught to want.” Her statement was accurately reflected when May attempts to use the pregnancy tactic in convincing Newland to stay by her side while discouraging Ellen from continuing the affair with Newland. The pregnancy tactic would be the dreadful method that was induced and the trivial things that [May] has been taught to want would be the unrequited love between her and Newland. Claudia believes that Wharton, being the independent and undivided woman that she is, wanted to appeal to the both female and male readers. For the females, they shouldn’t accept the love that they do not deserve–using shabby tactics to try to capture a man who is already one step out the door, and for men, they should not feel obligated to stay with a woman when the heart does not consider her to be home. In doing so, this would only lead a state of loneliness and deprivement of personal happiness.Claudia also stated that “Wharton has an ability to make make us love and hate the weak, manipulative, pitiful, dangerous and beautiful creatures that this history produced”. May’s scheming tactics still left the readers rooting for her. The readers willingly know that the tactics that May uses is wrong and immoral yet the readers still love and root for the couple who confines most with societal norm since readers often crave and yearn for things and people who seem familiar.

In American Rhapsody, Claudia Roth Pierpont accurately describes Edith Wharton’s writing style in the Age of Innocence. Pierpont’s analysis of Wharton’s style includes the fact that Wharton was very heavily influenced by her past, that she wrote with a “complex mixture of warmth and loathing,” and that Wharton’s style was considered old fashioned by the early 20^th Century (aka. the movement towards modernity). Edith Wharton grew up in a wealthy family in New York City during the late 1800s. She lived in a world where traditions and social acceptance and approval were very important, like the world that The Age of Innocence takes place in. Just as the protagonist, Newland Archer, Wharton was not happy in her marriage and actually lived with her husband for 28 years in celibacy. Also, like Archer, Wharton found comfort in the arms of another who she was not wed to, Morton Fullerton.

Wharton also wrote with a “complex mixture of warmth and loathing” in that she had a “negative hero” as the protagonist in the novel. For her, “novels were about character,” which is obvious in the way she wrote about the constant longing and emotional struggle of Newland Archer in his love for a woman he was not married to. This makes readers sympathize for Archer to some degree, however many would also dislike him for his lying and adulterous ways. Pierpont also mentions that Wharton wrote in an old fashioned manner and certainly rejected the modern style of writing – which included more self-reflection and exposed mental processes. Wharton clearly does have a more blunt and ironic writing style that Pierpont claims kept her from “becoming the great writer she could have been,” however I do not believe that makes her any less fantastic as a writer.