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The Age of Innocence Summary
Edith Wharton

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The Age of Innocence Summary

Book 1: Chapters 1 - 9

The book opens as members of old New York society gather at the opera. Although they have not come to the opera together, Newland Archer rests his gaze on his fiancée, May Welland. He considers her innocence and how he will educate and enlighten her, so that she can become his ideal woman. A stir is created when May's cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska, arrives in the Wellands' box. She married a Polish Count and lived in Europe until she left her husband, reportedly with his secretary. By inviting her to their opera box, the Wellands knowingly risk becoming the subject of gossip.

Newland thinks about the Welland family matriarch, Catherine Mingott, who is a powerful figure in New York society. Catherine is an enormous woman, whose weight prevents her from leaving her house. Still, she is a respected and animated member of her community.

During intermission, Newland visits... View more of the The Age of Innocence Summary

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Encyclopedia Articles (1)

The Age of Innocence

5,189 words, approx. 18 pages

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton Edith Wharton was born January 24, 1862, into a family known as one of the pillars of New York society. Her parents, George Frederic Jones and Lucretia Stevens... Read more

Project Gutenberg eBooks (1)

The Age of Innocence

89,812 words, approx. 300 pages

I. On a January evening of the early seventies, Christine Nilsson was singing in Faust at the Academy of Music in New York. Though there was already talk of the erection, in remote metropolitan distan... Read more

Edith Wharton Biography (8)

Edith Wharton

11,246 words, approx. 38 pages

Biography EssayWhile at the close of her career Edith Wharton was sometimes regarded as passe, a literary aristocrat whose fiction about people of high social standing had little to tell about the mas... Read more

Edith Wharton

398 words, approx. 2 pages

Edith Wharton (1861-1937), American author, chronicled the life of affluent Americans between the Civil War and World War I.Edith Wharton was born Edith Newbold Jones in New York City, probably on Jan... Read more

Edith Wharton

3,575 words, approx. 12 pages

During the early decades of the twentieth century--at a time when New York City could ban women from smoking in public--one American woman published works which discussed love outside of marriage, sca... Read more

Edith (Newbold Jones) Wharton

3,074 words, approx. 11 pages

The breadth of Edith Wharton's achievement makes definition of her place in literary history difficult. For fifty years she wrote prolifically, and her audience ranged from scholars to readers of popu... Read more

Edith (Newbold Jones) Wharton

10,899 words, approx. 37 pages

Perhaps the most striking thing about Edith Wharton 's reputation as a novelist is the fact that she has been "reclaimed" so many times. This fact seems all the more remarkable when one reflects that... Read more

Edith (Newbold Jones) Wharton

10,890 words, approx. 37 pages

While at the close of her career Edith Wharton was sometimes regarded as passe, a literary aristocrat whose fiction about people of high social standing had little to tell about the masses, particul... Read more

Edith (Newbold Jones) Wharton

9,072 words, approx. 31 pages

Although Edith Wharton is better known as a novelist than a short-story writer, she was in fact writing and publishing stories well before her debut as a novelist in 1902. Her first published story ... Read more

Edith (Newbold Jones) Wharton

9,410 words, approx. 32 pages

Henry James observed in an August 1902 letter to Edith Wharton's sister-in-law, Mrs. Cadwalader Jones, that Wharton "must be tethered in native pastures, even if it reduces her to a back-yard in New Y... Read more

Essays & Analysis (11)

Archer in "The Age of Innocence"

1,202 words, approx. 5 pages

The endings of books are commonly viewed as a means of providing closure to the conflict previously aroused in the text. However, an ending may be simply a way of epitomizing a quality of a character... Read more

Character Analysis of The Age of Innocence

1,124 words, approx. 4 pages

The characters in The Age of Innocence are portrayed as tragic victims of cruel social conventions. Each of them have an effect on the other and that is what captures your attention. Newland is the pr... Read more

Archer in "the Age of Innocence"

1,202 words, approx. 5 pages

The Age of Innocence

2,401 words, approx. 9 pages

Wharton's "ironic masterpiece", written in 1920 but based in the 1870's, may be argued to be critical of the "old New York" in which she grew up in, or may be a nostalgic, sentimental remembrance of h... Read more

Culture Prevails

1,453 words, approx. 5 pages

In The Age of Innocence, Wharton makes significant commentary criticizing the society of New York. Society plays a major role in the lives of the novel's characters. Most people, in the New York s... Read more

Values in Age of Innocence

1,238 words, approx. 5 pages

At the last part of the story, when Newland Archer is in his fifties, he is already reduced to a man who is too old and weak to breathe in the atmosphere where Ellen lives. The thriving trees and t... Read more

The Age of Innocence: Responsibility to Self Vs. Responsibility to Others

256 words, approx. 1 pages

In the novel, all but one character are bound to the status quo and code of society. It seems as though their own personal passions and thoughts are unimportant compared to those of those who judge th... Read more

Suppression of Individuality in 'the Age of Innocence'

1,007 words, approx. 4 pages

The `Age of Innocence' shows a society so controlled by manners and customs that individuality must be repressed. In the `Age of Innocence', Martin Scorsese portrays a society so controlled by manner... Read more

Blunt Indications

1,217 words, approx. 5 pages

When focusing on any character's actions in a story, a direct correlation appears between each event and that person's characteristics. In one such instance, Edith Wharton's protagonist, Newland Arche... Read more

Newland's Motivations in "The Age of Innocence"

804 words, approx. 3 pages

The ending of the Age of Innocence movie shows that many things have changed in the years that have passed since Ellen left New York and went back to Europe.Newland refused to meet Ellen after all the... Read more

Society Vs. Freedom in the Age of Innocence

1,066 words, approx. 4 pages

The 1870's in New York was a period of social repression and ideological conformity. In the novel The Age of Innocence, the author, Edith Wharton, makes these American struggles evident through her us... Read more

Free Book Notes (1)

The Age of Innocence

18,747 words, approx. 63 pages

The Age of Innocence Book Notes is a free study guide on The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. Browse the summary below: Author Biography / Context of the Work One-Page Plot Summary... Read more

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