The Age Of Innocence Gender Roles Essay
The current unit is entitled “The Gender Roles Unit”. Because of this, I assumed that The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, would be a feminist piece. When I first began reading it did not strike me as a feminist work. This in part is due to the contrast between our current society and the society set in the book. The representation of women within the novel were upsetting until I realized that I was unfairly judging it through a modern lens, as though this book from decades ago was supposed to somehow represent modern ideals perfectly. That is when I did the same thing of looking at the characters with a more open mind while also taking the constraints of the society they were in, in mind. However, it became clear upon further reading
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Newland Archer has been raised into a world where manners and moral codes dictate how the individual will act, and in some cases, even think. One of the individual's foremost duties is to promote and protect the solidarity of his or her tightly knit group of blood and marital relationships. In the second chapter of the book, Archer is expected, despite his initial unwillingness to associate with the scandal-garnering Countess Olenska, to enter the Mingott family's opera box in order to support their decision to bring the Countess out in public. Later in the novel, when Ellen wishes to reclaim her freedom by divorcing her husband, she is discouraged from this action because the family fears unpleasant gossip. Wharton is quick to demonstrate how easy it is to find loopholes in the code of Old New York. Another one of her large themes is that appearances are seldom in line with realities. Hypocrisy runs rampant in Old New York. The upstanding families who so eagerly attend Julius Beaufort's balls, who depend on his lavish hospitality as the center of their social activities, are the same ones who continually disdain his "commonness". This profound sense of irony lead me to the question of Wharton's choice of title. One of the questions I would like to ask my group is,To what extent is the era of Old New York truly an "Age of Innocence"? Wharton's title is neither purely earnest
Newland Archer has been raised into a world where manners and moral codes dictate how the individual will act, and in some cases, even think. One of the individual's foremost duties is to promote and protect the solidarity of his or her tightly knit group of blood and marital relationships. In the second chapter of the book, Archer is expected, despite his initial unwillingness to associate with the scandal-garnering Countess Olenska, to enter the Mingott family's opera box in order to support their decision to bring the Countess out in public. Later in the novel, when Ellen wishes to reclaim her freedom by divorcing her husband, she is discouraged from this action because the family fears unpleasant gossip. Wharton is quick to demonstrate how easy it is to find loopholes in the code of Old New York. Another one of her large themes is that appearances are seldom in line with realities. Hypocrisy runs rampant in Old New York. The upstanding families who so eagerly attend Julius Beaufort's balls, who depend on his lavish hospitality as the center of their social activities, are the same ones who continually disdain his "commonness". This profound sense of irony lead me to the question of Wharton's choice of title. One of the questions I would like to ask my group is,To what extent is the era of Old New York truly an "Age of Innocence"? Wharton's title is neither purely earnest