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Abstract: Edith Wharton is one of the greatest and successful writers in American literary history. The publication of her novel The Age of Innocence is considered as a cultural event in the United States and England. The success of The Age of Innocence benefits from Wharton’s unique narrative techniques. With the use of rhetoric strategies like intertextuality, structure unknown, irony and symbols, Wharton shows the readers a vivid picture of New York in different times, which is the representation of the history.
Key words: narrative techniques; intertextuality; structure unknown; irony; symbols
The success of The Age of Innocence benefits from Wharton’s unique narrative techniques. With the use of rhetoric strategies like intertextuality, structure unknown, irony and symbols, Wharton shows the readers a vivid picture of New York in different times, which is the representation of the history. At the same time, the theme of the novel is well depicted.
1.Intertextuality
Intertextuality is the shaping of texts' meanings by other texts. It can refer to an author’s borrowing and transformation of a prior text or to a reader’s referencing of one text in reading another. The term “intertextuality” has, itself, been borrowed and transformed many times since it was coined by poststructuralist Julia Kristeva in 1966. As critic William Irwin says, the term “has come to have almost as many meanings as users, from those faithful to Kristeva’s original vision to those who simply use it as a stylish way of talking about allusion.” Confounding the realist agenda that 'art imitates life,' intertextuality suggests that art imitates art. Oscar Wilde (typically) took this notion further, declaring provocatively that 'life imitates art'. Texts are instrumental not only in the construction of other texts but in the construction of experiences. Much of what we 'know' about the world is derived from what we have read in books, newspapers and magazines, from what we have seen in the cinema and on television and from what we have heard on the radio. Life is thus lived through texts and framed by texts to a greater extent than we are normally aware of. As Scott Lash observes, 'We are living in a society in which our perception is directed almost as often to representations as it is to "reality"' (Lash 1990, 24). Intertextuality blurs the boundaries not only between texts but between texts and the world of lived experience. Indeed, we may argue that we know no pre-textual experience. The world as we know it is merely its current representation.
In The Age of Innocence intertextuality occurs frequently. In these cases, intertextuality is used to provide depth to the fictional reality. It is through the use of ntertextuality that Wharton better describes the figures and the events, which makes us have a profound understanding on the background she created it and the age she lived—New York in 1870s and 1920s.
1.1 Intertextual making with Roman Myth
In Roman mythology, Diana is the goddess of the hunting, associated with wild animals and woodlands. She also later became a moon goddess, supplanting Luna, and was an emblem of chastity. Oak groves are especially sacred to her. She was praised in poetry for her strength, athletic grace, distinct beauty and hunting skill. In practice she made up a trinity with two other Roman deities: Egeria the water nymph, her servant and assistant midwife; and Virbius, the woodland god. In her etymology, "Diana" is simply "the Goddess", with a Greek parallel in the name — though not the cult practice — of Dione at Dodona. She was goddess of fertility and quick to anger. At the same time she is also the representative of the cruel and bloody because of the myth of Acteon, who saw her bathing naked. Diana transformed Acteon into a stag and set his own hunting dogs to kill him.
The goddess Wharton associates with May is Diana, virgin deity of the hunt. Wearing a “white dress, with a pale green ribbon about the waist and a wreath of ivy on her hat, May wins her archery match with Diana-like aloofness” (P201). Later she enters a ballroom “tall and silver-shining as a young Diana” (P306). Similarly, at the van der Luydens’ reception for Ellen Olenska, “in her dress of white and silver, with a wreath of silver blossoms in her hair, the tall girl looked like a Diana just alight from the chase” (P65-66). In May, Wharton takes selected virtues of the American girl: her innocence, her physical vigor, her cheerfulness and vivacity, her wholesomeness and self-confidence, and links them to a forever virginal goddess of death. Newland, with a shiver, wonders of May: “What if ‘niceness’ carried to that supreme degree were only a negation, the curtain dropped before an emptiness?”(P202). May Welland is empty. She is, in addition, living at the pinnacle of American society.
Diana is also the divinity of childbirth and fertility; she presides over the generation of life itself. May might well be ignorant of the more refined customs of decadent European culture; but in her “primitive” purity, she is committed t the most fundamental human processes, and in this commitment she is as ruthless as nature itself.
In Archer’s mind, May is a young Diana, a reductive vision of empty, unknowing, unsoiled virginity. He supposes that her “faculty of unawareness was what gave her eyes their transparency, and her face the look of representing a type rather than a person; as if she might have been chosen to pose for a Civic Virtue or a Greek goddess. The blood that ran so close to her fair skin might have been a preserving fluid rather than a ravaging element; yet her look of indestructible youthfulness made her seem neither hard nor dull, but only primitive and pure”.(P189)
1.2 Intertextual making with Catherine of Aragon
Catherine of Aragon first is the wife of Arthur, the son of Henry VII of England. Only six months of marriage life, Arthur was dead. The she married Henry VIII. Failed to give birth to a male heir, she was deserted by Henry VIII mercilessly. But with tenacity she fought for her rights and sought not only to retain her position, but also that of her daughter Mary. It is a pity until her death she got her position as Princess Dowager that she refused to acknowledge through to the end of her life, not as a Queen of England. However, she seldom complained of her treatment and spent a great deal of time at prayer.
Unkind people said that, like her Imperial namesake, Mrs. Mingott had won her way to success by strength of will and hardness of heart, and a kind of haughty effrontery that was somehow justified by the extreme decency and dignity of her private life. Mr. Manson Mingott had died when she was only twenty-eight, and had “tied up” the money with an additional caution born of the general distrust of the Spicers; but his bold young widow went her way fearlessly, mingled freely in foreign society, married her daughters in heaven knew what corrupt and fashionable circles, hobnobbed with Papists, entertained Opera singers, and was the intimate friend of Mme. Taglioni; and all the (as Sillerton Jackson was the first to proclaim) there had never been a breath on her reputation. (P13)
What Mrs. Mingott did to deal with her husband’s property has similarities with Henry VIII’s first wife Catherine of Aragon — they could deal with things calmly. They know how to protect their own rights and pay unremitting efforts.
2.Structure unknown: power of tragedy
As far as the theme is concerned, just like her close friend Henry James, Wharton takes international theme in The Age of Innocence. America appears to be innocent in face of sophisticated Europe. New York is more conservative than Paris where Wharton feels free and full of artistic atmosphere. While, the upper-class society in 1870’s New York is hypocritical, which buries two young man and woman—Archer and Ellen’s happiness to pursue love with its ridiculous and banal moral values. Grown up in such situation, as Wharton herself, the main characters of the novel— Archer, Ellen and May’s destiny is controlled by the customs, manners and culture of the times, which results in the tragic ending. It is such tragic outcome that makes the novel with power— individual compromise to powerful social forces seems futile, in fact, it is the sharp criticism on the upper-class society’s ethics, which has profound social and practical significance.
However, the tragedy can not be avoided. Then who should be responsible for it, Archer, Ellen or May? Obviously it is not any individual who can afford this responsibility.
Chinese great essayist and critic Yu Qiuyu uses the structure unknown to interpret the classics. He thinks structure unknown exists in nearly all the great works. The author creates a structure in the work which comprises complex multi-faceted life and human himself. While reading the readers are involved in it. The structure can enlighten readers thinking. Just as great German philosopher Hegel puts it from the aesthetic point of view: “Thinking gives readers a thrill.”
In The Age of Innocence Wharton creates such a structure—if Archer didn’t marry May but Ellen, what is the result? On the one hand, the readers have so strong desire to see the two true lovers Archer and Ellen would get married; but on the other hand, the readers will think about if they two really live together, what will be their marry life? Ellen has strong personality, who won’t be bond by convention pursuing free life. (From her childhood she has been leading a wandering life.) As for Archer, he has been accustomed to the old New York’s moral values, how can he bear Ellen’s clothing in public though he thinks her sexy in her shabby house? So contradictions of human nature have been excavated—the spirit of friends can become a minor partner in life? Apparently human emotion, unable to reconcile the marriage is exposed. The readers of generation after generation never know the answer.
At the end of the novel, Wharton stretches the structure unknown: 30years later, May has been dead, now 57 years old Archer came to Paris, Ellen’s downstairs. The moment is so exciting. Will he go upstairs and see her dearest Ellen? Is it time for them to reunite? Nearly every reader hopes so. But Wharton arranges another ending—Archer’s leaving quietly after sitting the whole afternoon under Ellen’s apartment. The readers’ thinking about the novel’s ending is endless around whether Archer should meet Ellen. People expect the romantic moment but just recollect the regrettable ending with a sigh. Until here, we can say their love story ends up in tragedy.
Wharton is great because she involves her readers into the structure unknown, the dilemma, which inspires the readers to think and to explore solutions with her together while reading.
3.Wharton’s habitual irony
While we are reading The Age of Innocence, we can feel Wharton’s habitual irony always runs through the story. Wharton uses irony to reveal the theme of the article — the upper-class society’s hypocrisy of Old New York in 1870s. At the same time she also satirizes individual’s helplessness confronted with the Puritan tradition and meaningless rituals and customs. Nevertheless, Wharton loves the country where she was born and spent her adolescence. Her irony to the old New York just like R.D.Townsend’s observation: There is irony behind it all, but not the bitterness of scorn or contempt. It is an etching, not a caricature.
The novel’s title is the biggest irony. Is it really an age of innocence? Is New York in 1870s innocent compared with the old traditional Europe? Like her idol and master, Henry James, she is forever comparing America with Europe, to the latter’s advantage. But in The Age of Innocence, it is only occasionally the direct comparison is made. Wharton describes a hot day in Boston: Archer found a cab and drove to the Somerset Club for breakfast. Even the fashionable quarters had the air of untidy domesticity to which no excess of heat ever degrades the European cities.(P218)The species of “innocence” prevailing in New York’s fashionable society in that period was the innocence of an artificial, conventional, and dull society. There was already the idea of an exclusiveness the lines of which were those of wealth, family connection, stiff social entertainments, and patronage of the opera, rather than those having relation to the world of art, literature, brilliant talk, or intellectual impulses. What was outside of this New York self-constituted circle was considered by it as dubious; life and culture “abroad” were practically unknown quantities. As a picture of the “upper classes” in our metropolis as it stolidly solidified itself in the decade or so after the Civil War, the “age” of the novel is not innocent; rather, it is the “age” that lost the struggle to preserve innocence and that set in motion the corruptions to come.
The writer’s habitual irony fell into cascades of feminine shrieks. The most typical character who reflects irony is May who represents all the merits of upper-class society. She looks innocent, naïve, pure just like the goddess of the moon. Wharton uses white clothes, the flower of lilies-of-the –valley, the blue eyes, the absence of imagination, particularly in Archer’s eyes to create the image of an innocent girl. But from the beginning to the ending, May’s complicatedness is carefully camouflaged. When she is aware of Archer’s falling in love with Ellen, she immediately agrees to advance their engagement and tells the message to Ellen first with a very intimate tone.
After May and Archer get married, she continues to pretend to be innocent about his husband’s passion towards Ellen. May must be very sad that her husband loves someone else. But nobody can perceive her true feelings from her looks, even her husband. She hides her pain under surface of innocence without complaining anything.
At the critical time when Archer is ready to give up family for Ellen, May announces her premature pregnancy, which terminates a responsible husband’s unruly behavior and buries Archer and Ellen’s love.
It isn’t until her death that May acts as if she knows nothing about Archer’s love for Ellen. But when Archer’s son told him: “the day before she (May) died, she sent for me alone. She asked you to, you’d given up the thing you most wanted.” Archer received this strange communication in silence. At length he said in a low voice: “She never asked me.”(P340) So it is an extreme irony that the true innocent person is Archer himself not May with whom he has spent all his life.
At the very end of the novel, when Archer, for the last time, retreats from Ellen, we feel the fullness of the irony. Archer, with his insecurity, his sensitivity, and his passion has obeyed the moral imperatives of his class and time and has given up Ellen and love for the furtherance of the shallow-seeming aims, all amorphous as they are, of his world. He has stuck to May and to his New York, giving up another world, though he knows “Something he knew he had missed: the flower of life.” (P331)
4.Symbols to represent protagonists’ inclination
The Age of Innocence is a book full of symbolism which relates to the plot and characters. The people of old New York Society rely greatly on the acceptance and influence of each other, and act solely based on "propriety;" which is deemed right and proper by those looked up to. There are two kinds of people in this novel, symbolically, the "gods" who are described as non-aging, who are high in society, and the "common" people, who aren't bound by the restricting standards of society. The "gods" all live their lives pretending, trying to look and act perfect for each other. Newland is torn between his "goddess" fiancée and Ellen, who cleverly "fluffs" off the unspoken rules in New York, slipping through the standards by not trying to impress anyone. She is the only one who is straight-forward and honest.
‘The Newport Archery club always held its August meeting at the Beauforts’. Archery was revived in England in 1844, and became very popular as a pastime. Ladies may become expert archers, and the sport recommends itself to them, in that, while it gives them excellent physical exercise, it also “shows off” their form and graces to the very best advantage.
In her white dress, with a pale green ribbon about the waist and a wreath of ivy on her hat, May had the same Diana-like aloofness as when she had entered the Beaufort ball-room on the night of her engagement. In the interval not a thought seemed to have passed behind her eyes or a feeling through her heart. She had her bow and arrow in her hand, and she lifted the bow to her shoulder and took aim. But not one had the nymphlike ease of his wife, when, with tense muscles and happy frown, she bent her soul upon some feat of strength.” (P201)Originally, the bow is used as a weapon of war and the chase. the story of the wild, beautiful hoyden goddess who, trailing her cloud of nymphs behind her flew over the purple hills, armed with bow and quiver, chasing the deer through cool, green groves where the winds sang scarcely less thrilling than the ringing note of her silken cord, and the long, low whir of her well-sent arrows. Here the long bow May uses to hit the target in the contest symbolizes the conspiracy means which she uses to drives Ellen away in order to protect herself. Ellen’s appearance in New York threatens May’s engagement, marriage and happiness. Every time when Archer and Ellen are likely to come together, May uses her lethal long bow—conspiracy to stop what will happen. Her advanced announcement on engagement and premature pregnancy become the whirred and cool long bow to hit the target—Ellen who is undesirable particularly when her role as exotic and sensual foreigner threatens the innocent flower of their community. May Welland is the mythic Diana of their society—healthy, vigorous, beautiful and, above all, chaste. Like Diana, she fulfills the role of pure womanhood, and like the mythic huntress, she is capable of using her bow—her openness and innocence—to figuratively take lives that threaten her well-being.
When Archer is at the theater watching a popular play “The Shaughraun”, there is a scene that particularly moves him, in which two lovers part. The actress, turning her back to her wooer, does not see him steal over to kiss the velvet ribbon hanging down her back before he leaves the room without her hearing him or changing her attitude. While watching the scene, Archer feels that it has a certain personal symbolic meaning for him, but he is unable to articulate exactly what it means. At that time, Archer is only the client and lawyer to persuade Ellen to give up sue for divorce. For reasons he cannot explain, this scene reminds Archer of the last time he left the Countess's flat. He concludes that it is perhaps Countess Olenska's mysterious ability to suggest a sense of tragedy that inspires him to compare her to the actress. But the scene symbolizes part of a larger pattern —later at Newport, Archer sees Ellen standing near the shore with her back turned, yet leaves without her noticing; in the dinner arranged by May and a band of dumb conspirators in the old New York way taking life ‘without effusion of blood”, he and Ellen’s parting in heart-broken silence and at the very end of the novel, Archer stands on the street below her Paris apartment, but leaves without seeing her.
White, the superficial meaning of it is pure, clear, innocent, while the deep meaning of which is the synonym of shadowy, pale and lifeless, indicating that May Welland is only a typical old New Yorker, with radiant genteel appearance, but corruptive core. Dark blue is the color Olenska wears which symbolizes mystery and passion. Ellen dares to wear unsuitable publicly, exposing that she is a rebellious and liberated being. It is commented that the most beautiful and fresh character under Wharton’s pen is Ellen. She is Wharton’s ideal woman imagine.
According to John H. Young, there is a sentiment attached to flowers, and this sentiment has been expressed in language by giving names to various flowers. These names constitute a language, which may be made the medium of pleasant and amusing interchange of thought between men and women. A bouquet of flowers and leaves may be selected and arranged so as to express much depth of feeling.
Lilly, by universal consent, attaches a sentiment of feminine beauty. However, Newland’s daily gift of lilies-of-the-valley to May not only conveys the purity associated with lilies and whiteness, these flowers also speak to the idea of expectation by promising “return of happiness” and “future happiness.” Associated in some dictionaries with “sweetness,” “humility,” and the proclamation “you have made my life complete,” the lily-of-the-valley was the flower that Wharton carried with the Episcopal Book of Prayer in her own bridal bouquet.
The yellow roses that Newland found suddenly and was surprised at there being something too rich, too strong, in their fiery beauty (P76) were sent anonymously to the Ellen underline the sense of secrecy in his offering. While roses signify “beauty” and “love”, yellow roses mean jealousy, infidelity, adultery, decrease of love, love that will not last, and much more rarely, friendship. As a gift, these bouquets are efforts to communicate sentiments from the giver to the recipient. Just as there is no simple equivalency for the meaning of yellow roses, even as one tries to follow the idea of infidelity in the novel, it remains unclear whether Ellen as the estranged wife of the Count Olenski is being said to be unfaithful or whether such a gift from the engaged Archer represents an act of infidelity on his part.
The gardenia or the cape jasmine that Newland Archer wears to his wedding, often listed as meaning “transport, ecstasy” is also widely understood to signify “secret, untold love.’
Faust, the opera, is one of the most famous works of Gounod. Wharton opens The Age of Innocence in order to perfectly make the readers anticipate her theme. The novel begins with a performance of Faust, and it is the soprano Christine Nilsson, not any of the male artists. As a symbol, Wharton asks us to imagine on stage and the readers are required to enter the novel with a real woman artist in mind.
Conclusion
Wharton’s structure and methods are perfect. The treating of large themes by highly personal symbols, intertextuality, structure unknown, and irony makes possible her admirable perfection of techniques. Just as the western critics said, “Hers is the technique of sculpture rather than the technique of architecture. It permits the fine play of a humor that has an eye of irony in it, but is more human than irony. It makes possible an approach to perfection.”
Works Cited
1. Arthur E. Gordon, "On the Origin of Diana", Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 63 (1932, pp. 177-192) p 178.
2. Cynthia Griffin Wolff. A Feast of Words: The Triumph of Edith Wharton. New York: Addison Wesley, 1995
3. Elizabeth Ammons. Cool Diana and the Blood-Red Muse: Edith Wharton on Innocence and Art. In American Novelists Revised: Essays in Criticism, ed. Fritz Fleischmann. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1982
4. John Dizikes. Opera in America: A Cultural History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993
5. Kathy Miller Hadley. Ironic Structure and Untold Stories in The Age of Innocence. Studies in the Novel 23(2), 1991
6. Linda Wagner-Martin. The Age of Innocence: A Novel of Ironic Nostalgia. New York: Twayne, 1996
7. Michael J. O’Neal. Point of View and Narrative Technique in the Fiction of Edith Wharton. Style 17, 1983
8.申丹,《解读叙事》,北京大学出版社,2004
9.魏家骏,《互文性和文学增值现象》,淮阴师范学院学报哲学社会科学版第25卷,2003
10.常耀信,《美国文学简史》,南开大学出版社,2003年12月第2版
Key words: narrative techniques; intertextuality; structure unknown; irony; symbols
The success of The Age of Innocence benefits from Wharton’s unique narrative techniques. With the use of rhetoric strategies like intertextuality, structure unknown, irony and symbols, Wharton shows the readers a vivid picture of New York in different times, which is the representation of the history. At the same time, the theme of the novel is well depicted.
1.Intertextuality
Intertextuality is the shaping of texts' meanings by other texts. It can refer to an author’s borrowing and transformation of a prior text or to a reader’s referencing of one text in reading another. The term “intertextuality” has, itself, been borrowed and transformed many times since it was coined by poststructuralist Julia Kristeva in 1966. As critic William Irwin says, the term “has come to have almost as many meanings as users, from those faithful to Kristeva’s original vision to those who simply use it as a stylish way of talking about allusion.” Confounding the realist agenda that 'art imitates life,' intertextuality suggests that art imitates art. Oscar Wilde (typically) took this notion further, declaring provocatively that 'life imitates art'. Texts are instrumental not only in the construction of other texts but in the construction of experiences. Much of what we 'know' about the world is derived from what we have read in books, newspapers and magazines, from what we have seen in the cinema and on television and from what we have heard on the radio. Life is thus lived through texts and framed by texts to a greater extent than we are normally aware of. As Scott Lash observes, 'We are living in a society in which our perception is directed almost as often to representations as it is to "reality"' (Lash 1990, 24). Intertextuality blurs the boundaries not only between texts but between texts and the world of lived experience. Indeed, we may argue that we know no pre-textual experience. The world as we know it is merely its current representation.
In The Age of Innocence intertextuality occurs frequently. In these cases, intertextuality is used to provide depth to the fictional reality. It is through the use of ntertextuality that Wharton better describes the figures and the events, which makes us have a profound understanding on the background she created it and the age she lived—New York in 1870s and 1920s.
1.1 Intertextual making with Roman Myth
In Roman mythology, Diana is the goddess of the hunting, associated with wild animals and woodlands. She also later became a moon goddess, supplanting Luna, and was an emblem of chastity. Oak groves are especially sacred to her. She was praised in poetry for her strength, athletic grace, distinct beauty and hunting skill. In practice she made up a trinity with two other Roman deities: Egeria the water nymph, her servant and assistant midwife; and Virbius, the woodland god. In her etymology, "Diana" is simply "the Goddess", with a Greek parallel in the name — though not the cult practice — of Dione at Dodona. She was goddess of fertility and quick to anger. At the same time she is also the representative of the cruel and bloody because of the myth of Acteon, who saw her bathing naked. Diana transformed Acteon into a stag and set his own hunting dogs to kill him.
The goddess Wharton associates with May is Diana, virgin deity of the hunt. Wearing a “white dress, with a pale green ribbon about the waist and a wreath of ivy on her hat, May wins her archery match with Diana-like aloofness” (P201). Later she enters a ballroom “tall and silver-shining as a young Diana” (P306). Similarly, at the van der Luydens’ reception for Ellen Olenska, “in her dress of white and silver, with a wreath of silver blossoms in her hair, the tall girl looked like a Diana just alight from the chase” (P65-66). In May, Wharton takes selected virtues of the American girl: her innocence, her physical vigor, her cheerfulness and vivacity, her wholesomeness and self-confidence, and links them to a forever virginal goddess of death. Newland, with a shiver, wonders of May: “What if ‘niceness’ carried to that supreme degree were only a negation, the curtain dropped before an emptiness?”(P202). May Welland is empty. She is, in addition, living at the pinnacle of American society.
Diana is also the divinity of childbirth and fertility; she presides over the generation of life itself. May might well be ignorant of the more refined customs of decadent European culture; but in her “primitive” purity, she is committed t the most fundamental human processes, and in this commitment she is as ruthless as nature itself.
In Archer’s mind, May is a young Diana, a reductive vision of empty, unknowing, unsoiled virginity. He supposes that her “faculty of unawareness was what gave her eyes their transparency, and her face the look of representing a type rather than a person; as if she might have been chosen to pose for a Civic Virtue or a Greek goddess. The blood that ran so close to her fair skin might have been a preserving fluid rather than a ravaging element; yet her look of indestructible youthfulness made her seem neither hard nor dull, but only primitive and pure”.(P189)
1.2 Intertextual making with Catherine of Aragon
Catherine of Aragon first is the wife of Arthur, the son of Henry VII of England. Only six months of marriage life, Arthur was dead. The she married Henry VIII. Failed to give birth to a male heir, she was deserted by Henry VIII mercilessly. But with tenacity she fought for her rights and sought not only to retain her position, but also that of her daughter Mary. It is a pity until her death she got her position as Princess Dowager that she refused to acknowledge through to the end of her life, not as a Queen of England. However, she seldom complained of her treatment and spent a great deal of time at prayer.
Unkind people said that, like her Imperial namesake, Mrs. Mingott had won her way to success by strength of will and hardness of heart, and a kind of haughty effrontery that was somehow justified by the extreme decency and dignity of her private life. Mr. Manson Mingott had died when she was only twenty-eight, and had “tied up” the money with an additional caution born of the general distrust of the Spicers; but his bold young widow went her way fearlessly, mingled freely in foreign society, married her daughters in heaven knew what corrupt and fashionable circles, hobnobbed with Papists, entertained Opera singers, and was the intimate friend of Mme. Taglioni; and all the (as Sillerton Jackson was the first to proclaim) there had never been a breath on her reputation. (P13)
What Mrs. Mingott did to deal with her husband’s property has similarities with Henry VIII’s first wife Catherine of Aragon — they could deal with things calmly. They know how to protect their own rights and pay unremitting efforts.
2.Structure unknown: power of tragedy
As far as the theme is concerned, just like her close friend Henry James, Wharton takes international theme in The Age of Innocence. America appears to be innocent in face of sophisticated Europe. New York is more conservative than Paris where Wharton feels free and full of artistic atmosphere. While, the upper-class society in 1870’s New York is hypocritical, which buries two young man and woman—Archer and Ellen’s happiness to pursue love with its ridiculous and banal moral values. Grown up in such situation, as Wharton herself, the main characters of the novel— Archer, Ellen and May’s destiny is controlled by the customs, manners and culture of the times, which results in the tragic ending. It is such tragic outcome that makes the novel with power— individual compromise to powerful social forces seems futile, in fact, it is the sharp criticism on the upper-class society’s ethics, which has profound social and practical significance.
However, the tragedy can not be avoided. Then who should be responsible for it, Archer, Ellen or May? Obviously it is not any individual who can afford this responsibility.
Chinese great essayist and critic Yu Qiuyu uses the structure unknown to interpret the classics. He thinks structure unknown exists in nearly all the great works. The author creates a structure in the work which comprises complex multi-faceted life and human himself. While reading the readers are involved in it. The structure can enlighten readers thinking. Just as great German philosopher Hegel puts it from the aesthetic point of view: “Thinking gives readers a thrill.”
In The Age of Innocence Wharton creates such a structure—if Archer didn’t marry May but Ellen, what is the result? On the one hand, the readers have so strong desire to see the two true lovers Archer and Ellen would get married; but on the other hand, the readers will think about if they two really live together, what will be their marry life? Ellen has strong personality, who won’t be bond by convention pursuing free life. (From her childhood she has been leading a wandering life.) As for Archer, he has been accustomed to the old New York’s moral values, how can he bear Ellen’s clothing in public though he thinks her sexy in her shabby house? So contradictions of human nature have been excavated—the spirit of friends can become a minor partner in life? Apparently human emotion, unable to reconcile the marriage is exposed. The readers of generation after generation never know the answer.
At the end of the novel, Wharton stretches the structure unknown: 30years later, May has been dead, now 57 years old Archer came to Paris, Ellen’s downstairs. The moment is so exciting. Will he go upstairs and see her dearest Ellen? Is it time for them to reunite? Nearly every reader hopes so. But Wharton arranges another ending—Archer’s leaving quietly after sitting the whole afternoon under Ellen’s apartment. The readers’ thinking about the novel’s ending is endless around whether Archer should meet Ellen. People expect the romantic moment but just recollect the regrettable ending with a sigh. Until here, we can say their love story ends up in tragedy.
Wharton is great because she involves her readers into the structure unknown, the dilemma, which inspires the readers to think and to explore solutions with her together while reading.
3.Wharton’s habitual irony
While we are reading The Age of Innocence, we can feel Wharton’s habitual irony always runs through the story. Wharton uses irony to reveal the theme of the article — the upper-class society’s hypocrisy of Old New York in 1870s. At the same time she also satirizes individual’s helplessness confronted with the Puritan tradition and meaningless rituals and customs. Nevertheless, Wharton loves the country where she was born and spent her adolescence. Her irony to the old New York just like R.D.Townsend’s observation: There is irony behind it all, but not the bitterness of scorn or contempt. It is an etching, not a caricature.
The novel’s title is the biggest irony. Is it really an age of innocence? Is New York in 1870s innocent compared with the old traditional Europe? Like her idol and master, Henry James, she is forever comparing America with Europe, to the latter’s advantage. But in The Age of Innocence, it is only occasionally the direct comparison is made. Wharton describes a hot day in Boston: Archer found a cab and drove to the Somerset Club for breakfast. Even the fashionable quarters had the air of untidy domesticity to which no excess of heat ever degrades the European cities.(P218)The species of “innocence” prevailing in New York’s fashionable society in that period was the innocence of an artificial, conventional, and dull society. There was already the idea of an exclusiveness the lines of which were those of wealth, family connection, stiff social entertainments, and patronage of the opera, rather than those having relation to the world of art, literature, brilliant talk, or intellectual impulses. What was outside of this New York self-constituted circle was considered by it as dubious; life and culture “abroad” were practically unknown quantities. As a picture of the “upper classes” in our metropolis as it stolidly solidified itself in the decade or so after the Civil War, the “age” of the novel is not innocent; rather, it is the “age” that lost the struggle to preserve innocence and that set in motion the corruptions to come.
The writer’s habitual irony fell into cascades of feminine shrieks. The most typical character who reflects irony is May who represents all the merits of upper-class society. She looks innocent, naïve, pure just like the goddess of the moon. Wharton uses white clothes, the flower of lilies-of-the –valley, the blue eyes, the absence of imagination, particularly in Archer’s eyes to create the image of an innocent girl. But from the beginning to the ending, May’s complicatedness is carefully camouflaged. When she is aware of Archer’s falling in love with Ellen, she immediately agrees to advance their engagement and tells the message to Ellen first with a very intimate tone.
After May and Archer get married, she continues to pretend to be innocent about his husband’s passion towards Ellen. May must be very sad that her husband loves someone else. But nobody can perceive her true feelings from her looks, even her husband. She hides her pain under surface of innocence without complaining anything.
At the critical time when Archer is ready to give up family for Ellen, May announces her premature pregnancy, which terminates a responsible husband’s unruly behavior and buries Archer and Ellen’s love.
It isn’t until her death that May acts as if she knows nothing about Archer’s love for Ellen. But when Archer’s son told him: “the day before she (May) died, she sent for me alone. She asked you to, you’d given up the thing you most wanted.” Archer received this strange communication in silence. At length he said in a low voice: “She never asked me.”(P340) So it is an extreme irony that the true innocent person is Archer himself not May with whom he has spent all his life.
At the very end of the novel, when Archer, for the last time, retreats from Ellen, we feel the fullness of the irony. Archer, with his insecurity, his sensitivity, and his passion has obeyed the moral imperatives of his class and time and has given up Ellen and love for the furtherance of the shallow-seeming aims, all amorphous as they are, of his world. He has stuck to May and to his New York, giving up another world, though he knows “Something he knew he had missed: the flower of life.” (P331)
4.Symbols to represent protagonists’ inclination
The Age of Innocence is a book full of symbolism which relates to the plot and characters. The people of old New York Society rely greatly on the acceptance and influence of each other, and act solely based on "propriety;" which is deemed right and proper by those looked up to. There are two kinds of people in this novel, symbolically, the "gods" who are described as non-aging, who are high in society, and the "common" people, who aren't bound by the restricting standards of society. The "gods" all live their lives pretending, trying to look and act perfect for each other. Newland is torn between his "goddess" fiancée and Ellen, who cleverly "fluffs" off the unspoken rules in New York, slipping through the standards by not trying to impress anyone. She is the only one who is straight-forward and honest.
‘The Newport Archery club always held its August meeting at the Beauforts’. Archery was revived in England in 1844, and became very popular as a pastime. Ladies may become expert archers, and the sport recommends itself to them, in that, while it gives them excellent physical exercise, it also “shows off” their form and graces to the very best advantage.
In her white dress, with a pale green ribbon about the waist and a wreath of ivy on her hat, May had the same Diana-like aloofness as when she had entered the Beaufort ball-room on the night of her engagement. In the interval not a thought seemed to have passed behind her eyes or a feeling through her heart. She had her bow and arrow in her hand, and she lifted the bow to her shoulder and took aim. But not one had the nymphlike ease of his wife, when, with tense muscles and happy frown, she bent her soul upon some feat of strength.” (P201)Originally, the bow is used as a weapon of war and the chase. the story of the wild, beautiful hoyden goddess who, trailing her cloud of nymphs behind her flew over the purple hills, armed with bow and quiver, chasing the deer through cool, green groves where the winds sang scarcely less thrilling than the ringing note of her silken cord, and the long, low whir of her well-sent arrows. Here the long bow May uses to hit the target in the contest symbolizes the conspiracy means which she uses to drives Ellen away in order to protect herself. Ellen’s appearance in New York threatens May’s engagement, marriage and happiness. Every time when Archer and Ellen are likely to come together, May uses her lethal long bow—conspiracy to stop what will happen. Her advanced announcement on engagement and premature pregnancy become the whirred and cool long bow to hit the target—Ellen who is undesirable particularly when her role as exotic and sensual foreigner threatens the innocent flower of their community. May Welland is the mythic Diana of their society—healthy, vigorous, beautiful and, above all, chaste. Like Diana, she fulfills the role of pure womanhood, and like the mythic huntress, she is capable of using her bow—her openness and innocence—to figuratively take lives that threaten her well-being.
When Archer is at the theater watching a popular play “The Shaughraun”, there is a scene that particularly moves him, in which two lovers part. The actress, turning her back to her wooer, does not see him steal over to kiss the velvet ribbon hanging down her back before he leaves the room without her hearing him or changing her attitude. While watching the scene, Archer feels that it has a certain personal symbolic meaning for him, but he is unable to articulate exactly what it means. At that time, Archer is only the client and lawyer to persuade Ellen to give up sue for divorce. For reasons he cannot explain, this scene reminds Archer of the last time he left the Countess's flat. He concludes that it is perhaps Countess Olenska's mysterious ability to suggest a sense of tragedy that inspires him to compare her to the actress. But the scene symbolizes part of a larger pattern —later at Newport, Archer sees Ellen standing near the shore with her back turned, yet leaves without her noticing; in the dinner arranged by May and a band of dumb conspirators in the old New York way taking life ‘without effusion of blood”, he and Ellen’s parting in heart-broken silence and at the very end of the novel, Archer stands on the street below her Paris apartment, but leaves without seeing her.
White, the superficial meaning of it is pure, clear, innocent, while the deep meaning of which is the synonym of shadowy, pale and lifeless, indicating that May Welland is only a typical old New Yorker, with radiant genteel appearance, but corruptive core. Dark blue is the color Olenska wears which symbolizes mystery and passion. Ellen dares to wear unsuitable publicly, exposing that she is a rebellious and liberated being. It is commented that the most beautiful and fresh character under Wharton’s pen is Ellen. She is Wharton’s ideal woman imagine.
According to John H. Young, there is a sentiment attached to flowers, and this sentiment has been expressed in language by giving names to various flowers. These names constitute a language, which may be made the medium of pleasant and amusing interchange of thought between men and women. A bouquet of flowers and leaves may be selected and arranged so as to express much depth of feeling.
Lilly, by universal consent, attaches a sentiment of feminine beauty. However, Newland’s daily gift of lilies-of-the-valley to May not only conveys the purity associated with lilies and whiteness, these flowers also speak to the idea of expectation by promising “return of happiness” and “future happiness.” Associated in some dictionaries with “sweetness,” “humility,” and the proclamation “you have made my life complete,” the lily-of-the-valley was the flower that Wharton carried with the Episcopal Book of Prayer in her own bridal bouquet.
The yellow roses that Newland found suddenly and was surprised at there being something too rich, too strong, in their fiery beauty (P76) were sent anonymously to the Ellen underline the sense of secrecy in his offering. While roses signify “beauty” and “love”, yellow roses mean jealousy, infidelity, adultery, decrease of love, love that will not last, and much more rarely, friendship. As a gift, these bouquets are efforts to communicate sentiments from the giver to the recipient. Just as there is no simple equivalency for the meaning of yellow roses, even as one tries to follow the idea of infidelity in the novel, it remains unclear whether Ellen as the estranged wife of the Count Olenski is being said to be unfaithful or whether such a gift from the engaged Archer represents an act of infidelity on his part.
The gardenia or the cape jasmine that Newland Archer wears to his wedding, often listed as meaning “transport, ecstasy” is also widely understood to signify “secret, untold love.’
Faust, the opera, is one of the most famous works of Gounod. Wharton opens The Age of Innocence in order to perfectly make the readers anticipate her theme. The novel begins with a performance of Faust, and it is the soprano Christine Nilsson, not any of the male artists. As a symbol, Wharton asks us to imagine on stage and the readers are required to enter the novel with a real woman artist in mind.
Conclusion
Wharton’s structure and methods are perfect. The treating of large themes by highly personal symbols, intertextuality, structure unknown, and irony makes possible her admirable perfection of techniques. Just as the western critics said, “Hers is the technique of sculpture rather than the technique of architecture. It permits the fine play of a humor that has an eye of irony in it, but is more human than irony. It makes possible an approach to perfection.”
Works Cited
1. Arthur E. Gordon, "On the Origin of Diana", Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 63 (1932, pp. 177-192) p 178.
2. Cynthia Griffin Wolff. A Feast of Words: The Triumph of Edith Wharton. New York: Addison Wesley, 1995
3. Elizabeth Ammons. Cool Diana and the Blood-Red Muse: Edith Wharton on Innocence and Art. In American Novelists Revised: Essays in Criticism, ed. Fritz Fleischmann. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1982
4. John Dizikes. Opera in America: A Cultural History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993
5. Kathy Miller Hadley. Ironic Structure and Untold Stories in The Age of Innocence. Studies in the Novel 23(2), 1991
6. Linda Wagner-Martin. The Age of Innocence: A Novel of Ironic Nostalgia. New York: Twayne, 1996
7. Michael J. O’Neal. Point of View and Narrative Technique in the Fiction of Edith Wharton. Style 17, 1983
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