Having read Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence once again, I find myself compelled to share my own thoughts on its interpretation. Before we begin our exploration, however, I think it quite necessary to share a modest subset of the social and cultural context which—mundane as such detail may at first appear—inevitably informs my own approach to the text. To say that my rather unconventional upbringing predisposed me to its own peculiar idiosyncrasies is a profound understatement—indeed, those years were so remarkably out of step with the experiences of my generational cohort-at-large that one, at the time, might have thought my very existence one of temporal anomaly.
I remain so.
Where most view the strictures of New York society so deftly portrayed by Mrs. Wharton as quaint relics of a world long since vanished, I was thoroughly and methodically trained by my great-grandmother in most of them for eight of my formative years. Thus, in reading the novel, I find myself frequently and instinctively predicting behaviors and reactions to them before they are exposed in the text–although the form of training I received had a certain middle-class color not represented in the book, the flavor and texture comported entirely with the world in which we meet the Wellands, the Mingotts, and the Archers. As a consequence of those early, formative experiences, my sympathies don’t land as easily upon Newland Archer, almost universally hailed as the romantic protagonist, so beleaguered by the rules of his society. Instead, my mind falls keenly to the subtleties of strategy by which Miss Welland survives within those strictures.
I believe an honest reading of the text requires such an approach. Indeed, the breathing machinery of social norms is itself quite nearly a character in its own right, wielding remarkable influence in the lives of each character. To view Newland–who idolizes the norms of his society–as the victim of May, who represents their ultimate product, is to miss May’s unique power, and the breathtaking way in which she navigates a world so carefully crafted to rob her of it.
So it is with May Welland, sweet-faced archer of propriety, that we begin. She is so often read as little more than an emblem of innocence wrapped like a sprig of baby’s breath about the throat of Newland Archer’s tragic sensitivities—as though the poor girl were born solely to blight his poetic sighs and lay snares in the path of his noble indecision.
How droll.
How exquisitely modern to mistake a woman’s skill for insipidity, merely because she chooses to exercise it beneath the hem of her gown rather than from atop a soap-box.
Indeed, May’s apparently artless manoeuvres—those soft little phrases, that deftly timed invitation, the guileless announcement of her condition which forestalled her husband’s bolt toward the horizon—these are not the actions of a simpleton, but of a woman thoroughly educated in the solitary grammar of feminine survival. One does not meet the world head-on when the world has no intention of acknowledging one’s face; one advances sideways, in the gentle half-step of the fencer who has learned to parry with lace instead of steel.
It is only men—dear souls—with their irritating fondness for imagining themselves persecuted by feminine delicacy, who would mistake this for weakness.
And now to Newland Archer—paragon, supposedly, of thwarted longing. I confess that when I hear him heralded as a man of tragic principle, I am moved to laughter as brittle as frost upon a November dawn. Principle? The poor creature exhibits the moral fibre of a dinner napkin left soaking overnight in a tureen of consommé. His convictions, whatever their tenor, dissolve upon contact with the slightest expectation—maternal, marital, or societal. Were rectitude measured by steadfastness, the young man would scarcely qualify as a damp stocking abandoned in a puddle behind the scullery door.
Oh, he dreams beautifully, I grant him that. He arranges elaborate tableaux in his mind, adorned with noble intentions and daring escapes; but alas, he is chronically unable to rise from the settee of his own sensibilities long enough to enact a single one. He is, in effect, the patron saint of wistfulness, a man whose spirit may be perpetually aflame, but whose hands remain thrust despairingly in his pockets lest they be required to do something.
May, by contrast, acts. She sees the world clearly—the narrow avenues permissible to her, the peril of misstep, the necessity of retaining a man who, though dear, is as malleable as warm wax upon the parlour hearth. She chooses, with impeccable calm, the one course that allows her life to remain intact. There is no villainy in such prudence. It is the fundamental arithmetic of our sex: exist or perish. And Mrs. Wharton, brilliant though she is, slyly invites readers to mistake the armour of angelic propriety for passivity, forgetting that a woman’s halo, properly wielded, makes an admirable shield.
No, May Welland is not naïve; she is trained. Heaven help the man—or the reader—who confuses the one for the other.
As for Newland, let us say only this: he is not tragic. He is merely soft. A creature of drizzling impulses and half-born wishes, forever hoping that someone else might deliver him from the snares he himself arranged. Indeed, if moral fortitude were fabric, the man would wear a garment knit from the very essence of swamp-water—limp, vaguely odorous, and in perpetual danger of slipping from the shoulder.
In the end, May preserves her marriage, her reputation, and her realm—not by force, for she is permitted none—but by precision, patience, and the understated ferocity of a woman determined not to be cast into society’s wastebasket simply because her husband’s fancy drifted like thistledown toward a more exotic bloom. That Newland feels trapped is no indictment of her; it is merely proof that he lacked the sinew to stand upright in any wind, whether of desire or of duty.
And thus I close this gentle remonstrance: let us not malign Miss Welland for mastering the only strategies society permitted her. Let us instead raise an eyebrow—arched, as fashion dictates—and note that Newland Archer’s gait through life possesses all the resolve of a soggy sock mourning its lost elasticity upon a riverbank.
A man may sigh for romance, but a woman must survive. May Welland, poor child, chose survival with enviable poise.
Be First to Comment