GANC: The Age of Innocence

I am not sure by what means I decided to read The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton for this challenge. Maybe it was on a "Top 100" list I looked over, or I remembered Wharton's name from a literature class I took in college. Maybe the book caught my eye because it won a Pulitzer. For the first 100 pages or so, I was wondering exactly why it made lists and won prizes. But things soon fell together and now I see why it merits the credit it is given.

The Age of Innocence is the story of a young man, Newland Archer, in the late 1800s who lives in the upper New York City society. He is engaged to a society girl, following the traditions, suggestions, and orders of his class as a proper gentleman should. But Archer knows there is more to life, to experience, to love than order and tradition. He just does not know how to escape the confines of his class system. Through his fiancee, he meets a woman, Countess Olenska, who he feels free around. Problem is, she is married, albeit separated. Archer decides to follow social expectations and marries his fiancee, but Olenska is continually in his mind. The plot of the story circles around whether Newland will break from his social class's regulations and seek out a woman that is opinionated, carefree and dangerous to his reputation, or will he stay with his wife May, who though pretty and acceptable, is devoid of opinion, passion or individuality?

The New York aristocracy took some getting used to and sorting out. Everyone is related to everyone else somehow, and there are family clans basically. I am positive all of this made much more sense to those reading when the book was published, but it is not so foreign that it cannot be understood today. With a little stretching of the theme, this story could be anyone of a young person trying to escape the rituals and parameters of his or her parents. Trying to figure out what of your upbringing to keep and what to slough off. In that way, the story does make this book a great American novel. It is a classic story, retold in the context of New York high society.

Time for a tangent! I fell short in reading this book because I did not realize until near the end I was reading it in the wrong fashion. Some books can be devoured like a 7-year-old with Halloween candy - voraciously and heedlessly, without regard to taste or texture. Other books are meant to be savored like a gourmet chocolate truffle (or insert memorable food here) - you let it sit with you, tasting it slowly and thoroughly so that all the notes sing. I began reading The Age of Innocence in a method nearer on the scale to a 7-year-old, and slowly recognized it should have been read more methodically and purposefully. The people in this book tell so much based off of a small nod or the way they greet another, and thus too is the book written. Displeasure is displayed delicately but deliberately; not screamed and echoed from rooftops.

Great American Novel Challenge Booklist:

July 2009: Absalom, Absalom! - William Faulkner, publ. 1936

August 2009: Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurtry, publ. 1985

September 2009: Moby Dick - Herman Melville, publ. 1851

October 2009: For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway, publ. 1940

November 2009: Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston, publ. 1937

December 2009: The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath, publ. 1963

January 2010: Rabbit, Run - John Updike, publ. 1960

February 2010: East of Eden - John Steinbeck, publ. 1952