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Age Of Innocence

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Claire Peters Honors English October 27, 2015 Literary analyse What one would often expect to see in a old-fashioned romance at the peak of the reverend social ladder is hushed romance and graceful beauty. Edith Wharton’s Age of Innocence is an unconventional version of this. It is perhaps one of the most important and influential records of life in this time. It chronicles life in the unbelievably rigorous and exclusive society of the 1870s taking place in a transfiguring New York City . The setting is the most important aspect in this story because it has such an incredible effect on the plot as the plot nearly revolves around the setting and the time period this story takes place in. Edith Wharton’s “Age of Innocence” tells of a young man, …show more content…

Because of the surroundings it is a critical point that the betrothed ,May, does everything in her power to appear proper and poised through out her entire life as a young bride and eventually a mother which is already resolute. This undoubtedly has a great effect on May as she is still young enough to be paraded about wealthy doting relatives by her mother with out any say in any matters as was expected by the society in this time and area and it is May that is oblivious this fact and couldn’t change it even if she realized it. The setting also has a perhaps greater effect on May’s cousin Ellen who Newland falls in love with. Ellen, having been away from the New York society for a long time is unaccustomed to how she ought to be ,in the opinion of everyone, dressing, acting, and speaking and she regularly makes mistakes, but this does not seem to harm her nor the people around her in any way. The center of the story of Ellen is a particularly scandalous one. She caught her husband doing rather terrible things concerning drink and other

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