Key themes
- Conformity and the sacrifice of selfhood it demands
- Desire suppressed by duty — and what remains when duty wins
- Old New York as a world that suffocates what it protects
About this book
Edith Wharton's most famous novel, written immediately after the end of the First World War, is a brilliantly realized anatomy of New York society in the 1870s, the world in which she grew up, and fro
Published in 1920, The Age of Innocence won the Pulitzer Prize in 1921 — making Wharton the first woman to win the prize. She was drawing on memories of the world she had grown up in and deliberately left.
Discussion questions
- Newland Archer knows exactly what his world expects and chooses to stay within its bounds. Is this weakness, maturity, or something the novel refuses to categorise simply?
- Ellen Olenska is both an outsider and a former insider — she left New York and then returned. How does Wharton use this position to show what New York's rules cost those who live by them?
- The final scene — Newland choosing not to go up to Ellen — is one of the great endings in American fiction. How do you read his choice: as renunciation, as cowardice, or as a kind of wisdom?
- Wharton was herself a product of the Old New York she critiques. Does this insider status give the novel authority, or compromise it?
- The novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1921. What does it do that earns its status as one of the great American novels — and what does it see that The House of Mirth doesn't?
Get the book
Links open an Amazon search. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
Read together or read next
Books that make a good pairing or natural follow-up.
Reading it with your group?
Get The Age of Innocence
As an Amazon Associate and Bookshop.org affiliate we earn from qualifying purchases.