https://lpgventures.com/hl5xaiul2 Edith Wharton’s masterpiece The Age of Innocence won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1921, in just the fourth year of the prize’s existence. And she was the first woman to win the prize. But her award became controversial, not because of her gender, but because it was revealed that the three-man jury had initially voted to give the award to Sinclair Lewis’s caustic satire Main Street, but had been overruled by the Pulitzer board, led by Columbia University president Nicholas Murray Butler. Pulitzer himself had initially established an annual prize of $1000 to be awarded “for the American novel published during the year which shall best present the whole atmosphere of American life, and the highest standard of American manners and manhood.” By 1921, that “whole” had been replaced by “wholesome,” and the board reckoned that Lewis’s satire, which had annoyed several prominent midwestern citizens, could not be considered “wholesome” enough. So they presented the prize to Wharton. Characteristically, Wharton wrote Lewis that when she learned the Pulitzer board had given her novel about the emotional and psychological warfare that took place in New York’s high society of the Gilded Age the award “for uplifting American morals,” she confesses she “did despair.” It was clear to her that they had not understood her novel at all. Director Martin Scorsese understood the book far better nearly three quarters of a century later when he made his 1993 film of the story, afterwards asserting that it was the most violent film he ever made, but it was characterized by what he called “refined violence”:
https://www.mbtn.net/?p=2ytjndnm0https://www.marineetstamp.com/7yw2r3i It’s emotional and psychological violence. Just as powerful and just as deadly as Joe Pesci getting shot in Goodfellas.
clicksource Subsequent critical opinion has tended to see Wharton’s selection for the award as hardly a miscarriage of justice, Wharton’s novel being at least as significant an achievement as Lewis’s. But their reasons are more in line with Scorsese’s than with the Pulitzer board. The book has been celebrated by inclusion on the New York Public Library’s 1996 “Books of the Century” list, the American Scholar’s 2014 list of the “One Hundred Best American Novels, 1770 to 1985,” Amazon’s “100 Books to Read in a Lifetime” (2014), and The Guardian’s 2015 list of the “100 Best Novels Written in English.” It was ranked as 58th on the Modern Library’s famous 1998 list of the “100 Best Books of the Century,” 55th on the Reader’s Digest 2022 “Greatest Books of All Time” list, 46th on Entertainment Weekly’s 2013 list of the “Top 100 Novels,” and 42nd on Radcliffe Publishing’s 1998 list of the “100 Best Novels.” On Penguin’s 2022 list of “100 Must-Read Classics, as Chosen by Our Readers,” Age of Innocence was voted number 34. And on the 1999 Bookman list of the “100 Favorite Novels of Librarians,” Wharton’s book came in as number 15. And of course, it comes in as number 95 on my own list of the “100 Most Lovable Novels in the English Language.”
https://www.marineetstamp.com/eg7xwe41click here Writing in 1920, the 59-year old Wharton was telling about the upper-class of the New York society of her childhood, the Gilded Age of the 1870s. Wharton’s title comes from a famous painting by Joshua Reynolds—originally entitled “A Little Girl” but circulated in the 19th century as a popular engraving commonly known as “The Age of Innocence.” Perhaps Wharton associated the girl in the engraving with her own innocence at that time, but it is clearly ironic: as we come to see, the innocence of characters in this society is a façade, behind which judgment, hypocrisy, and the most calculating machinations are taking place unnoticed.
source linkhttps://guelph-real-estate.ca/dn8d7na7w The novel’s protagonist, the young and popular lawyer Newland Archer, is from a prominent family in the upper echelon of New York society. He becomes engaged to the young and beautiful May Welland, the scion of an equally prominent family. It’s precisely the kind of match that conventional New York society is likely to celebrate. But into this rosy picture comes May’s cousin, the Countess Ellen Olenska. Ellen is plagued by scandal, having left the Count, her unfaithful Polish husband, and fled from Europe to New York and to her family there. Leaving one’s husband, for whatever reason, was simply not done in this society, and her presence threatens the peace and quietude of her family and Archer and May’s future happiness. Archer begins by taking Ellen’s part, along with May’s family who seek to protect her from society’s judgment. He later even supports her desire to divorce her husband—which is a bridge too far even for the family. As he realizes he is in love with Ellen (and that she returns that love), Archer struggles between his love for Ellen and his commitment to May, between the individual struggle of his heart and the expectations of his social class. It’s a society in which there is no manifest hostility, but where, as Wharton describes it,
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https://www.yolascafe.com/hwgmwm5s5source link These secret signs and unspoken prejudices permeate the novel. Early on, when New York society is busy snubbing Ellen and the stain of her reputation threatens to cast a shadow on the Welland family’s good name, Louisa and Henry van der Luyden (cousins of the Archer family and the most powerful couple in New York society) step in and invite Ellen to an exclusive dinner honoring the visiting Duke of St. Austrey, thus silently throwing their support behind Ellen.
follow urlsource site Mrs. Manson Mingott is also a mover and shaker in New York society. Matriarch of the family, she is May and Ellen’s grandmother and controls the family purse strings. When Newland, fearing he might be tempted to break his engagement to May because of his attraction to Ellen, pushes May to agree to an earlier wedding date than agreed on, Mrs. Manson Mingott makes it happen. It is her welcoming response to the disgraced Ellen that convinces the rest of the family to accept her, but when Ellen threatens the family name by planning to divorce Count Olenski, Mrs. Mingott withholds Ellen’s living allowance to make society’s disapproval plain. “It was the old New York way” Wharton says of these kinds of behavior: “the way people who dreaded scandal more than disease, who placed decency above courage, and who considered that nothing was more ill-bred than ‘scenes,’ except those who gave rise to them. ”
https://penielenv.com/cyeb81bzq3follow site Julius Beaufort is a relatively minor character who like Ellen is something of a pariah in high society. British born and haughty, he is nevertheless tolerated among the city’s gentry because as a banker he is able to make them rich, or richer, when he handles their investments. He befriends Ellen and much to Archer’s chagrin seems to be pressing her to have an affair with him, though he is already married to Mrs. Manson Mingott’s niece, Regina Beaufort (née Dallas). When Beaufort’s bank fails, he crumbles into financial ruin (and the greater part of New York society with him). Regina becomes an outcast in society because of her husband, though Ellen, oblivious to society’s demands, is the only one to consistently visit Regina in spite of her disgrace. When Mrs. Beaufort goes to Mrs. Mingott to beg for a loan, the matriarch says she will not support dishonesty, but tells Regina she must stand with her husband: source link “And when she said: ‘But my name, Auntie—my name’s Regina Dallas,’ I said: ‘It was Beaufort when he covered you with jewels, and it’s got to stay Beaufort now that he’s covered you with shame.’” But the shock of the scandal and loss sends the matriarch into a stroke.
Tramadol Hexal 100Mg Onlinesource site And May herself, who seems at first to be a completely shallow but pretty little thing, raised to be the perfect wife and mother following every jot and tittle of social custom, grows—perhaps is forced to grow—into a wife able to check her husband at every turn as she suspects Newland’s infatuation with her cousin, yet is able to maintain the outward image of their perfect marriage. Archer, desperate of ever consummating his love for Ellen, unsuccessfully urges her to run away with him, finally convinces her to be with him for one night. On that very evening, however, May decides to give her first formal dinner. and as was the case with the first formal dunner in the novel—the one given by the van der Luydens—this one too is fraught with unspoken meaning. It is a “farewell” dinner for Ellen, who has decided to move to Paris. And as Archer dines, he comes to realize what that meaning is:
http://www.mscnantes.org/9jpforzih3Buying Tramadol From India He guessed himself to have been, for months, the center of countless silently observing eyes and patiently listening ears; he understood that, by means as yet unknown to him, the separation between himself and the partner of his guilt had been achieved, and that now the whole tribe had rallied about his wife on the tacit assumption that nobody knew anything….As these thoughts succeeded each other in his mind Archer felt like a prisoner in the center of an armed camp.
https://penielenv.com/rgivjjlm0of The novel is certainly about social status and the nature of New York’s “high society” in the late nineteenth century. Opinions of the novel have varied over the years since its publication and many have seen May as ultimately a strong woman protecting her marriage and family against the scheming homewrecker Ellen. More recently, readers have found Ellen more sympathetic and seen May as manipulative. It seems to me that Wharton looks on society as benign on the surface but hypocritically ruthless and malicious. The single strongest impression one takes from the novel is the feeling of intense but confined and inexpressible passion, a love forever anticipated but never realized, a love whose only outlet may be the touch of a hand or a lock of hair brushing the cheek. As Archer experiences it:
https://onlineconferenceformusictherapy.com/2025/02/22/m8w81emaj6 The longing was with him day and night, an incessant undefinable craving, like the sudden whim of a sick man for food or drink once tasted and long since forgotten. He could not see beyond the craving, or picture what it might lead to, for he was not conscious of any wish to speak to Madame Olenska or to hear her voice. He simply felt that if he could carry away the vision of the spot of earth she walked on, and the way the sky and sea enclosed it, the rest of the world might seem less empty.
http://www.mscnantes.org/epcq5u5 There have been three film versions of the novel: a 1924 silent Warner Brothers film directed by Wesley Ruggles (who directed the Oscar winning Cimarron in 1931); a 1934 RKO picture starring Irene Dunne as Ellen; and of course Scorsese’s lavish and acclaimed 1993 film with which this review opened. You really ought to see that film, but please read the incredible novel first. One thing you can be sure of: it is not a “wholesome” book.