Edith Wharton's "The Age of Innocence" is a piercing exploration of the constraints and conventions of upper-class society in New York during the Gilded Age. The novel tells the story of Newland Archer, a privileged lawyer engaged to the conventional and lovely May Welland. However, the sudden arrival of May's cousin, Ellen Olenska, who has fled a disastrous marriage in Europe, disrupts Archer's settled life. As he grows increasingly captivated by Ellen, Archer grapples with his commitment to May and his deep longing for a life less bounded by societal norms. Wharton's novel, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1921, skillfully dissects the complexities of love, passion, and duty, all set against a backdrop of fading aristocratic values.
