Edith Wharton Essays

The Age of Innocence

New York Society, in Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence (1920), is paradoxically immortal and mortal. Like the Olympic pantheon of mythological Greek antiquity, New York Society cavorts and carouses, bickers and condemns while it feasts on ambrosia...

The Age of Innocence

It has been said that the true power of beauty is felt most deeply by those who have caught but a glimpse of its potential; those able to see its ethereal quality without demanding more. Perhaps, some have said, the fragility of aesthetic beauty...

The Age of Innocence

“Ah, don’t say that. If you knew how I hate to be different!” (Wharton 69). Ellen Olenska in Edith Wharton’s Age of Innocence is, to Newland Archer, the perfect example of an exciting rebel to the mores of society in the New York aristocracy. He...

12th Grade

The Age of Innocence

Newland Archer is not only a well-read intellect, but an introspective thinker who deeply considers his own life. One concept that Newland consistently struggles with is his understanding of “reality”, and a major journey exposed through Wharton’s...

College

The Age of Innocence

Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence [1] and Alice Walker’s The Color Purple [2] both paint a portrait American culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This culture appears to be male, with no room for the female as any...

College

The Age of Innocence

In The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton paints an intimate view of New York culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Wharton does this by masterfully presenting a slice of New York, focusing on a few intricately developed...

12th Grade

The Age of Innocence

“It’s worth everything, isn’t it, to keep one’s intellectual liberty, not to enslave one’s powers of appreciation, one’s critical independence?” (164). Questioning the concepts of true freedom and liberty, the overall theme presented throughout...

College

The Age of Innocence

In American literature and culture throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the signs of wealth and poverty are often indicated by an individual’s appearance. The belief that one’s exterior reflects their class is demonstrative of the...

College

The Age of Innocence

Erich Fromm’s The Sane Society and Edith Wharton’s Age of Innocence both display individuals ripped away from society by its judgment due to personal disagreements with social norms. The condemnation commences a battle between holding on to one’s...

11th Grade

Ethan Frome

Language comes in many forms. The forms can be actual different languages, or the forms can be found within a language. There are many forms of languages in writing alone. One can be straight forward, like a business letter, and another then be...