Age of Innocence :: essays papers

Age of Innocence Chapter One Summary The play opens at the opera. Newland Archer enters his opera box and looks out across the theater to check over his girlfriend, May Welland, touch the lilies he had given her. While dreaming of their coming(prenominal) together, his thoughts are interrupted by gasps from the gentlemen sitting with him. They are whispering some a fashionably dressed char who has just sat polish in the box with May. Sillerton Jackson gasps, I did not think they would fetch tried it on, which means, he merchant shipt believe the Mingotts would allow the woman to come and sit in their box at the Opera. Analysis This is a book close the conventions of Old New York, New York City in the 1870s. Wharton loves contrasting the nonagenarian against the untried. She begins these contrasts in the very first paragraph. Here she describes the new Opera theater that is going to be erected in the remote forties. We evoke assume that the forties have been built up since then and population reading her book in the 1920s (when it was published) would enjoy hearing about how New York has changed. Along these lines, there is also a description of the old people versus the new people, whom NY was beginning to dread and yet be skeletal to. Also key in this first chapter is Whartons discussion of fashionability and propriety. We can tell from the way that Newland Archer, Lawrence Lefferts and Mr. Silverton Jackson are introduced (all are so touch on with what is moral and the thing) that Wharton will spend a lot of cadence in the fable discussing and perhaps critiquing these concepts in the book. Of note, as well, is the great charge to enlarge that Wharton has. The way she describes clothing and interior decoration with much detail has led many to dub this book a costume novel. We will have to see for ourselves if the book develops beyond being a bodice ripper sort of book. May Welland will be one of the most important cha racters in the book. She is holding Lillies of the Valley. In the 1870s the lily of the valley was the flower of goodness and of the names Cynthia and Diana. Later in the book, May is often compared to Diana, the Greek goddess of the hunt.