I seem to recall that at some point I began reading the Age Of Innocence but after a few pages put it aside and didn’t pick it up again (and have still not). Why I don’t recall, and this was also at least 26 years ago. I like to think I now appreciate some things more.
I had somehow got it into my head that Wharton was ‘an old-fashioned writer’. I’ve read Austen and some Trollope and liked it. I tried Dickens and didn’t much like it, and am old enough and have read enough that ‘old-fashioned’ and ‘modern’ when talking about writing are equally pointless and misleading descriptions. They tell us nothing.
Then I heard a radio interview with the actor Gillian Anderson, and she spoke of the film of the novel The House Of Mirth in which she had starred and I decided to read it. And boy am I glad I did.
Wharton is not in the least ‘old-fashioned’, and writing this, I can’t even remember or think what I might have meant by the term. Certainly, language, style, the meaning of words and the like can ‘age’ and, depending on the author, be ‘challenging’.
But as writers tend to deal in human nature and behaviour (and deal well or not so well as the case might be), the notion of being ‘old-fashioned’ essentially can relate to ‘style’ and less to ‘content’. A greed man, a lascivious
woman, a miser, a kind man are no different whether we come across them in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales or in a novel by this year’s ‘sensational new novelist’.
As I have grown older and better read, I have come to appreciate ‘style’ more (whatever that style might be) and writing skill.
Like too much in ‘the world of the arts’, a great deal of ‘appreciation’ is down to subjective judgment, and we should always be aware of personal preferences, especially our own, when evaluating a work. That is particularly relevant when we make our judgment pubic as I am doing here.
But – for me – Wharton might well be regarded as a ‘writer’s writer’.
At the risk of sounding unbearably pretentious and silly, reading Wharton, in common with one or two other writers, is a sensual experience: while reading The House Of Mirth I found I was enjoying the writing as much as the other elements which contribute to her novel.
Wharton had an unusual life. She was born into a well-off family and socially well-connected family who lived the life portrayed in the Downton Abbey New York-based spin-off streaming series The Gilded Age. Her maiden name was Jones and to live a lifestyle comparable to the one her family lived entailed ‘keeping up with the Joneses’.
Like Lily Bart, her heroine in The House Of Mirth, Wharton was brought up for more or less one purpose, to make a good marriage.
With her family, she travelled around Europe several times while still young and learnt to speak French, Italian and German. She did have an education from private tutors but wanted more and read extensively in her father’s library. From an early age she wrote, fiction and verse, but had nothing published until she was over 40.
The House Of Mirth is not quite a satire and not quite a tragedy, but it most certainly is a little of both. In brief, Lily Bart who was orphaned and taken into the care of a rich aunt is already a little ‘old’ for the marriage market and has had her chances to ‘make a good match’ as in marry a man with money. That, it seems was the sole purpose of young women of her class in middle-to-late New York high society.
Lily has, however, passed up many chances until, when the novel starts, she is gradually aware that ‘time might be running out’.
I shall not carry on outlining the plot, but simply recommend you read the novel for yourselves. Crucial, however, is that in the tight-knit, hypocritical world in which she exists she is thought to have crossed a social boundary and ostracised. From that point she sinks lower and lower.
Like Wharton, Lily is a bright woman and intelligent and self-aware. Yet she is apparently not bright, intelligent and self-aware enough to save herself. That might be regarded as her ‘tragedy’ yet the reader – at least this reader – suggests her ‘tragedy’ might never have been.
She seems to lack the backbone to save herself and it would be a little dishonest to blame her downfall on the rigidity of the hypocritical society in which she exists. Towards the end of the book she is given a glimpse of what a happy life might be outside her very limited sphere but seems unable to draw the obvious conclusion.
Instead she clings on until the end which is her death and which might or might not have been suicide.
Wharton’s novel is about far more than just the sad story of Lily’s life. She satirises the world in which Lily (and she) grew up although not all its denizens are tarred with the same brush: this is not a hatchet job and the picture of Gilded Age New York high society is nuanced. But nuance be damned: New York high society was very put out and being shown in the poor light Wharton had cast on it.
In describing the fate of young women in that society, the novel might be regarded as ‘proto-feminist’, but thankfully there is not political tub-thumping on the issue (I personally could not bear it if there had been).
Wharton herself overall refused to play the game. She did marry a man with money, although she had plenty of her own, but eventually they divorced. More to the point, she eventually relocated to France and spent the last 25 years of her life there. She was also a talented interior designer and renovated two properties.
The House Of Mirth was a find and I intend to read more of Wharton’s work, not least for her prose. Not a word is out of place. Although it is elegant writing, there is not a hint of showiness. It might for some be reminiscent of Henry James’ style but at no point does it suffer from the convolution which increasingly marked that style.
Wharton had an unusual life. She was born into a well-off family and socially well-connected family who lived the life portrayed in the Downton Abbey New York-based spin-off streaming series The Gilded Age. Her maiden name was Jones and to live a lifestyle comparable to the one her family lived entailed ‘keeping up with the Joneses’.
Like Lily Bart, her heroine in The House Of Mirth, Wharton was brought up for more or less one purpose, to make a good marriage.
With her family, she travelled around Europe several times while still young and learnt to speak French, Italian and German. She did have an education from private tutors but wanted more and read extensively in her father’s library. From an early age she wrote, fiction and verse, but had nothing published until she was over 40.
The House Of Mirth is not quite a satire and not quite a tragedy, but it most certainly is a little of both. In brief, Lily Bart who was orphaned and taken into the care of a rich aunt is already a little ‘old’ for the marriage market and has had her chances to ‘make a good match’ as in marry a man with money. That, it seems was the sole purpose of young women of her class in middle-to-late New York high society.
Lily has, however, passed up many chances until, when the novel starts, she is gradually aware that ‘time might be running out’.
I shall not carry on outlining the plot, but simply recommend you read the novel for yourselves. Crucial, however, is that in the tight-knit, hypocritical world in which she exists she is thought to have crossed a social boundary and ostracised. From that point she sinks lower and lower.
Like Wharton, Lily is a bright woman and intelligent and self-aware. Yet she is apparently not bright, intelligent and self-aware enough to save herself. That might be regarded as her ‘tragedy’ yet the reader – at least this reader – suggests her ‘tragedy’ might never have been.
She seems to lack the backbone to save herself and it would be a little dishonest to blame her downfall on the rigidity of the hypocritical society in which she exists. Towards the end of the book she is given a glimpse of what a happy life might be outside her very limited sphere but seems unable to draw the obvious conclusion.
Instead she clings on until the end which is her death and which might or might not have been suicide.
Wharton’s novel is about far more than just the sad story of Lily’s life. She satirises the world in which Lily (and she) grew up although not all its denizens are tarred with the same brush: this is not a hatchet job and the picture of Gilded Age New York high society is nuanced. But nuance be damned: New York high society was very put out and being shown in the poor light Wharton had cast on it.
In describing the fate of young women in that society, the novel might be regarded as ‘proto-feminist’, but thankfully there is not political tub-thumping on the issue (I personally could not bear it if there had been).
Wharton herself overall refused to play the game. She did marry a man with money, although she had plenty of her own, but eventually they divorced. More to the point, she eventually relocated to France and spent the last 25 years of her life there. She was also a talented interior designer and renovated two properties.
The House Of Mirth was a find and I intend to read more of Wharton’s work, not least for her prose. Not a word is out of place. Although it is elegant writing, there is not a hint of showiness. It might for some be reminiscent of Henry James’ style but at no point does it suffer from the convolution which increasingly marked that style.
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