By Edith Wharton
Told from the perspective of a young society man on the brink of marriage, this story is a window into the mores, hypocrisies and general social behaviors of upper crust gilded-age New York and Newport. Chafing under society's restrictions, Newland Archer falls in love with a young cousin of his fiancee. Ellen Olenska is the wife of a count (from an unnamed European country) who escapes her husband's abuse and seeks a more comfortable life back in the US. New York society, however, bound by rules of what it considers decent, regards Countess Olenska as scandalous for having left her husband (despite his known peccadillos), and her family employs various tactics to make her to go back to him, including engaging a law firm to clarify to Ellen the financial and social consequences of her present position; as a partner in the law firm, it falls to Newland to clarify things. Learning the extent of the count's mistreatment, Newland finds himself in a difficult position and it is during his meetings with Ellen that he is most drawn to the Bohemian countess. He looks on his fiancee, May, though lovely, as bound by strict societal codes that dictate whom they must invite to dinner, where they must vacation, and what types of behavior may be condoned. May comes across as naive and unaware of Newland's interest in Ellen, but May's words and actions suggest that she knows exactly where her husband's true feelings lie, and she acts cunningly to thwart them. As a result, Newland ends up following the path of least resistance, settling for a boring life with May. His yearning for Ellen never ends and the reader wonders if this story might have had a different ending, had it taken place in a different time and social class.
I enjoyed "walking" with Newland through 1870s Newport, as he rambled down Narragansett Avenue and past local landmarks. Edith Jones Wharton herself was a New Yorker who summered in Newport. She won the Pulitzer Prize for this compelling novel in 1921.
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