TBT: The Age of Innocence
By Edith Wharton
Rating 5/5 Stairs
I’m not usually one to pick up a classic novel for recreational reading. While they sound interesting, the language and writing style is typically just not for me. If it wasn’t required reading in school, I probably haven’t read it.
Honestly, if fate hadn’t intervened, I would have never picked up Age of Innocence. It would have been doomed to sit in my large (virtual) pile of unread classics. But in 1993, Martin Scorsese wrote and directed a beautiful, moving film based on the novel. Winona Ryder was the quiet, loving May Welland. Daniel Day-Lewis played the dashing Newland Archer, engaged to May but drawn to her cousin, the beautiful and mysterious Countess Ellen Olenska (Michelle Pfeiffer). It was stunning. Torn between his love for the two women, it is a heart-wrenching tale. Of course after seeing the film, I had to pick up the novel.
Ever since, The Age of Innocence has remained one of my favorite reads.
- Late 19th century New York society
- Love
- Anguish
- Passion
- Scandal
- Yearning
- Regret
- Sacrifice
- A beautiful and tragic love story
What’s not to love? Watch the film. Read the book. You’ll fall in love, too.
Hidden Staircase 
I’ve never read the book but I loved the movie. I had to study it for my Semiotics class in undergrad and it was so much fun to break down all the aspects of the film. I meant to read the book after I watched the movie but it slipped my mind! Thanks for the reminder 😉
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“He simply felt that if he could carry away the vision of the spot of earth she walked on, and the way the sky and sea enclosed it, the rest of the world might seem less empty.”
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