By: Sarah Tomsyck
Knox College Common Room: Volume 3,  Number 1
May 27, 1998
URL:  http://nthome.knox.edu/deptorg/engdept/commonroom/Volume_Three/number_one/stomsyck/
 
 

The underlying forces of social convention characterize the world of Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence.  Wharton’s protagonist, Newland Archer, describes 1870’s New York society to this effect:  “In reality, they all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs” (Wharton, 44).  Inexorably bound by social conventions, Wharton’s characters in The Age of Innocence rely on the signs proscribed by society’s dictates to convey their meaning to others, and in so doing, to achieve their implicit personal (or group) agendas.  Like the layered symbolism of a system of hieroglyphics, the mechanisms of convention operate chiefly through the “superiority of implication and analogy over direct action” (Wharton, 335); and thus the unobserved, implied meanings in situations in the novel are equally as important as the actions and motives that are directly revealed.  Indeed, Wharton’s narrative structure in The Age of Innocence is critical to our understanding of the significance of the implied, for missing plot details leave major events in the novel glossed over or even omitted.  As readers we must fill in the elisions in the novel’s timeline, interpreting the implications of Wharton’s omissions, which create gaps in our knowledge of crucial thematic events.  Much like Newland, who struggles to interpret the often contradictory set of signs that surround him, as readers we must interpret for ourselves the significance of what Wharton leaves unsaid.  As much as Newland is bound within the constraints of his society, the conventional Age of Innocence, as readers we too are mired in the novel The Age of Innocence through narrative elisions.  In effect, the significance of the implied in the hieroglyphic world that is 1870’s New York is mirrored by narrative devices which reinforce reader implication in the world of the novel.
 

In The Age of Innocence, “the real drama is played out below the surface--the impeccable, sophisticated surface--and communicates itself, if at all, to the observer by means of signs which only the initiate can read” (Nevius, 182).  The crux of the novel is Newland Archer’s impending choice between May Welland and Ellen Olenska, and nearly every incident and remark in the novel contributes to this central conflict.  But it is a conflict that Newland should not even be faced with, according to the conventions of his society.  The problem for Wharton, the critic Blake Nevius suggests, is that if passions are to spin the novel’s plot, then they must be deliberately visible (183).  But in The Age of Innocence Newland’s socially unacceptable desires are not deliberately showcased for public view, though he and Ellen are discovered by both the family tribe and the reader.  Although as readers we are allowed periodic, advantageous glimpses into Newland’s mind, Wharton’s art lies in her ability to reduce us to the level of Newland’s own confusion in a hieroglyphic world.  By masking critical decisions from our view, like Newland’s choice to go through with his marriage to May, and by omitting important events, such as details of the couple’s life together, Wharton engages the reader in their own reading of signs.  As Gary Lindberg notes, “the gaps between a novelist’s scenes have a curious power to implicate us, for somehow we must tacitly account for the lapsed time, and to this degree we participate in constructing the narrative movement itself” (47).  Wolfgang Iser’s criticism similarly asserts that a reader must act as co-creator of the work by supplying that portion of the text which is not written but only implied.  This process of “concretization” requires that each reader fills in the unwritten portions of the text, its “gaps” or areas of “indeterminacy” in her own way (Tompkins, xv).  Thus Wharton’s elisions are a deliberate narrative strategy which implicates us as readers into a relationship with The Age of Innocence where we must concretize what is merely implied.
 

Wharton’s narrative strategy is clearly at work in the transition between Books 1 and 2 of The Age of Innocence.  Returning home from a visit with Ellen at the end of Book 1, Newland receives a telegram from May.  His rendezvous with Ellen just prior to the telegram culminates in their mutual admission of love for each other and Newland’s plaintive cry, “Do you see me marrying May after this?” (Wharton, 170).  Upon arriving home, the telegram announces the Wellands’ acquiescence to a shortened engagement and the couple’s pending marriage.  The telegram itself is doubtless the result of the family’s machinations to keep Archer in line by sealing his union with May, and in effect the conventions of society, in prompt public ceremony.  For up until this telegram, May tried to convince Archer that they should not hasten their wedding, and even generously expressed her wish that she could not have her “happiness made out of a wrong--an unfairness” (Wharton, 148) to another woman Archer cared for.  So why would she turn around without telling him and get her family’s support to marry Archer early?  And why did she have to send a message to Ellen about the change in plans?  Clearly, the machinery of the family tribe is at work, and it is up to the reader to uncover within the telegram itself the underpinnings of manipulated social convention.  With the advent of the telegram, Archer is forced into a timetable for making a decision between May and Ellen.
 

But where does that time go and when is Newland’s decision made?  For Book 2 opens with Newland standing on the chancel step of Grace Church waiting for the approach of his bride.  Thus, Wharton whisks us from Newland’s declaration of his love for Ellen, via May’s telegram, immediately to his marriage ceremony to May.  The narrative strategy enclosing the central moral decision of the novel is key in the transition between Books 1 and 2, where Newland makes a choice that we do not witness.  As readers we have been caught in a literary ellipsis, a narrative discontinuity between story and discourse (Chatman, 68).  Wharton halts her narration of events immediately after the telegram arrives, even though time has continued to pass in the novel.  Newland will make a decision, and he will prepare for his wedding, but there is no narrative discourse to allow us to watch these events unfold.  Wharton’s ellipsis thus makes the discourse-time of the narration shorter than the actual story-time of the novel; so much shorter that the discourse-time is zero (Chatman, 68).
 

Gary Lindberg asserts that “here, instead of accounting for lapsed time by postulating a chain of consequences, the reader is forced into Archer’s bewildered sense of what has happened” (49).  The rapidity of the sequence leaves no time for the reader to even question whether May’s telegram should really have changed everything again for Archer.  In fact, the sudden movement in events between Books 1 and 2 seems to emphasize the power of a simple public gesture, like a telegram, when it is backed by a complex web of social obligations and personal standards conditioned by convention.  The almost nonexistent interval between the telegram and the wedding further suggests that the wedding is the immediate and only recognizable consequence of the telegram.  Archer seems to have no choice; and our perception as readers of Newland’s entrapment is heightened by Wharton’s narrative technique:  “Wharton’s arrangement of interstices engages the reader in Archer’s own illusion that May’s announcement eliminates moral choice entirely” (Lindberg, 49).
 

In effect, Wharton’s narrative strategy also includes psychological gaps; that is, not only are sequences of time in the novel condensed, but elisions occur at critical junctures in Newland’s mental decision-making process.  It is important to note, however, that Wharton’s narrative strategy does not free her protagonist entirely from personal responsibility.  It is just that as readers we do not see Newland accepting much responsibility, as he succumbs to the demands of social circumstance.  As far as we can tell, Newland does not even deliberate over his pending decisions; in this sense, his choices are almost non-choices.  He only follows the path of least resistance, the option with the least immediate difficulty through the web of social obligations.  Thus, “it is the power of social expectancies, reinforced by the pressure of public time, that creates for the character the illusion that only one line of action is even imaginable” (Lindberg, 49).  Wharton’s ellipses condense the time during which such decisions take place, and emphasize what clarity of insight and strength of action (which Newland sorely lacks) would be needed to even contemplate a course of action other than that enforced by societal pressure.
 

The elisions in Wharton’s description of the wedding itself further suggest the significance of social convention.  The majority of the event is conveyed to the reader through Newland’s eyes as he awaits the approach of his bride; drawn out over nearly seven pages are the thoughts of this bridegroom, like so many others, on the chancel steps.  Wharton thus emphasizes the ritualistic significance of Archer’s marriage before the entire community, collectively representing the entirety of convention.  But once again, an ellipsis condenses the time that would have been spent in decision-making or reflection by pulling us abruptly into the real time of the novel at a later point:  Like Newland, we are surprised when “the white and rosy procession was in fact half way up the nave . . . the vision of the cloud of tulle and orange-blossoms floating nearer and nearer” (Wharton, 185).  Interestingly, Newland does not even identify May as a person until she is at his side.  Thus, the entire ceremony and the narrative strategy in describing it focuses specifically on Newland, and further emphasizes Newland’s entrapment in social machinery.
 

After the whirlwind wedding, Wharton creates further elisions in the novel’s timeline which force the reader to insightfully infer what she omits.  As the happy couple travel to their honeymoon destination, we must continue to concretize gaps in the novel.  For plans unexpectedly change, and they must now spend their honeymoon at the Patroon’s house where Newland courted Ellen.  A foreboding proposition for Newland, the one house where Ellen insists she could be perfectly happy (Wharton, 191) will now be shared by Newland and May on their wedding night.  Readers expectant of an embarrassing mishap with a discomfited Archer are disappointed; for the chapter (XIX) ends in gloriously dreadful expectation, but the next chapter (XX) does not begin where the former left off.  Chapter Twenty opens a month or so into the couple’s travels abroad, as they contemplate a visit with Archer family friends.  Where are the elaborate details of Newland and May’s new life together?  The elision of events immediately following the wedding and soon thereafter leads us as readers to ask questions about what Wharton’s narrative strategy necessarily omitted, and what perhaps simply did not happen.  May’s description of the honeymoon in letters to her girlfriends was “vaguely summarized as ‘blissful’” (Wharton, 194).  The trip was certainly vague, but what made it blissful?  May is no more convincing than Wharton in her summary of events, and as readers we are denied not only summary but psychological insights into Newland’s feelings about spending his honeymoon in the house where he rendezvoused with Ellen.  In addition, after consistently building up Newland’s desire to “take the bandage from this young woman’s [May’s] eyes, and bid her look forth on the world” (Wharton, 81) throughout Book 1, there is no mention made of it after the fact.  The brevity of narrative description, or the complete lack thereof, forces us as readers to make assumptions based on conventional standards.  While we can obviously figure out what occurs on one’s wedding night, and make sufficient inferences about the bliss of the honeymoon, the details Wharton omits make the honeymoon merely another fulfillable and forgotten social convention.  The honeymoon and all that it entails is an inexorable event, which further reinforces the idea that there is only one socially acceptable line of action to follow in this situation; and Newland therefore acts accordingly.
 

Perhaps the most interesting narrative elision in The Age of Innocence is from May’s announcement of her pregnancy to Newland’s retrospective reflections on his life almost thirty years later.  Much like her telegram wedding announcements, news of May’s pregnancy reaches Ellen before Newland is told.  This time too, May’s social cunning is directly exposed, as she spoke with Ellen two weeks before the day she was sure and then told Newland.  It is there that the chapter ends.  The final chapter begins with events that are to happen twenty-six years in the future, which is no small elision from the end of one chapter to the beginning of the next.  This epilogue, as it were, forces us to rely heavily on the significance of the implied in our interpretations of what those years must have been like for Newland and May.  Undoubtedly they were consumed by the fulfillment of conventional roles, such as the births of their three children, and Wharton teases the reader with some details of what did come to pass.  But we are largely in the dark about critical moments of those years, for the last chapter opens and May is dead.  We learn from her oldest son the details of her last words; when Dallas confronts his father about “the woman you’d have chucked everything for:  only you didn’t,” (Wharton, 356) he reveals his mother’s full knowledge of Newland’s love for Ellen.  In addition, there is the question of whether or not May ever “asked” Newland to give up what he most wanted (Wharton, 356), a life with Ellen.  Newland claims she never asked and, like Dallas, as readers we are similarly tempted to accuse May and Newland of characteristically “just sitting and watching each other and guessing at what was going on underneath” (Wharton, 357).  We have no way of confirming any sort of exchange between Newland and May as that entire time period is carefully obliterated from our view.  Perhaps it does not matter whether May ever asked or not, for the ultimate conclusion that would have been reached would be the same:  a conventional, long-lasting marriage of fidelity.  In effect, Wharton’s use of an extended ellipsis once again condenses time and events to force reader implication of critical details, and emphasizes the obligatory nature of social convention when personal choices to the contrary are not made.
 

The ellipsis of almost thirty years between the last two chapters is especially significant because in the interval old New York and its manners have outwardly disappeared.  Thus, Wharton’s elisions are not only narrative and psychological, but historical as well.  Archer’s son Dallas is no longer restrained by his parents’ delicacies, and to his son, Newland’s once impulsive love affair seems an old-fashioned fantasy.  The time that has passed even characterizes Newland’s final attempt at reunion with Ellen.  After declining to go upstairs to meet her, Newland instructs his son to “say I’m old-fashioned:  that’s enough” (Wharton, 361).  There is too much distance between them now for Newland to start over, and he is still a man bound by the conventions of old New York.  The gaps in Newland’s life, at least to the reader, seem to be complete with this final unseen, unexperienced meeting between him and Ellen.  Guided by convention, Newland’s life inevitably led him to the bench outside Ellen’s apartment in the fading light.  Even without witnessing the three decades from his prime years, perhaps we already know that Newland will not rekindle his old relationship with Ellen.  As ever, what Wharton implies through her use of elisions is more essential to our understanding of The Age of Innocence than events that are directly stated.
 

Narrative elisions in Wharton’s The Age of Innocence parallel and emphasize the subtleties of social convention in 1870’s New York.  Just as Newland attempts to interpret what is merely implied in a hieroglyphic world of manners and public custom, as readers we must interpret the absences Wharton’s narrative strategy creates for us in the text.  Ellipses force us to fill in the gaps in Wharton’s drastically abbreviated discourse-time, and to concretize implied events in the story-time for ourselves.  As we try to fill in the narrative, psychological, and even historical elisions in The Age of Innocence, we become victims of the undercurrents of social convention ourselves; for we fill in elisions in the text based on our own conventional expectations.  In effect, Wharton’s narrative gaps carry us along in Newland’s bewilderment, further emphasizing the subtle pressures of social convention which guide his actions and characterize his world.  In the end, as readers we become mired in The Age of Innocence through Wharton’s narrative strategy.  Through our concretization of Wharton’s narrative gaps, we become Newland.
 
 

Chatman, Seymour.  Story and Discourse:  Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film.  Ithaca:   Cornell University Press, 1988.

Lindberg, Gary H.  Edith Wharton and the Novel of Manners.  Charlottesville:  University  Press of Virginia, 1975.

Nevius, Blake.  Edith Wharton:  A Study of her Fiction.  Berkeley:  University of  California Press, 1953.

Tompkins, Jane P.  Reader-Response Criticism.  Durham:  Duke University Press, 1979.

Wharton, Edith.  The Age of Innocence.  New York:  Macmillan Publishing Company,  1993.