Characters in Vanity Fair [Update 2]

The two women at the centre of Vanity Fair are Rebecca (Becky) Sharp and Amelia (Emmy) Sedley, who are later Mrs Rawdon Crawley and Mrs George Osborne respectively. 

The novel mostly revolves around 3 families—the Sedleys, the Crawleys, and the Osbornes—and also William Dobbin, who is friends with George Osborne and in love with Amelia.

If I have to name the most interesting characters in Vanity Fair, I would say Becky Sharp, George Osborne, Mr Osborne (his father), Joseph Sedley (Amelia’s brother), and Miss Matilda Crawley (Pitt and Rawdon’s spinster aunt).  

Becky Sharp is an obvious choice: Vanity Fair wouldn’t be Vanity Fair without her. Right from the beginning, Thackeray sets up her and Amelia to be foil for each other, but I doubt any reader would pick the soft and gentle Amelia to be a favourite, as she is insipid. On the surface, Amelia may be grouped together with good, virtuous female characters whom readers like to hate, such as Fanny Price from Mansfield Park and Esther Summerson from Bleak House, but she’s nothing like them: she doesn’t have the sharp eye, introspection, and moral strength of Fanny Price, and doesn’t have the observation and sense of humour of Esther Summerson. Amelia isn’t just insipid—she is passive, vacuous, oblivious, and self-absorbed. She notices nothing. But I think Amelia becomes less boring as a character when Thackeray shows that the gentle, good-natured woman everyone loves isn’t so good after all, and she is shallow. 

Becky is a social climber, a liar, a hypocrite, a schemer, a manipulator, a chameleon, a deceitful friend, an unfaithful wife, a distant and cold mother, and yet we can’t help being enthralled by her. She is one of the greatest creations in literature. 

For example, look at the scene when George Osborne visits the Crawleys and sees Becky again after some time. At this point, Becky Sharp is a governess at the Crawleys. 

“When the young men went upstairs, and after Osborne's introduction to Miss Crawley, he walked up to Rebecca with a patronising, easy swagger. He was going to be kind to her and protect her. He would even shake hands with her, as a friend of Amelia's; and saying, "Ah, Miss Sharp! how-dy-doo?" held out his left hand towards her, expecting that she would be quite confounded at the honour.

Miss Sharp put out her right forefinger, and gave him a little nod, so cool and killing, that Rawdon Crawley, watching the operations from the other room, could hardly restrain his laughter as he saw the Lieutenant's entire discomfiture; the start he gave, the pause, and the perfect clumsiness with which he at length condescended to take the finger which was offered for his embrace.” (Ch.14) 

Last time they met, Becky was trying to bait the rich Joseph Sedley, and George Osborne was advising him against it because of her low background. Now he alludes to her failed attempt, in front of others, but she’s utterly cool. 

“Thus was George utterly routed. Not that Rebecca was in the right; but she had managed most successfully to put him in the wrong. And he now shamefully fled, feeling, if he stayed another minute, that he would have been made to look foolish in the presence of Amelia.” (ibid.) 

Isn’t she a fabulous character? 

Now look at this: 

“My Lady Bareacres cut Mrs. Crawley on the stairs when they met by chance; and in all places where the latter's name was mentioned, spoke perseveringly ill of her neighbour. The Countess was shocked at the familiarity of General Tufto with the aide-de-camp's wife. The Lady Blanche avoided her as if she had been an infectious disease.” (Ch.32) 

From the first appearance in the novel, they’re described as snobbish: Amelia writes to her mother “how the Countess of Bareacres would not answer when spoken to; how Lady Blanche stared at her with her eye-glass” (Ch.28). But Becky isn’t Amelia, and things change when the war spreads and people want to get out of Brussels.  

“Rebecca had her revenge now upon these insolent enemies. It became known in the hotel that Captain Crawley's horses had been left behind, and when the panic began, Lady Bareacres condescended to send her maid to the Captain's wife with her Ladyship's compliments, and a desire to know the price of Mrs. Crawley's horses. Mrs. Crawley returned a note with her compliments, and an intimation that it was not her custom to transact bargains with ladies' maids.

[…] What will not necessity do? The Countess herself actually came to wait upon Mrs. Crawley on the failure of her second envoy. She entreated her to name her own price; she even offered to invite Becky to Bareacres House, if the latter would but give her the means of returning to that residence.” (Ch.32) 

She laughs in the Countess’s face. It’s hard not to love Becky in those moments. It’s delicious. 

In some ways, Becky Sharp is a cousin to Mary Crawford in Mansfield Park and Undine Spragg in The Custom of the Country, but she beats them both. Compared to Mary Crawford, she comes from a poorer family and has to try harder, and has grander schemes. Becky is more similar to Undine, who is also a social climber, but the central difference is that Edith Wharton doesn’t allow Undine to be charming and bewitching to the reader, as Thackeray does with Becky Sharp or Jane Austen does with Mary Crawford. Edith Wharton’s contempt for her own character comes through. 

Miss Matilda Crawley, the spinster aunt, is also a memorable character. 

“She was a bel esprit, and a dreadful Radical for those days. She had been in France (where St. Just, they say, inspired her with an unfortunate passion), and loved, ever after, French novels, French cookery, and French wines. She read Voltaire, and had Rousseau by heart; talked very lightly about divorce, and most energetically of the rights of women.” (Ch.10) 

She’s painted with a few large strokes, and she is vivid. 

“Besides being such a fine religionist, Miss Crawley was, as we have said, an Ultra-liberal in opinions, and always took occasion to express these in the most candid manner.

"What is birth, my dear!" she would say to Rebecca—"Look at my brother Pitt; look at the Huddlestons, who have been here since Henry II; look at poor Bute at the parsonage—is any one of them equal to you in intelligence or breeding? Equal to you—they are not even equal to poor dear Briggs, my companion, or Bowls, my butler. You, my love, are a little paragon—positively a little jewel—You have more brains than half the shire—if merit had its reward you ought to be a Duchess—no, there ought to be no duchesses at all—but you ought to have no superior, and I consider you, my love, as my equal in every respect; and—will you put some coals on the fire, my dear; and will you pick this dress of mine, and alter it, you who can do it so well?" So this old philanthropist used to make her equal run of her errands, execute her millinery, and read her to sleep with French novels, every night.” (Ch.11) 

And we can see how liberal she is, when the “little jewel” Becky secretly marries her favourite nephew Rawdon. 

Among the male characters, the greatest is George Osborne. William Dobbin, in comparison, is insipid—Thackery’s strength clearly isn’t in noble or good-natured characters. To use today’s slang, Dobbin is a bit of a simp. Another major character in the novel, Rawdon Crawley, doesn’t have much of a personality: he starts off as a bad boy, but submits to his devious wife and gradually loses his identity: “that was now his avocation in life. He was Colonel Crawley no more. He was Mrs. Crawley's husband.” (Ch.37) 

George Osborne is more interesting because he’s more complex and multifaceted: he’s an asshole, but has the nobility to recognise and acknowledge Dobbin; he’s a snob, but loves and chooses to marry Amelia; he’s selfish, thoughtless, and unprincipled, but does have a conscience, at least sometimes; he’s captivated by Becky and even tempted to betray his wife (the ball scene in Vanity Fair makes me think of Anna Karenina), but does love Amelia and afterwards realises what he has almost done; he’s careless with money, but in the army, is a brave and respectable soldier… Thackeray depicts George Osborne so that we think Amelia is foolish for idealising him and loving him for so long, not noticing William Dobbin’s affection, but at the same time, we can also see why she loves him, why other characters get along with him, and why the noble Dobbin is best friends with someone so self-centred and unprincipled. 

I think the way Thackeray depicts the difference and quarrel between George Osborne and his father is especially excellent: we can see why George, who is normally distracted by all sorts of diversions and thoughtless or even cold to Amelia, would openly defy his own father and risk disinheritance, by marrying the poor Amelia. 

I would even go as far as saying that the Osbornes are one of the most interesting depicts of father-son relationships in literature. 

“Turning one over after another, and musing over these memorials, the unhappy man passed many hours. His dearest vanities, ambitious hopes, had all been here. What pride he had in his boy! He was the handsomest child ever seen. […] And this, this was the end of all!—to marry a bankrupt and fly in the face of duty and fortune! What humiliation and fury: what pangs of sickening rage, balked ambition and love; what wounds of outraged vanity, tenderness even, had this old worldling now to suffer under!” (Ch.24)  

That is a great passage. Before this chapter, Thackeray lets the reader see it from George’s point of view, but now he writes about the father’s perspective. Thackeray has sympathy for everybody. 

After George’s death: 

“He remembered them once before so in a fever, when every one thought the lad was dying, and he lay on his bed speechless, and gazing with a dreadful gloom. Good God! how the father clung to the doctor then, and with what a sickening anxiety he followed him: what a weight of grief was off his mind when, after the crisis of the fever, the lad recovered, and looked at his father once more with eyes that recognised him. But now there was no help or cure, or chance of reconcilement: above all, there were no humble words to soothe vanity outraged and furious, or bring to its natural flow the poisoned, angry blood. And it is hard to say which pang it was that tore the proud father's heart most keenly—that his son should have gone out of the reach of his forgiveness, or that the apology which his own pride expected should have escaped him.” (Ch.35) 

A few deaths in Vanity Fair are not much more than plot devices—Nabokov’s remark that in Jane Austen’s novels, no character dies in the author’s arms could be true for the deaths of Lady Crawley (Sir Pitt’s wife), Miss Matilda Crawley, and Sir Pitt in Vanity Fair—but the death of George Osborne has a great impact on many characters, and it is poignant. The old man switches his seat at church so he can face the inscription about George on the wall. 

And yet, the interesting thing is that even then, old Osborne doesn’t really forgive his son, and turns his anger and regret into hatred for Amelia, rather than take care of his dead son’s widow and child. That is extreme, but it is believable. 

Compared to George Osborne, Joseph Sedley is not so multifaceted. Readers who want depth may not see much in Joseph, but the character is very vivid: he is obese but vain about his clothing, self-important but deep down insecure and gullible, foolish, cowardly, lazy, pompous… And most of all, the characterisation is very funny. 

“"The children must have someone with them," cried Mrs. Sedley.

"Let Joe go," said-his father, laughing. "He's big enough." At which speech even Mr. Sambo at the sideboard burst out laughing, and poor fat Joe felt inclined to become a parricide almost.

"Undo his stays!" continued the pitiless old gentleman. "Fling some water in his face, Miss Sharp, or carry him upstairs: the dear creature's fainting. Poor victim! carry him up; he's as light as a feather!"

"If I stand this, sir, I'm d———!" roared Joseph.” (Ch.4) 

It’s hard to explain why many characters in the novel are types, as it is a satire, and Joseph is also a type, but he’s much more vividly drawn than others. 

At some point, I should perhaps write about the “insignificant” characters in Vanity Fair. I do think it’s one of the greatest novels of the 19th century.

Addendum (21/4/2022): It is to be expected that in a novel spanning so many years, the characters would change and our view of them wouldn’t stay the same. 

A lot has happened since I wrote the blog post (which is an argument for writing blog posts after reading the book, though I doubt I’ll change). 

Old Mr Osborne is even more finely portrayed than I thought—I like that he doesn’t change upon George’s death, which would have appeared rather contrived and amateurish, but persists in his anger, resentment, and hatred, and becomes a tyrant to his spinster daughter Jane, but he gradually has a change of heart after he sees the boy. It is more believable, more subtle this way.

I was unfair to both Amelia and Joseph Sedley. Joseph, for all his foibles, is good to his own family—compare him to, say, Pitt Crawley (Rawdon’s brother). And Amelia is in some ways self-absorbed, but she does take care of her parents, and does have lots of patience for them. Her main fault is that she notices nothing, and lives with delusion for so long. And she is insipid, but if she’s meant to be, isn’t that a success for Thackeray?

The same can be said about Rawdon Crawley: he is dull and doesn’t have much of a personality, but isn’t that also the point?  

“Rawdon Crawley was scared at these triumphs. They seemed to separate his wife farther than ever from him somehow. He thought with a feeling very like pain how immeasurably she was his superior.” (Ch.51) 

Rawdon isn’t meant to be Ralph Marvell: in The Custom of the Country, Undine is a little philistine who is attractive and full of life, and Ralph is more intelligent, more refined than her, but that isn’t the case for Rawdon and Becky. Rawdon is described as dull, without an identity beyond “Mrs Crawley’s husband”, and he follows Becky around like a shadow, not noticing what she’s been doing and how she’s been ruining their reputation. Chapter 53 is excellent, and heartbreaking. 

I’m currently on chapter 62. 

Addendum (22/4/2022): Finished, after 17 days or so. I read relatively quickly, perhaps because I have been ill with Covid and unable to do anything else. Great, masterful novel, one of the best novels of 19th century British literature, why did I not read it till now? 

Brief thoughts on The Kreutzer Sonata, The Devil, and Ethan Frome

Hello there. I haven’t been blogging lately because I wasn’t in the mood, having an excruciating toothache for over a week (wisdom teeth). The agony is over, but this blog post will be brief. 

After several months of reading plays and Shakespeare books, I returned to short stories, novellas, and novels.  

Returning to Tolstoy (in the translation of Aylmer and Louise Maude), I first read a short story called “A Spark Neglected Burns the House”. It’s a moral tale, a well-written one but still a moral tale—I thought Tolstoy was capable of so much more. 

And he was. The next reads were The Kreutzer Sonata and The Devil, and they’re both superb. Neither are comfortable to read and The Kreutzer Sonata may provoke some strong feelings of anger and disgust because it explores the mind of a sick, jealous, and misogynistic man, but both are great works. Do I think The Kreutzer Sonata is a misogynistic work? Some people seem to think there is a clear-cut answer but there isn’t. On the one hand, Tolstoy did write an epilogue in which he agreed with a lot of the character’s extreme views on sex and the body, and I did notice that not only the second narrator (the main character) but the first narrator (in the frame story) was also misogynistic, making unnecessary comments on the woman in the discussion about love and marriage, but on the other hand, Tolstoy is not the character. The character/ the second narrator, as he admits it himself, didn’t see his wife as a human being until he saw her dying, and can you imagine him—the character—having sympathy for Anna or Sonya or Natasha or Dolly as Tolstoy clearly does? 

As I read The Kreutzer Sonata, I thought I could see why Tolstoy clashed with Shakespeare: Tolstoy digs deep into his characters’ minds and explores their motivations, and in this novella tries to understand what may lead a man to kill his wife, whereas Shakespeare sometimes removes the characters’ motives from the source stories and makes them more obscure, like in the cases of Iago and Lear as Tolstoy singles out. Tolstoy clashes with Shakespeare because they have different approaches, different aesthetic visions.  

After The Devil, I picked up Ethan Frome because both are about a married man having a thing for another woman. The two however are very different: The Devil is about lust whereas Ethan Frome is about love, so the question of guilt doesn’t really bother Ethan. 

Ethan Frome is to me interesting for several reasons: partly because I read it after The Devil and could contrast the two books and two authors, and partly because it made me think of The Age of Innocence. I have always been aware that Ethan Frome is an unusual work, uncharacteristic of Edith Wharton, because it’s not about the upper class and it also doesn’t have the harsh tone found in The House of Mirth or The Custom of the Country, but it shares with The Age of Innocence the basic plot of a man having a wife or fiancée and falling in love with her cousin and seeing his wife send the other woman away. It’s fascinating to see what Edith Wharton does with the same basic idea, as the two books couldn’t be more different: Ethan isn’t Newland Archer, Zeena isn’t May, Mattie isn’t Ellen, and Ethan Frome is set in a fictional town called Starkfield in New England instead of New York. 

She’s very good at writing about desire, forbidden desire.

The ending of Ethan Frome is probably going to haunt me for a while: it is bleak, and the most awful (to the characters) out of all the possible outcomes. Edith Wharton’s endings are always haunting.  

I’m going to need something to cheer me up. 

Reading women (3)

See part 1, in which I wrote about my reading of female authors and the call to read more women. 

See part 2, in which I talked at length about Murasaki Shikibu, and also discussed Edith Wharton and Carson McCullers. 

1/ I suppose it’s time to look at the works by women that I’ve read this year (not counting the Jane Austen re-reads): 

- Edith Wharton: The House of Mirth, The Custom of the Country, The Age of Innocence. 

- Daphne du Maurier: My Cousin Rachel. 

- Kate Chopin: “At the ‘Cadian Ball”, “The Storm”, “Désirée’s Baby”. 

- Willa Cather: “Neighbour Rosicky”, “The Sculptor’s Funeral”. 

- Carson McCullers: The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. 

- Murasaki Shikibu: The Tale of Genji (trans. Royall Tyler), The Diary of Lady Murasaki (trans. Richard Bowring). 

- Sei Shonagon: The Pillow Book (trans. Meredith McKinney). 

- The daughter of Sugawara Takasue, also known as Lady Sarashina: Sarashina Nikki (retitled As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams, trans. Ivan Morris). 

- Virginia Woolf: The Moment and Other Essays, The Death of the Moth and Other Essays, On Being Ill.  

- Susan Sontag: Against Interpretation, Illness as Metaphor. 

- Joan Didion: Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The White Album, Vintage Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking. 

The majority of them are newly discovered writers, except for Daphne du Maurier, Kate Chopin, and Virginia Woolf. 

Last year I didn’t get a new favourite writer (are you shocked, Rebecca fans?), this year I’ve got 2: Murasaki Shikibu and Edith Wharton. With Carson McCullers and Joan Didion, I don’t use the word “favourite” (yet) but I do like them. 

See my blog post comparing Edith Wharton to Jane Austen, and my post comparing her to other writers, specifically George Eliot and Henry James. 

Murasaki Shikibu remains the greatest and most important writer I’ve discovered this year (and perhaps over the past 5 years)—I don’t expect her to lose “the title” any time soon. I know many readers object to ranking writers and naming someone as the best, saying literature is not a competitive sport, but I do think that Murasaki is the greatest Japanese writer. Apart from the ones mentioned above, this year I’ve read Natsume Soseki (most highly acclaimed writer of modern Japan), Yasunari Kawabata, and Junichiro Tanizaki—The Tale of Genji surpasses them all in terms of scope, depth, complexity, and vision. But the greatness of the novel is not limited to only Japanese literature, I place Murasaki next to literary geniuses such as Tolstoy, Jane Austen, Flaubert, etc. and she writes about death and its impact in a way that I don’t find elsewhere. 

This blog post is perhaps another excuse of mine to praise and promote The Tale of Genji, as I do every once in a while, but it is neglected, it is overlooked, it is not often read and consequently almost never mentioned among the greatest novels of all time (as it should) and therefore not much read. The length is intimidating perhaps, and the distance in time might cause hesitation, but why read 20-30 other books, which would appear small in comparison, if you can spend that time reading a novel that has lasted a millennium, a novel that has lasted while almost everything else has faded into oblivion? 

I myself am glad I have read The Tale of Genji, and I hold Murasaki Shikibu close to my heart. 

2/ As I read modern essayists such as Susan Sontag and Joan Didion, both of whom have a strong persona on the page, I can’t help thinking of Sei Shonagon. A lot of The Pillow Book is gossip and she writes about all sorts of things, but Sei Shonagon speaks across 1000 years because of her overwhelming personality. 

3/ I’ve now read Sontag and Didion, 2 of the most iconic American essayists, always listed among the best. 

So far I’ve written a blog post about both of them, and one about Vintage Didion and Didion’s writings about politics. 

I do like Joan Didion and, as written before, she makes me rethink essay-writing. I also get a bit “protective” of her in possibly a strange way—perhaps there is something in what people say about Didion and young women (am I young?). If you have a look at The Year of Magical Thinking on the hellscape called goodreads, most of the negative reviews reek of bitterness and resentment and seem to hate her for being rich and privileged, as though being rich and privileged means that someone didn’t experience deep sorrows and wouldn’t deserve sympathy, or they complain about her name-dropping famous people and mentioning (expensive) trips, as though she should feel bad for being friends with important people in the media or in Hollywood, considering that she works in both. The trips they took, the food they ate, the places they went to… are mentioned in the memoir because they’re part of her life, part of the memories of her husband. The negative reviews also say that the book is “depressing, self-pitying, and whiney”, but what do these readers expect, picking up a book about the author’s husband’s sudden death while their daughter’s in ICU? 

Having said that, I was a bit underwhelmed by The Year of Magical Thinking. It is very good, and insightful, and very moving, I didn’t mind that it’s fragmentary, but I was underwhelmed perhaps because of the immense praises I read before reading the book. That probably says more about me than about the book itself. 

I don’t quite share lots of women’s worship of Joan Didion either (is it partly because I’m not American?). The writers I worship (or come closest to worshipping) are Jane Austen and Murasaki Shikibu (and the artist in Tolstoy—I still have troubles with some of his ideas). 

4/ Where does the myth come from, that women can’t write men? These novelists I’ve read create vividly alive male characters: Murasaki Shikibu (Genji, To no Chujo, Kaoru, Niou, Suzaku, Yugiri, Kashiwagi…), Edith Wharton (Simon Rosedale, Gus Trenor, Lawrence Selden, Ralph Marvell, Elmer Moffatt, Peter Van Degen, Newland Archer…), Carson McCullers (Dr Copeland, Jake Blount…), etc. Even Daphne du Maurier, who is generally read more for mood and atmosphere and mystery than for psychological insight, portrays very well the character of Philip, who presents himself as inexperienced and naïve but who is actually controlling, paranoid, and manipulative. 

There are some female writers that can’t write men just as there are some male writers that can’t write women, but there are plenty of female writers that write men well and vice versa. Jane Austen and George Eliot too are excellent at writing male characters. 

The most fascinating and remarkable one here is Murasaki Shikibu, as The Tale of Genji was a striking masterpiece built upon a very slight foundation. She might not go as far as Tolstoy or Flaubert in exploring human consciousness, understandably, but the major characters in The Tale of Genji are still complex, memorable, and fully alive, and we follow them over the course of a lifetime and watch them change over time. Murasaki Shikibu also works with hundreds of characters who are all distinct. Then in the Uji chapters (45-54), she focuses on a much narrower group of characters and delves even deeper into their minds. 

5/ You might ask, why did I decide to read more books by women this year? 

Because I wanted to. 

Generally speaking, I don’t necessarily prefer or feel closer to female writers than male writers, I don’t share lots of feminists’ obsession with gender (and hostility towards “dead white men”), and I don’t look at literature through the lens of feminism. I also think that complaints about numbers and percentages are often foolish—of course there are more great writers that are men, throughout history women didn’t get the same education and the same opportunities, women didn’t get the same respect. 

I wanted to read more books by women because I was, and am, interested in the female perspective. The phrase doesn’t mean that women all think the same—all the female writers I have read are very different, in style, in approach, in ideas. But men and women are different, because of biology and evolution as well as social factors (though of course good writers can write across gender), and I do notice that female writers generally have more sympathy (and pity) for female characters, even the frivolous, selfish, and mercenary ones, than male writers do. 

I embarked on this personal project hoping to discover great books by female writers, which I did. The most interesting part is that it helped me discover the Heian period, which seems to be unique in the history of literature in the way that women were at the time seen as inferior and therefore barred from writing Chinese and writing history/ non-fiction, it just so happened that over time women became instrumental in developing vernacular Japanese and developing Japan’s literature—Japan’s greatest literary work was written by a woman. 

That being said, The Tale of Genji should be read not just because it’s an important book by a woman, but because it’s a great book. It’s one of the greatest novels I’ve ever read.

The books The Age of Innocence might have been

I recently had some conversations with 2 friends on Twitter about The Age of Innocence, particularly the ending, which reminded me of a blog post I intended to write long ago but never wrote. 
This is Edith Wharton’s original plan for the novel, as she proposed to her New York publishers, Appleton & Company—according to R. W. B. Lewis: 

“It bore the working title ‘Old New York’ and the scene was laid in 1875. The two main characters, Langdon Archer and Clementine Olenska, are both unhappily married. Falling in love, they ‘go off secretly’, Edith explained, ‘and meet in Florida where they spend a few mad weeks’ before Langdon returns to his pretty, conventional wife in New York, and Clementine to an existence, separated from her brutish husband, in Paris.” 

This is in the introduction of my copy of The Age of Innocence (Oxford Classics). 
The introduction also mentions another version, as described by Cynthia Griffin Wolff: 

“Archer breaks his engagement to May and marries Ellen, but though their honeymoon is magical, when they settle in New York, ‘he and Ellen are not happy together. There is no shared sense of reality; she misses the life in Europe that she has always known; he misses the familiar amenities of old New York; and finally they separate and return to their separate worlds’—she to Europe, and he to a bachelor life again with his mother and sister.” 

The essay “The Composition of Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence” by Alan Price (source) includes a more detailed account of this version, from Edith Wharton’s own notebook: 

“… Gradually Archer falls in love with her, & sees that life with May Welland, or any other young woman who has not had Ellen’s initiation, would be unutterably dull. 
It is very painful to him to break his engagement, but he finally has the courage to do so, though he does not tell May why he no longer cares for her. 
She gives him up magnanimously [cancelled: but when she finds that Ellen is the cause she is very bitter, & reproaches Ellen for Ellen too is very much distressed but still] because she has been taught that “ladies do not make scenes”, & she continues to pretend that she does not suspect Ellen of being her rival till the latter’s engagement is announced. Even then May is heroically generous, & is among the first to bring her good wishes to her cousin. 
[…] [Ellen] consents to a hasty marriage; but then, when they come back from their honeymoon, & she realizes that for the next 30 or 40 years they are going to live in Madison Ave in winter & on the Hudson in the spring & autumn, with a few weeks of Europe or Newport every summer, her whole soul recoils, & she knows at once that she has eaten of the Pomegranate Seed & can never live without it. 
She flies to Europe, & Archer consents to a separation…” 

(In this version, Archer is called Lawrence Archer). 
Needless to say, the final version is perfect as it is, and much superior to these alternatives, but do these plans not make you see the novel differently? 
The Age of Innocence is so poignant and moving because Newland marries May, and never has an affair with Ellen—they never get a taste of what it’s like to be together. On the one hand, Ellen becomes more dignified as she refuses the deceitful life as a mistress. On the other hand, Newland would forever be haunted by a “what if?”, though in the end, when he’s finally “free”, he chooses not to see her. 
But in her notes, Edith Wharton has contemplated them being together—for a brief period, and in her mind, in the various versions, Archer and Ellen cannot be truly happy together. 
As I wrote in my last blog post in April about The Age of Innocence, May and Ellen seem to correspond to the 2 sides within Newland Archer—he is drawn to Ellen because of her unconventionality, honesty, and courage, but he himself cannot be unconventional and honest; he recognises the limitations, hypocrisy, and the stifling nature of society, but he is part of it, he shares its rules and hypocrisy. Much as he wants to, Newland cannot rise above conventions, which is why he asks Ellen to be his mistress (without the frankness to use the exact word)—a banal, selfish, and cowardly suggestion. 
So Ellen refuses. 
In the end, both Ellen and May are more admirable, and more in control than Newland.
As the previous versions suggest, Archer and Ellen, in the author’s mind, cannot be truly happy together. Edith Wharton is too fine an artist to write a simple novel about romantic rebellion against society—The Age of Innocence is much more nuanced and complex.
Then, even a finer artist, Edith Wharton develops the novel in a different direction—with “the packed regrets and stifled memories of an inarticulate lifetime” and a lingering “what if?”, the final novel becomes much more subtle and moving. 
This novel is a masterpiece. 

Reading women (2)

See my earlier blog post about reading women. 

1/ With the plan of reading more books by women this year, so far I have read: 
- Edith Wharton: The House of Mirth, The Custom of the Country, The Age of Innocence. 
- Daphne du Maurier: My Cousin Rachel. 
- Kate Chopin: “At the ‘Cadian Ball”, “The Storm”, “Désirée’s Baby”. 
- Willa Cather: “Neighbour Rosicky”, “The Sculptor’s Funeral”. 
- Carson McCullers: The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. 
- Murasaki Shikibu: The Tale of Genji. 
- Sei Shonagon: The Pillow Book. 
I also reread Mansfield Park and Persuasion. 
I like them all, and now Murasaki Shikibu and Edith Wharton are among my favourite writers. 

2/ The Tale of Genji is the greatest book I’ve read this year, and among the best I’ve read. Here’s what I wrote at The Common Breath: 

“From afar, The Tale of Genji may not look very appealing because it’s from the 11th century, and the culture is indeed alien, but in terms of technique, it is surprisingly modern. It forced me to rethink everything about world literature and the history of literature, because most of my favourite writers come from the 19th century (Tolstoy, Austen, Melville, Flaubert, etc.), then I realised that in 11th century Japan, a female writer had already figured out everything about the psychological novel.
I think it would be hard to read The Tale of Genji without getting a sense of awe, as it is a novel of great scope, longer than War and Peace, with about 400 characters. The characters are all unnamed, because it is rude to use personal names at Heian court, so we know of the characters by their titles or nicknames related to a flower, a poem, or a residence. The challenge is that the characters get promoted and change titles, or move house, and their inter-connections are also complex, so it is more difficult than War and Peace, but Murasaki Shikibu keeps track of all of them and the characters are all distinct and memorable.
As Tolstoy does with Russia in War and Peace and Anna Karenina, The Tale of Genji captures the intellectual and moral climate of Japan in the Heian period — we learn about the court system, beliefs and lifestyles, rituals, festivals, letter-writing, calligraphy, poetry, music, dance, incense-making, painting, gardening, Buddhist philosophy, and so on. At the same time, because it’s written by a woman, and about the women surrounding Genji as much as about Genji, The Tale of Genji also shows us what it’s like to be a woman in Heian Japan. It is also a beautiful novel, pervaded by mono no aware. A central theme is the fragility and impermanence of life, but it is not only sadness—in the idea of mono no aware, there is also a celebration of fleeting beauty, while it lasts.
It is an extraordinary novel, one that should be read more.” 

Everyone who knows me and knows my obsession with Jane Austen would be surprised to hear that I think Murasaki Shikibu is a greater writer. It’s partly because The Tale of Genji is an immense, impressive novel, in which she has to keep track of a large number of characters and still makes them vivid and distinctive (see my blog post about 2 kinds of big novels). She’s similar to Tolstoy in that she works on a large canvas, but you’re even more in awe when you come closer and see all the subtlety, all the fine details. Another reason is the way she writes about death and its impact, mortality, and the fragility of life. I love Jane Austen, but cannot help noticing, since Nabokov pointed it out in his lecture on Mansfield Park, that in her novels, deaths always happen off-stage and tend to drive the plot forward—no character dies in the author’s arms. 
There’s something else that I love in The Tale of Genji: the spirit of the Rokujo Haven is one of the finest creations I’ve encountered in literature—it is not a ghost, because the person is still alive, it’s an incarnation of her jealousy, hatred, and bitterness. The spirit may have its roots in Japanese folk tales, I don’t know, but it works so well in the novel because the Rokujo Haven, as herself, is unhappy but unaware of her jealousy of Aoi, but the bitterness takes the form of a spirit to attack Aoi savagely and kill her—Murasaki Shikibu is aware of the gap between conscious and unconscious feelings. 
She doesn’t just show the material aspects of life—she shows something more, something beyond them. 
In some ways, Murasaki Shikibu is comparable (though not similar) to Tolstoy, but with her, I don’t have to struggle the way I sometimes do with Tolstoy’s ideas and the preacher in him. 
Between her and Jane Austen, I naturally feel closer to Jane Austen because I’ve known her works for several years and am familiar with British culture, but I already feel that Murasaki Shikibu’s also close to my heart, in spite of time, in spite of the cultural barriers. 

3/ My reading took a new direction because of the pandemic, as I started reading East Asian classics—The Tale of Genji fits both (East Asian and female author). Little did I know, it would change me forever. 

4/ Edith Wharton and Carson McCullers are also wonderful. Both of them can create vivid and complex characters, and both fit my ideal of not moralising and not spoon-feeding readers, but in a way they are opposite. Edith Wharton is the cold, harsh one, who dissects society, sees through everything, and exposes the hypocrisies and pretensions of the upper-class, often in a misanthropic, mocking tone, whereas Carson McCullers, at least in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, writes about a range of misfits and depicts them with lots of love and compassion. 
McCullers is even more remarkable because she was only 23 when the novel was published—is it not stunning that a 23-year-old white woman in the South in 1940 could write so well and with so much sympathy about a bitter middle-aged black doctor? Is it not even more incredible that a 23-year-old could see through and expose the type like Jake Blount—a Marxist who goes on and on about grand ideas, but who is deep down very racist, heartless, hypocritical, and willing to sacrifice people for his cause? 

5/ I want to read more books by Carson McCullers and Willa Cather. 
Edith Wharton too, but at least I’ve read her 3 major works. 

6/ I also like Daphne du Maurier, and so far have read Rebecca and My Cousin Rachel. Both are enjoyable and well-plotted. She’s a great storyteller. 

7/ So far my plan to read more books by women has been going well, and I’ve discovered some fantastic authors.

10 favourite novels and some other lists about books

- 10 favourite novels (updated): 
The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu 
Anna Karenina by Lev Tolstoy
War and Peace by Lev Tolstoy
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton 
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert 
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison 

- 3 favourite writers: 
Jane Austen 
Murasaki Shikibu 
Lev Tolstoy 

- 10 novels I feel worst for not having read:  
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky 
Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe 
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman 
The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass
Hunger by Knut Hamsun 
To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf 
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo 
The works of Emile Zola 

- 10 novels I very much want to read though won't read any time soon: 
Ulysses by James Joyce
In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust 
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov 
Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin
Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac 
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco 
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray 
Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne
My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk 
The Red and the Black by Stendhal  

Compare to my lists from 4 years ago.

Update on 27/12/2020: Less than half a year later, my top 10 favourite novels have been updated. 

Me at The Common Breath

Me being featured at The Common Breath: talking about Jane Austen, Murasaki Shikibu, Lev Tolstoy, Edith Wharton, Nguyễn Du, and some others: click here. 

Midway through A Backward Glance

It probably shows how bad my concentration is, or how little patience I have, during the lockdown that midway through Edith Wharton’s autobiography, I’m thinking of abandoning it.  
It’s just not very compelling, which is a surprise. Wharton had a rich, fascinating life: she was extremely rich and was brought up in fashionable society, had a privileged life, had many intellectual friends (including Henry James), travelled often between Europe and the US and travelled widely, had many interests from architecture to gardening and interior design, wrote a book called The Decoration of Houses and a book called Italian Villas and Their Gardens, started writing fiction quite late in her life but became enormously successful (bestsellers), had many accomplishments, had an affair, got a divorce, then later in France worked tirelessly in her charitable efforts for refugees and the injured, and got appointed Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. She also became the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize, for The Age of Innocence.
Compared to many people in her time, especially women, Wharton had a fascinating, eventful, and enviable life. 
And yet, the autobiography seems really dull and repetitive. The Wharton of A Backward Glance isn’t the Wharton of The House of Mirth or The Custom of the Country or even The Age of Innocence—the book isn’t really funny, and even though there’s some irony, some mockery here and there, there’s none of the sharpness we see in the novels, probably because she’s writing about real people. It’s quite bland and dull.  
I’m nearly halfway through the book. She begins the autobiography talking about the background, her ancestors, family, then her childhood. In the adult chapters, she spends lots of time writing about the cultivated minds she knows, the intelligent, cultured people who help her with her writings (Walter Berry, for example), which becomes repetitive and tiresome after a while, as all the figures she mentions become fused together and get mixed up. 
There are things I’m interested in that don’t get discussed in the book, such as her feelings about her mother Lucretia, or her marriage with Teddy. She doesn’t even write about the events that led up to the marriage. In short, in terms of personal life, it is a very conservative, and not at all frank, autobiography. 
I can’t help thinking of Speak, Memory, which is stamped with Nabokov’s strong personality and filled with enthusiasms; in A Backward Glance, Edith Wharton’s personality doesn’t come out very strongly. 
At this point, she hasn’t said anything about The House of Mirth. I may still pick up the book again, as I’m interested in her writing process, inspiration, ideas, thoughts on the success of her books, etc. I don’t know anything about the background of The House of Mirth, but my copy of The Age of Innocence mentions her original ideas, which were completely different. I’m interested in her writing process and artistic decisions, and also interested in her views on other writers, contemporary or classic. It’s just a pity that so far there’s so little of it. 
Or maybe I just have very short attention spans these days.

Ethics in Persuasion and the Jane Austen myths

Many people often foolishly think Jane Austen’s a romance author—the mother of chicklit. Indeed all her 6 novels follow the marriage plot, and if we’re talking about the bare plot, they all have the same one (a heroine, a hero, some obstacles, a female rival, a foil to the hero), but there are a lot more things going on and the novels are all different. The idea of plot is meaningless as the history of literature also boils down to a handful of different plots, used over and over again.
Some other people mistakenly think she’s chiefly concerned with manners. That appears to be true, as her novels are seen as comedy of manners—but what Jane Austen’s chiefly concerned with is not manners but the mind, the character, the moral principles underneath the manners. She’s interested in ethics. She uses the marriage plot to write about ethics, about self-deception and misunderstanding, about moral education and mental growth.    
Jane Austen’s ethics, in my opinion, are more sophisticated than both George Eliot’s and Edith Wharton’s. 
George Eliot’s ethics are built around the central idea of sympathy—people should love and sympathise with others, and shouldn’t be selfish. 
Edith Wharton’s main concern seems to be the conflict between society and individual—in The House of Mirth and The Custom of the Country, her ethics are mainly to do with self-respect and dignity; whilst in The Age of Innocence, her ethics are about self-respect and the sense of duty. 
These 3 writers all have different strengths, and they’re all great, so I’m not putting down George Eliot and Edith Wharton in order to champion Jane Austen. I’m comparing the ethical aspect of their works. When I say Jane Austen’s ethics are more sophisticated, I mean they’re not built around a central idea—she deals with different moral values or principles, as well as different shades and different degrees of the same moral value. 
An example is the concept of pride in Persuasion. In the book, the word “proud” appears 8 times in Persuasion, “pride” 18 times. In my blog post about Anne Elliot’s personality, I wrote that Jane Austen made a distinction between bad pride (arrogance, self-satisfaction, self-importance), as in Sir Walter, Elizabeth, and Mary, and good pride (self-respect, confidence), as in Anne. 
However, there’s a 3rd kind of pride in Persuasion (this is the problem of blogging before finishing reading): Frederick Wentworth’s pride. His attempts to attach himself to Louisa Musgrove at the beginning are, in his words, “the attempts of angry pride”. 

“… There he had seen everything to exalt in his estimation the woman he had lost; and there begun to deplore the pride, the folly, the madness of resentment, which had kept him from trying to regain her when thrown in his way.” (Ch.23) 

Later, he admits that a few years ago, in a better position, he was too proud to ask Anne again. His pride is in the sense of a wounded ego. 
Also in Persuasion, Jane Austen writes about the different shades of the concept of resolution. Frederick Wentworth initially sees Anne as lacking resolution. 

“She had used him ill, deserted and disappointed him; and worse, she had shewn a feebleness of character in doing so, which his own decided, confident temper could not endure. She had given him up to oblige others. It had been the effect of over-persuasion. It had been weakness and timidity.” (Ch.7) 

He says to Louisa:

“"... It is the worst evil of too yielding and indecisive a character, that no influence over it can be depended on. You are never sure of a good impression being durable; everybody may sway it. Let those who would be happy be firm…"” (Ch.10) 

Throughout the novel, he’s the one who has to grow and learn:  

“There, he had learnt to distinguish between the steadiness of principle and the obstinacy of self-will, between the darings of heedlessness and the resolution of a collected mind.” (Ch.23) 

Some people are more attracted to an openly resolute character, but Jane Austen reminds us that there’s a difference between the steadiness of principle and the obstinacy of self-will. 
Jane Austen’s idea can be seen clearly in Mansfield Park. Yesterday I saw someone say that she didn’t like Fanny Price because she’s not defiant. I’ve also seen lots of people call Fanny passive, or remark that she’s characterised by negation (whatever that means). Such misreadings are due to a shallow understanding of Jane Austen and a juvenile idea of resolution. There is nothing passive about holding fast to your principles, standing by your own belief and judgment, and resisting pressures from different sides. Fanny is defiant—just not in a noisy way. In fact, she’s more defiant than all of Jane Austen’s heroines. Her resolution is the steadiness of principle, and the resolution of a collected mind. 
In Persuasion, Anne Elliot is similar—her personal respect for her father and her sense of duty to her don’t allow her to defy him openly, but she has her own set of values, and refuses either to flatter Lady Dalrymple or to drop her friendship with Mrs Smith, of whom her father disapproves. 

There’s something else I find interesting. Frederick Wentworth fears that Lady Russell, who years ago persuaded Anne to reject him, would now persuade her to marry William Walter Elliot. It is true that she does try, but Anne tells him the difference: 

“"... If I was wrong in yielding to persuasion once, remember that it was to persuasion exerted on the side of safety, not of risk. When I yielded, I thought it was to duty, but no duty could be called in aid here. In marrying a man indifferent to me, all risk would have been incurred, and all duty violated."” (ibid.) 

The novel examines the moral dangers of persuasion, but Jane Austen makes a distinction between persuasion on the side of safety, and on the side of risk. Lady Russell’s advice to decline Wentworth’s proposal did break their hearts, but at the time it’s sound advice. He comes back now a captain, with lots of money, but we can’t say that he would have achieved all that if Anne had accepted him. Perhaps he had the potential and ambition in him, or perhaps the rejection drove him to prove himself—we don’t know. Anne herself thinks Lady Russell wasn’t wrong, and she wasn’t wrong to reject him. 
But her friend’s attempt to persuade her to accept William Walter Elliot is altogether a different sort of persuasion.  
More can be said about Persuasion and Jane Austen’s other works, but I think that’s enough for now. It’s her misfortune that her novels can be enjoyed on a superficial level. Contrary to general perception, Jane Austen’s much more sophisticated, ethically and artistically.

On finishing The Age of Innocence

I’ve finished reading The Age of Innocence. A magnificent novel. It must be Edith Wharton’s best book. 

“… he had built up within himself a kind of sanctuary in which she throned among his secret thoughts and longings. Little by little it became the scene of his real life, of his only rational activities; thither he brought the books he read, the ideas and feelings which nourished him, his judgments and his visions. Outside it, in the scene of his actual life, he moved with a growing sense of unreality and insufficiency, blundering against familiar prejudices and traditional points of view as an absent-minded man goes on bumping into the furniture of his own room. Absent—that was what he was: so absent from everything most densely real and near to those about him that it sometimes startled him to find they still imagined he was there.” (Ch.26) 

I see The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence as masterpieces, and both are greater than The Custom of the Country, because they’re written with compassion and sympathy, whereas The Custom of the Country is a cold dissection of an essentially hollow character. It is masterfully done, and Undine Spragg is a fascinating, vivid character, among the most memorable female characters in literature, but something is lacking in the novel as a whole, especially after Ralph’s death (except for the final chapter, which is haunting).  
In an earlier blog post, I wrote that there was a sameness to Wharton’s 3 great New York novels, but that was only my initial reaction. Compared to The House of Mirth and The Custom of the Country, The Age of Innocence has a different tone—the sense of suffocation is still there, but the social criticism is more muted, and there is a tenderness and melancholy that the other books don’t have.  
Look at these wonderful lines from the final chapter: 

“He preferred to spend the afternoon in solitary roamings through Paris. He had to deal all at once with the packed regrets and stifled memories of an inarticulate lifetime.”   

That is what the novel is about—longing, passion, then “packed regrets and stifled memories”. 
There are some magnificent passages in the final chapter, which serves as epilogue, but I will save them, for those of you who haven’t read the book. 
I began reading The Age of Innocence, thinking it was about Newland Archer’s choice between individual needs (Ellen Olenska) and social duty (May Welland), but it’s a lot more complex, and his choice cannot be seen merely in such abstract terms. Nor is it a choice between a passionate, unconventional woman (Ellen) and an innocent, conventional, and narrow-minded woman (May). 
Both Ellen and May are portrayed with lots of compassion. Ellen sacrifices her own happiness because she cannot betray the people who have welcomed her back and accepted her with kindness, and has too much self-respect to agree to be Newland’s mistress; whilst May turns out to have much more depth and understanding than Newland recognises, and she too probably sacrifices herself in accepting a life with him, knowing that he passionately loves someone else. 
The 2 women, the way I see it, seem to correspond to the 2 sides in Newland: he recognises the limitations, hypocrisy, and the stifling nature of his society, but he is part of it—he shares its conventions and hypocrisy. Newland has many shortcomings, but his shortcomings are those of his class—he’s more of a product of society than he sometimes realises. In middle age, as he looks back at his life and choices, Newland knows he has missed “the flower of life”, but “he thought of it now as a thing so unattainable and improbable that to have repined would have been like despairing because one had not drawn the first prize in a lottery” (Ch.34). He must know, at the back of his mind, that life with Ellen might not be as happy as his fantasy. 
If we must compare The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence, some readers might see the former as having more tragic weight, and prefer it for the harsh, merciless analysis of high society, but I think of the latter as greater for having more emotional depth, more sympathy, and a greater vision. I won’t say more, both are great. 


See my previous blog posts about The Age of Innocence: random thoughts, passion, and the things people leave unsaid. 

The things left unsaid in The Age of Innocence

Writing about Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf ponders, if she had lived longer: 

“She would have devised a method, clear and composed as ever, but deeper and more suggestive, for conveying not only what people say, but what they leave unsaid; not only what they are, but (if we may be pardoned the vagueness of the expression) what life is.” (full essay)   

This is something I’ve noticed in The Age of Innocence: Edith Wharton writes a lot about things people leave unsaid.  
(From where we are, the 2 writers may not seem that far apart, at least to some of us, but more than 100 years passed between Jane Austen’s last novel, Persuasion, which was published in 1818, and The Age of Innocence, which was published in 1920, exactly 100 years ago). 
In The Age of Innocence, I think there are 3 main kinds of silence: 
1/ As Edith Wharton focuses on Newland Archer’s perspective (instead of switching between perspectives as she does in The Custom of the Country or The House of Mirth), such moments are about him—we know the things he thinks but doesn’t say. 
Newland has a gentleman’s restraint. For example, look at this exchange between him and his sister Janey: 

“"Not the half of one—if she thinks such old maid's rubbish."
"Mother is not an old maid," said his virgin sister with pinched lips.
He felt like shouting back: "Yes, she is, and so are the van der Luydens, and so we all are, when it comes to being so much as brushed by the wing-tip of Reality." But he saw her long gentle face puckering into tears, and felt ashamed of the useless pain he was inflicting.” (Ch.10)

 As he’s a gentleman, bound by conventions, there is lots of restraint in his conversations with Ellen Olenska. For example, this is when he and Ellen discuss her intention to file for divorce: 

“It was on his lips to exclaim: "My poor child—far more harm than anywhere else!" Instead, he answered, in a voice that sounded in his ears like Mr. Letterblair's: "New York society is a very small world compared with the one you've lived in. And it's ruled, in spite of appearances, by a few people with—well, rather old-fashioned ideas."” (Ch.12) 

Then: 

“"And you take their view?"
He stood up at this, wandered across the room, stared with void eyes at one of the pictures against the old red damask, and came back irresolutely to her side. How could he say: "Yes, if what your husband hints is true, or if you've no way of disproving it?"
"Sincerely—" she interjected, as he was about to speak.” (ibid.)   

He cannot bring himself to ask if she’s involved with her husband’s secretary, as her husband threatens to bring against her in the divorce. 

“Since she would not or could not say the one word that would have cleared the air, his wish was not to let her feel that he was trying to probe into her secret. Better keep on the surface, in the prudent old New York way, than risk uncovering a wound he could not heal.” (ibid.) 

As they both leave things unsaid, especially on Newland’s side, they keep the discussion on the surface and make assumptions about each other, and end up misunderstanding each other. In the end, Ellen chooses not to have a divorce, to protect him, May, and their families, and they cannot be together. 
There are many more such moments in The Age of Innocence. Newland may see all the conventions and restrictions in his society, but he too is part of society—he too has been brought up that way. He also chooses restraint and leaves thing unsaid, he also hints or avoids subjects instead of speaking frankly, he also keeps things on the surface, he also uses stock phrases like everyone else. He is exactly like the people he secretly condemns. 
However, this makes it so good when he confesses his feelings to Ellen. There is lots of passion, and a real sense of release.  
Later on, Newland, now married, still has restraint when seeing Ellen. Here is the scene in Boston: 

“The young man's blush deepened. She had pronounced the word as if it had no more significance than any other in her vocabulary. For a moment it was on the tip of his tongue to ask: "Did he send his secretary, then?" But the remembrance of Count Olenski's only letter to his wife was too present to him. He paused again, and then took another plunge.
"And the person?"— ” (Ch.23) 

A bit later: 

“They sat silent, not looking at each other, but straight ahead at the people passing along the path. Finally she turned her eyes again to his face and said: "You're not changed."
He felt like answering: "I was, till I saw you again;" but instead he stood up abruptly and glanced about him at the untidy sweltering park.” (ibid.) 

There he’s repressing his passion. It is no use. He’s now married. Anything with her is impossible. 

2/ The 2nd kind of silence is the silence of nearness and understanding, between Newland and Ellen—it is enough to be near each other, they do not speak. 

“As the paddle-wheels began to turn, and wharves and shipping to recede through the veil of heat, it seemed to Archer that everything in the old familiar world of habit was receding also. He longed to ask Madame Olenska if she did not have the same feeling: the feeling that they were starting on some long voyage from which they might never return. But he was afraid to say it, or anything else that might disturb the delicate balance of her trust in him. In reality he had no wish to betray that trust. There had been days and nights when the memory of their kiss had burned and burned on his lips; the day before even, on the drive to Portsmouth, the thought of her had run through him like fire; but now that she was beside him, and they were drifting forth into this unknown world, they seemed to have reached the kind of deeper nearness that a touch may sunder.” (ibid.) 

Later: 

“"And that's to be all—for either of us?"
"Well; it is all, isn't it?"
At that he sprang up, forgetting everything but the sweetness of her face. She rose too, not as if to meet him or to flee from him, but quietly, as though the worst of the task were done and she had only to wait; so quietly that, as he came close, her outstretched hands acted not as a check but as a guide to him. They fell into his, while her arms, extended but not rigid, kept him far enough off to let her surrendered face say the rest.
They may have stood in that way for a long time, or only for a few moments; but it was long enough for her silence to communicate all she had to say, and for him to feel that only one thing mattered. He must do nothing to make this meeting their last; he must leave their future in her care, asking only that she should keep fast hold of it.” (Ch.24) 

This is a magnificent scene. Newland and Ellen understand each other without speaking, they don’t need to say a word. They just stand there, in the moment. 

3/ The 3rd kind of silence, which I find particularly interesting, is May’s silence.  
Wharton does something interesting when she chooses to focus on Newland’s perspective, instead of switching between different points of view. We know what he thinks, we can guess what Ellen thinks, but what about May? How much does she know? 
Through Newland’s eyes, Wharton creates the impression that May is young, inexperienced, conventional, narrow, pure, and innocent—a nice girl, basically. But at the same time, we can see that May is not really what he thinks she is.  
Take this passage: 

“His wise May—how he had loved her for that letter! But he had not meant to act on it; he was too busy, to begin with, and he did not care, as an engaged man, to play too conspicuously the part of Madame Olenska's champion. He had an idea that she knew how to take care of herself a good deal better than the ingenuous May imagined. She had Beaufort at her feet, Mr. van der Luyden hovering above her like a protecting deity, and any number of candidates (Lawrence Lefferts among them) waiting their opportunity in the middle distance. Yet he never saw her, or exchanged a word with her, without feeling that, after all, May's ingenuousness almost amounted to a gift of divination. Ellen Olenska was lonely and she was unhappy.” (Ch.13) 

May has a sensitivity and perceptiveness that Newland doesn’t realise she has. She’s not naïve and ignorant either—he thinks nothing reaches her, but for a long time she knows about his previous affair with Mrs Rushworth, she just doesn’t ask about it.  
In this aspect, Newland is reminiscent of Ralph Marvell in The Custom of the Country—he looks down on his wife and underestimates her. 
To me, it’s obvious that May knows Newland’s involved with Ellen. When he speaks of going to Boston for business, it’s not stated in the novel but it should be easy for her to know that Ellen would also be there, as they’re cousins.  
The whole thing about the trip to Washington makes it even clearer, to the reader though not to Newland, that she knows. When he mentions the trip the 1st time, she tells him to remember to visit Ellen, I suppose, to see his reaction, and to let him know that she knows he lies. When their grandmother Mrs Manson Mingott has a stroke and wants Ellen back, the way May mentions Newland’s Washington business trip, in front of everybody, shows her cunning. They would cross paths. 
Later on, when the Wellands argue about who should pick up Ellen, and Newland volunteers, it seems obvious that May has been waiting to see what he says, then she acts like it’s all good, to keep up the happy couple image in front of her parents. But afterwards, she cross-examines Newland about why his employer (Mr Letterblair) goes to Washington but he doesn’t. 
I’ve written enough. May is no simpleton, and her silence is much more interesting as Wharton hints that she knows a lot more than she shows.

Passion in The Age of Innocence

Edith Wharton can sure write about passion. Look: 

“"Then stay with me a little longer," Madame Olenska said in a low tone, just touching his knee with her plumed fan. It was the lightest touch, but it thrilled him like a caress.” (Ch.8) 

That is from an early meeting between Newland Archer and Ellen Olenska. 

“The words stole through him like a temptation, and to close his senses to it he moved away from the hearth and stood gazing out at the black tree-boles against the snow. But it was as if she too had shifted her place, and he still saw her, between himself and the trees, drooping over the fire with her indolent smile. Archer's heart was beating insubordinately. What if it were from him that she had been running away, and if she had waited to tell him so till they were here alone together in this secret room?” (Ch.15) 

If I had good concentration now, I would be very tempted to reread Anna Karenina to see the way Tolstoy writes about passion.
Contrast the way Newland feels about Ellen, with the way he feels about May: 

“The young man was sincerely but placidly in love. He delighted in the radiant good looks of his betrothed, in her health, her horsemanship, her grace and quickness at games, and the shy interest in books and ideas that she was beginning to develop under his guidance.” (Ch.6) 

The word “radiant” or “radiance” seems to be linked to May: 

“The day was delectable. […] It was the weather to call out May's radiance, and she burned like a young maple in the frost. Archer was proud of the glances turned on her, and the simple joy of possessorship cleared away his underlying perplexities.” (Ch.10) 

He loves May’s looks, and he’s aware that she’s seen as a prize, so to speak (especially after they’re married), but she doesn’t inspire passion in him as Ellen does. Several times he travels to meet Ellen, on an impulse (Skuytercliffe, then the Blenkers’ house, then Boston). 

“He was not sure that he wanted to see the Countess Olenska again; but ever since he had looked at her from the path above the bay he had wanted, irrationally and indescribably, to see the place she was living in, and to follow the movements of her imagined figure as he had watched the real one in the summer-house. The longing was with him day and night, an incessant undefinable craving, like the sudden whim of a sick man for food or drink once tasted and long since forgotten. He could not see beyond the craving, or picture what it might lead to, for he was not conscious of any wish to speak to Madame Olenska or to hear her voice. 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.” (Ch.22) 

The passages about passion in The Age of Innocence are too great not to share. 

“As the paddle-wheels began to turn, and wharves and shipping to recede through the veil of heat, it seemed to Archer that everything in the old familiar world of habit was receding also. He longed to ask Madame Olenska if she did not have the same feeling: the feeling that they were starting on some long voyage from which they might never return. But he was afraid to say it, or anything else that might disturb the delicate balance of her trust in him. In reality he had no wish to betray that trust. There had been days and nights when the memory of their kiss had burned and burned on his lips; the day before even, on the drive to Portsmouth, the thought of her had run through him like fire; but now that she was beside him, and they were drifting forth into this unknown world, they seemed to have reached the kind of deeper nearness that a touch may sunder.” (Ch.23) 

Is that not magnificent? 
The writing is even better because the passion is unfulfilled: 

“… for a man sick with unsatisfied love, and parting for an indefinite period from the object of his passion, he felt himself almost humiliatingly calm and comforted. It was the perfect balance she had held between their loyalty to others and their honesty to themselves that had so stirred and yet tranquillized him; a balance not artfully calculated, as her tears and her falterings showed, but resulting naturally from her unabashed sincerity. It filled him with a tender awe, now the danger was over, and made him thank the fates that no personal vanity, no sense of playing a part before sophisticated witnesses, had tempted him to tempt her. Even after they had clasped hands for good-bye at the Fall River station, and he had turned away alone, the conviction remained with him of having saved out of their meeting much more than he had sacrificed.” (Ch.25) 

The Age of Innocence is such a great book. Like The House of Mirth and The Custom of the Country, it has some critique of high society and social conventions, but it’s much mellower, especially as Edith Wharton wrote this novel after the war and her perspective now changed. The Age of Innocence has a tenderness and melancholy not in the other novels, and there is also lots of passion. 




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Now, I must admit that a part of me disapproves of Newland Archer. I empathise with him, but can’t help feeling that he’s a coward and he’s being unfair to both May and Ellen, especially May. When he meets and falls in love with Ellen, he’s engaged but not married to May, he’s still free; Ellen is legally married, but separated, and seeking a divorce. It would be difficult, there would be a scandal, but he’s not in the same situation as, say, Anna Karenina. 
I don’t think I’m judging Newland from the modern perspective. His choice, I can’t help thinking, cannot be seen purely in abstract terms as a choice between individualism/ human needs and social conventions/ public image/ other people’s expectations. On the one hand, I understand that breaking the engagement in order to marry Ellen would hurt everyone involved and both families, but on the other hand, is it not worse that he marries May but yearns for Ellen and keeps thinking that May is innocent, conventional, limited, and doesn’t have what Ellen’s got? Newland himself says that Ellen gives him a glimpse of real life, and his life with May is a sham one. 
On a personal level I find it difficult to sympathise with Newland completely—he realises his feelings for Ellen, but instead of thinking about it and considering everything, he decides to shorten the engagement and hurry the wedding. Then he goes on with the wedding after he and Ellen have confessed their feelings to each other. 
Perhaps it’s too early to write about these things—I might change my view at the end of the book. People feel for Newland and Ellen, and their thwarted desire, I find myself caring more about May. It’s unjust to her.