Get The Age of Innocence from Amazon.com

The Age of Innocence Summary
Edith Wharton

Everything you need to understand or teach The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton.

The Age of Innocence Summary & Study Guide
1 eBook
11 Student Essays
1 Encyclopedia Article
1 Book Notes
1 Nota de Libro
...and more

30 The Age of Innocence Lessons
20 Activities
180 Multiple Choice Questions
60 Short Essay Questions
20 Essay Questions
Pre-Made Tests and Quizzes
...and more

The Age of Innocence Summary

Already a successful novelist in 1920 when she completed The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton anticipated best-selling status for her new novel. The Age of Innocence, set in late nineteenth-century New York society, did indeed become a best-seller and won the Pulitzer Prize the following year. Wharton was the first woman to receive this high literary honor. The novel is both nostalgic and satirical in its depiction of old New York, with its often-stifling...

(read more from the Study Guide)

Study Pack

The The Age of Innocence Study Pack contains:

The Age of Innocence Study Guide

Free Quiz

Characters

Themes

Style

Criticism

Adaptations

Topics for Further Study

Encyclopedia Articles (1)

The Age of Innocence

5,394 words, approx. 18 pages

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton Edith Wharton was born January 24, 1862, into a family known as one of the pillars of New York society. Her parents, George Frederic Jones and Lucretia Stevens... Read more

Project Gutenberg eBooks (1)

The Age of Innocence

114,979 words, approx. 384 pages

I. On a January evening of the early seventies, Christine Nilsson was singing in Faust at the Academy of Music in New York. Though there was already talk of the erection, in remote metropolitan distan... Read more

Edith Wharton Biographies (8)

Edith (Newbold Jones) Wharton

3,042 words, approx. 11 pages

The breadth of Edith Wharton's achievement makes definition of her place in literary history difficult. For fifty years she wrote prolifically, and her audience ranged from scholars to readers of popu... Read more

Edith (Newbold Jones) Wharton

10,907 words, approx. 37 pages

Perhaps the most striking thing about Edith Wharton 's reputation as a novelist is the fact that she has been "reclaimed" so many times. This fact seems all the more remarkable when one reflects that... Read more

Edith (Newbold Jones) Wharton

10,894 words, approx. 37 pages

While at the close of her career Edith Wharton was sometimes regarded as passe, a literary aristocrat whose fiction about people of high social standing had little to tell about the masses, particul... Read more

Edith (Newbold Jones) Wharton

9,059 words, approx. 31 pages

Although Edith Wharton is better known as a novelist than a short-story writer, she was in fact writing and publishing stories well before her debut as a novelist in 1902. Her first published story ... Read more

Edith (Newbold Jones) Wharton

9,451 words, approx. 32 pages

Henry James observed in an August 1902 letter to Edith Wharton's sister-in-law, Mrs. Cadwalader Jones, that Wharton "must be tethered in native pastures, even if it reduces her to a back-yard in New Y... Read more

Edith Wharton

387 words, approx. 2 pages

Edith Wharton (1861-1937), American author, chronicled the life of affluent Americans between the Civil War and World War I.Edith Wharton was born Edith Newbold Jones in New York City, probably on Jan... Read more

Edith Wharton

3,538 words, approx. 12 pages

During the early decades of the twentieth century--at a time when New York City could ban women from smoking in public--one American woman published works which discussed love outside of marriage, sca... Read more

Edith Wharton

11,252 words, approx. 38 pages

Biography EssayWhile at the close of her career Edith Wharton was sometimes regarded as passe, a literary aristocrat whose fiction about people of high social standing had little to tell about the mas... Read more

Essays & Analysis (11)

Archer in "The Age of Innocence"

1,228 words, approx. 5 pages

The endings of books are commonly viewed as a means of providing closure to the conflict previously aroused in the text. However, an ending may be simply a way of epitomizing a quality of a character... Read more

Character Analysis of The Age of Innocence

1,133 words, approx. 4 pages

The characters in The Age of Innocence are portrayed as tragic victims of cruel social conventions. Each of them have an effect on the other and that is what captures your attention. Newland is the pr... Read more

Archer in "the Age of Innocence"

1,229 words, approx. 5 pages

The Age of Innocence

2,469 words, approx. 9 pages

Wharton's "ironic masterpiece", written in 1920 but based in the 1870's, may be argued to be critical of the "old New York" in which she grew up in, or may be a nostalgic, sentimental remembrance of h... Read more

Culture Prevails

1,487 words, approx. 5 pages

In The Age of Innocence, Wharton makes significant commentary criticizing the society of New York. Society plays a major role in the lives of the novel's characters. Most people, in the New York s... Read more

Values in Age of Innocence

1,287 words, approx. 5 pages

At the last part of the story, when Newland Archer is in his fifties, he is already reduced to a man who is too old and weak to breathe in the atmosphere where Ellen lives. The thriving trees and t... Read more

The Age of Innocence: Responsibility to Self Vs. Responsibility to Others

295 words, approx. 1 pages

In the novel, all but one character are bound to the status quo and code of society. It seems as though their own personal passions and thoughts are unimportant compared to those of those who judge th... Read more

Suppression of Individuality in 'the Age of Innocence'

1,030 words, approx. 4 pages

The `Age of Innocence' shows a society so controlled by manners and customs that individuality must be repressed. In the `Age of Innocence', Martin Scorsese portrays a society so controlled by manner... Read more

Blunt Indications

1,240 words, approx. 5 pages

When focusing on any character's actions in a story, a direct correlation appears between each event and that person's characteristics. In one such instance, Edith Wharton's protagonist, Newland Arche... Read more

Newland's Motivations in "The Age of Innocence"

853 words, approx. 3 pages

The ending of the Age of Innocence movie shows that many things have changed in the years that have passed since Ellen left New York and went back to Europe.Newland refused to meet Ellen after all the... Read more

Society Vs. Freedom in the Age of Innocence

1,100 words, approx. 4 pages

The 1870's in New York was a period of social repression and ideological conformity. In the novel The Age of Innocence, the author, Edith Wharton, makes these American struggles evident through her us... Read more

Free Book Notes (1)

The Age of Innocence

18,710 words, approx. 63 pages

The Age of Innocence Book Notes is a free study guide on The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. Browse the summary below:   Author Biography / Context of the Work   One-Page Plot Summary... Read more

Download the Study Pack