Perhaps the easiest connection to pick up on is the location of The Age of Innocence and where Edith Wharton spent the majority of her life. She was born into an extremely wealthy family in 1862 in New York City. When she was four years old, her family moved to Europe until she was nine. Wharton and her family then returned to New York City. Although she participated in more traveling, she remained in the big city for the rest of her life. This is an extremely good foundation for Wharton to build her stories on. She was more familiar with New York than any other place in the world. She also knew exactly how society acted in this precise location. Her novel, The Age of Innocence is set in New York. Although we, as a class, did not read the novel, watching the movie made it apparent that the setting was one of my major backbones of the story. It held the society and troubled souls within that society together.
The status of Edith Wharton’s family and the characters showcased in The Age of Innocence are identical. Wharton wrote about the big money New York society because that is what she herself was a part of. Like I said before, she was born into a very wealthy family, she went to Yale, an Ivy League school, and was the first woman to earn her doctorate degree. She traveled to Europe frequently, which probably gave her the ability to write about Ellen and her life out of the country before re-entering New York society. Besides the location of The Age of Innocence, the wealthy society is key to the novel. Without the high level society, Archer would not have to deal with the eternal struggle of living in despair among the New York socialites or living his own independent life without the money and recognition. The way the society is written in The Age of Innocence appears as if it is strictly autobiographical. One might assume that several of the characters depicted in her Pulitzer Prize winning novel represent specific people that she once dined, laughed, and danced with.
In addition to the location and society, the romantic strings between Archer and Ellen are quite similar to Wharton’s romantic situation. Edith Wharton married in 1885 to Teddy Wharton. She was only twenty-three years old. They ended up getting a divorce once she realized Teddy was cheating on her and stealing her money to support himself. While one might assume Edith stood by her husband and was only the victim, such is not true. Wharton happened to have an affair of her own with Morton Fullerton, a journalist, for three years. Although anyone can write about the trials and tribulations of love and suffering, only the ones that have truly experienced love can write about it well. This goes for Edith Wharton and the love affair between Archer and Ellen. It was depicted as so tantalizing, such an escape from the society they both despised and feared. Perhaps this is what Wharton underwent during her marriage to Teddy. They were married for thirty years. Teddy was from the society she grew up in, but lacked the same artistic and creative inspiration she held so dearly. The same goes for Archer in The Age of Innocence.
The connections between Wharton’s writings and her real life are astonishing. It is no wonder that her pieces of work received so much recognition. She spent an entire lifetime collecting data and experiencing the events and emotions that she bestowed upon her characters.
WORKS CITED.
Merriman, C. D. The Literature Network. Jalic Inc, n.d. Web. 10 September 2009.
Campbell, D. The Edith Wharton Society. n.p., 21 July 2008. Web. 10 September 2009.
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