A Study Of The Age Of Innocence From The Perspective Of Archetypal Theory

As one of the famous woman writers in late19th century and early20th century, Edith Wharton created many excellent works for us, especially The Age of Innocence, which was written in1920and made her became the first woman writer awarded the Pulitzer Prize, attracted many critics’ attentions and became popular among people. And some works began to analyze The Age of Innocence from many different perspectives.As a woman writer born in upper class, Wharton had experienced up and down, which made her begin to concern her living world, especially women’s lives under this society. Most of her works describe different people’s life that lived in upper class of Old New York and the problems in their daily life. The Age of Innocence, as one of Wharton’s representative works, portrays the upper class society of Old New York in late1870s and early1880s, which displays women’s inferior position and bitter life in male dominate society through the description of upper class life in Old New York. In this work, Wharton applies some allusions of myth and biblical stories to portray protagonists, which helps reader to understand well this novel.This paper will analyze protagonists, images and themes from the archetypal perspective. Chapter one will introduce some relative information about Edith Wharton and the archetypal theory’s influence on the author. Chapter two will involve in analyzing the main characters and relative archetypal characters in myth. May Welland is the incarnation of the Diana in Roman Myth, whereas Ellen Olenska is the symbol of Aphrodite and her name’s pronunciation is similar to Helen in Greek Myth. Newland Archer is the symbol of Actaeon, a hunter in Metamorphoseon libri written by Ovidius. This novel reflects the convention and tradition of upper class in Old New York which restrains individual thought and behavior through the three main charcters’ different dispositions and destinies. Chapter three will analyze the theme, structure and some images from archetypal view. Then it comes to chapter four which will draw a conclusion of the whole paper. It is concluded The Golden Bough and Bible do play an essential role in Wharton’s works and provides a crucial context to make a better understanding of them. Hence The Age of Innocence can be interpreted as a story of reflecting reality of Old New York in the archetypal sense. Edith Wharton’s genius lies in concentrating on individual’s independence in both thought and behavior versus the convention. Therefore this novel intends to reflect individual miserable fates in this male chauvinist society, and give an attack to Old New York.