Marital Dilemma In Edith Wharton's The Age Of Innocence

The Age of Innocence presents the opinions and customs of the aristocratic class familiar to Edith Wharton,and explores multiple collisions and contradictions in a turbulent age.In the novel,Wharton used a critical tone to describe the conventional opinions and behaviors in the old society,but between the lines,there was also an ambivalent entanglement and nostalgia with the old-fashioned life.Using close reading and marriage critique,this paper explores the marital dilemma in The Age of Innocence,analyzing how it was generated and developed in the Gilded Age according to Wharton's views and reflection of the old New York society,and unpacks the novel's underlying significance as a critique on the plight of a society without unified ideologies or values.The first chapter of the thesis explores the beginning of the tragic marriage in the Gilded Age in the novel.Under the dual influence of conventional ideology and the market economy,the aristocratic protagonists in the novel held a wrong conception of love and marriage,and had unconsciously become the tool to assist to maintain the authority of the marriage market.The second chapter analyzes the dilemma of marital life in the novel.In a turbulent society,the great discrepancy in people's perception of marital relationships had intensified their contradictions in their marriage.Moreover,the flood of material life made people reluctant to make spiritual communication with their spouses,which led to the emptiness of the marital life.The third chapter focuses on the divorce anxiety,which mainly discusses the dilemma of getting a divorce,including the self-restraint of the characters,the constraint of family responsibilities,and the complicity of the social forces.Although the upper class were operating a defective marital system with rigid and ruthless rules,people would undertake more serious consequences if they tried to get rid of it.The fourth chapter explores the main characters' trials to solve the marital dilemma.Under that social background,the two attempts reflected in the novel had their respective limitations,which implies Wharton's hesitant and ambivalent attitude towards the revolution of marriage.Her complicated attitude came from the social forces,her unfortunate marriage experience which resulted in her lack of confidence for marriage,and people's paradoxical psychology of that changing age.Though The Age of Innocence is a novel with some matrimonial experiences as the main plot,its focus is not on discussing the problems of marriage.Rather,the novel concentrates on the plight of the society as well as the age through the presentation of marital dilemma.During the period of social turbulence in the Gilded Age,there was not a fixed guideline to unify the ideology and values of the society.People's thoughts,living,and marriage were all in the abyss of suffering,and they need to keep looking for and exploring the way to break through the predicament.