The Age of Innocence
Step into the opulent yet stifling world of 1870s New York high society through the eyes of Newland Archer. His engagement to the perfect May Welland promises a life of convention, but the arrival of her unconventional cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska, throws his carefully planned future into chaos. As forbidden feelings ignite, Archer must confront the rigid social codes he's always known and decide where his true loyalties lie.
Edith Wharton, writing from the vantage of the 1920s about the vanished world of her own youth, dissects a society that enforces its rules through silence, gesture, and unspoken consensus rather than open conflict. The result — awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1921, the first given to a woman — is both a wrenching love story and a precise, quietly devastating portrait of a class defending itself against change.
A young lawyer bound by the conventions of his social class, torn between duty and desire.
Archer's fiancée and later wife, outwardly innocent but more perceptive than she appears.
May's cousin, recently separated from her European husband, whose unconventionality draws Archer's love.