We Came Along with a Hammer

Penny said, below:

We know in Age that Newland and Ellen are both sexually experienced: Ellen through marriage, adultery, and whatever else was happening to her across the pond, and Newland through at least one affair with a married woman. But I still think that their entire affair together was conducted without much pleasure. All of the events unfold with their own momentum and that momentum doesn’t seem particularly driven by passion, but by escape from conformity.

See, now you’ve got me thinking about the mechanics of repression, which is what the whole book’s about — I just finished The Master by Colm Toibin, his imagining of Henry James (who was friends with EW in real life.) That book is all about repression too, but somehow you feel in Toibin that his Henry James is repressing himself, that when a young handsome sculptor comes to visit, HJ is consciously limiting his own thoughts about the sculptor, preventing himself from going there, from articulating his desire, even in thought.

After reading “Beatrice Palmato,” I’m not quite sure whether I ought to take Newland Archer the same way, whether what seems to me as a modern to be an absence is merely something unspoken — as almost everything is; every exchange between Newland and the Countess is about nine-tenths inference to one-tenth verbiage.

In many ways that’s what the whole book’s about; everybody infers everything, no one says anything. Newland’s jealousy of Julius Beaufort is all based in inference, not knowledge. That’s how reputations get ruined, in the book; you allow something to appear improper and everybody assumes that it is. The very first crisis in the book demonstrates the mechanics of inference. The Countess’ appearance at the opera prompts Newland’s decision to announce his engagement that same night. The two events have nothing to do with one another, superficially, but the latter is meant to send a message: Society is meant to infer that the link with the scandalous Countess will not cause Newland to regret or hesitate to ally himself with her family, and that the weight of the Archer clan will therefore be brought in defense of the alliance, so don’t no one think about snubbing her or May.

Which is a hell of a lot to suss out from a mere announcement. And as the book progress, and so many small gestures acquire more and more emotional weight, Wharton seems to realize this herself, and we get extraordinary moments like the one at the end of Chapter 26, when Newland has just told May he’s planning to go down to DC for a few days. He tells her it’s on business, but really it’s because the Countess is living there and he wants to warn her about a possible scandal that might involve her:

“The change will do you good,” she said simply, when he had finished; “and you must be sure to go and see Ellen,” she added, looking him straight in the eyes with her cloudless smile, and speaking in the tone she might have employed in urging him not to neglect some irksome family duty.
It was the only word that passed between them on the subject; but in the code in which they had both been trained it meant: “Of course you understand that I know all that people have been saying about Ellen, and heartily sympathise with my family in their effort to get her to return to her husband. I also know that, for some reason you have not chosen to tell me, you have advised her against this course, which all the older men of the family, as well as our grandmother, agree in approving; and that it is owing to your encouragement that Ellen defies us all, and exposes herself to the kind of criticism of which Mr. Sillerton Jackson probably gave you, this evening, the hint that has made you so irritable.… Hints have indeed not been wanting; but since you appear unwilling to take them from others, I offer you this one myself, in the only form in which well-bred people of our kind can communicate unpleasant things to each other: by letting you understand that I know you mean to see Ellen when you are in Washington, and are perhaps going there expressly for that purpose; and that, since you are sure to see her, I wish you to do so with my full and explicit approval—and to take the opportunity of letting her know what the course of conduct you have encouraged her in is likely to lead to.”
Her hand was still on the key of the lamp when the last word of this mute message reached him. She turned the wick down, lifted off the globe, and breathed on the sulky flame.
“They smell less if one blows them out,” she explained, with her bright housekeeping air. On the threshold she turned and paused for his kiss.

This is rather delicious— all through the book we have (as Newland does) been inclined to see May as rather dim, and here she reveals herself to be a good deal sharp enough to protect her interests— but it’s also bloody ridiculous. No reader could possibly infer from the dialogue all that Wharton lays out in her exposition of the subtext. And yet that moment is extraordinary; far more of the book is like the engagement scene than like this moment, with hints given and relationships sketched out but vast reams of subtextual meaning left as an exercise for the reader. It’s a rare thing for Wharton to cut in like this and provide direct color commentary, though such exposition does become more frequent and explicit as the book picks up the pace and heads for the climax. (Like the moment Penny points to in her post.)

So I guess what I’m saying is, I’m not sure how to take Newland and the Countess’ suppressed passion. Do they each know perfectly well they’d like to rip each other’s clothes off and jump bones, and Wharton expect us to infer same from her subtle hints? Or is it supposed to be that Newland and the Countess dare not admit to themselves that they’d like a little sumptin’ sumptin’ and so their love chats feel dry and disembodied, a flirtation of minds alone? Because I do think that their feelings for each other are obviously far more than physical: Each of them recognizes in the other a kindred spirit, someone who cares for art and thought, who sees clearly the limitations of the little world in which they live and longs to be free of them. Thus the passage towards the end of the novel which talks about the Countess living in Newland’s mind as a kind of idol, to whom he bring the offerings of his true self, the person to whom he imagines talking to about all the things he really cares about and feels.

I suppose it all gets down to what Wharton really means by innocence. In some ways, the book made more sense to me if you subtracted about a decade from the ages of all the characters…

This entry was posted on April 11, 2008 at 3:37 pm and is filed under Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.