The Age of Innocence

May and Archer are on a six-month-long honeymoon in Europe. They are in London during autumn; there, they dine with May’s acquaintance Mrs. Carfry. May is dismissive of the Carfry family’s young French tutor, judging him as common. Her stance disappoints Archer.

In general, the more he gets to know May, the more he dislikes her. May cares about clothes more than Archer expected; she spends a month in Paris with a dressmaker. She also favors sports over culture, being an eager to try out the new game of lawn tennis. Traveling does not really interest her, and she is ready to get back to New York. Archer treats his wife as his friends treat theirs—an innocent who must be protected from places like Italy, considered a more warm-blooded part of Europe. He imagines that the first six months of marriage are the most difficult and hopes that things will improve.

Archer and May move into the East 39th Street house and he returns to work. They spend the summer in Newport with May’s family. He comes to regard his feelings for Ellen as a bout of premarital madness. She becomes like a ghost for him.

At Newport, when May wins the first prize in archery, Julius Beaufort comments that May’s sporting prowess is her only attraction. Archer is annoyed, although he privately wonders whether his wife is deficient despite her propriety.

Mrs. Mingott informs them that Ellen has come to stay. Archer has heard that in the past year, Ellen has established herself in Washington DC as a society belle. On the way home, May makes the ungenerous comment that Ellen seems changed and that she might have been better off staying with her husband. Archer passes a sleepless night thinking of Ellen driving behind Beaufort’s trotter horses.

While May is on an outing with her family, Archer visits the Blenkers, in case Ellen is visiting her grandmother. He is uncertain of whether he wants to see Ellen herself, but knows that he needs “irrationally and indescribably, to see the place she was living in, and to follow the movements of her imagined figure” (Location 2858). Inside, he sees a pink parasol and imagines it is Ellen’s. It however belongs to Miss Blenker, who informs him that Ellen is in Boston. Archer pretends that he has business in Boston and travels to see her.

Archer finds Ellen in Boston Common. She finds Archer unchanged since his marriage, and he proposes that they run off on a paddle steamer, having done “all we could” (Location 2996). She reproaches him for speaking to her that way. He should have come up to her at her grandmother’s house in Newport. When he tells her that he almost did, she confesses that she went to the beach to get away from him. As she is dropping a note back at the Parker house, Archer sees a young man who does not have a typical American face.

On the boat with Ellen, Archer feels as though they’ve taken a decisive departure from familiarity and are entering an unknown world together. The boat’s dining room is full, so Archer asks for a private room. Ellen seems entirely natural and untroubled, making him feel that “to seek to be alone was the natural thing for two old friends who had so much to say to each other” (Location 3062).

After lunch, Archer asks why, given that America is so dull, Ellen does not go back to Europe. She replies that he has shown her that beneath American dullness “there are things so fine and sensitive and delicate that even those I most cared for in my other life look cheap in comparison” (Location 3087). He tells Ellen that “you gave me my first glimpse of a real life, and at the same moment you asked me to go on with a sham one” (Location 3116) by telling him to marry May. They both agree that this is difficult to endure. He will not be able to cope if she goes back to her husband; she will not leave if they do not lapse into adultery. He decides to leave their future in Ellen’s care.

Alone, Archer realizes that Ellen really does not want to tempt him to infidelity and thereby to “fall away from the standard they had both set up” (Location 3158). However, back in New York, he again sees the non-American young man from Boston. Archer realizes he and May met the man at the Carfrys’: He is the French tutor. The young man wants to speak to Archer about Ellen; he is Count Olenski’s envoy to summon back his wife, something Ellen’s entire family agrees with. They would prefer Ellen go back to her husband. Archer recalls May remarking something similar, realizing that May’s seemingly “careless allusion had no doubt been the straw held up to see which way the wind blew” (Location 3233). Archer’s evident opposition to Ellen’s return to Europe caused him to be excluded from the family’s confidence about Ellen’s situation.

Although the young man has ostensibly been sent to plead Count Olenski’s case, realizing that Archer thinks differently from the rest of the family, he wants him to persuade Ellen to not return to her husband. 

At Mrs. Archer’s Thanksgiving dinner there is talk of Julius Beaufort’s financial ruin. The conversation turns to Mrs. Struthers’s Sunday gatherings; Mrs. Archer credits Ellen with making them socially acceptable. Everyone disapproves of Ellen’s refusal to return to her husband. When a guest remarks that Ellen “is a great favorite with the gentlemen” (Location 3362), May blushes in a manner that makes Archer wonder. The implication is that Ellen’s refusal to return to her husband makes her sexually available. Alongside this rumor runs the speculation that Beaufort has engaged in profligate spending on a woman other than his wife.

As Archer thinks over Ellen’s desire to put off a meeting, another guest approaches Archer and informs him that Ellen’s refusal to return to her husband will lead to financial troubles: The family has reduced her allowance as a punishment and she has already lost her personal fortune. Archer is furious at the insinuation that Ellen will become someone’s mistress, likely Julian Beaufort’s, to support herself. Medora Manson’s fortune is tied up with Beaufort, so if he truly goes bankrupt, Medora and Ellen will also sink.

Archer announces to May that he will be going to Washington on business. May responds that he must visit Ellen while he is there, implying that she knows he is against the family’s plan to reunite her with her husband. 

When the lawsuit that is his pretext to go to Washington is delayed, Archer lies to May that the trial date has been moved forward so he can leave the next day.

At work, Archer learns that Beaufort has become involved in an even greater financial scandal, having pretended to be solvent and causing his depositors to flood the bank with money under false pretenses. Then, a clerk brings a telegram: Old Mrs. Mingott has had a stroke. Possibly, she was overcome after Beaufort’s wife came to see her to persuade her to back Beaufort and “cover and condone their monstrous dishonor” (Location 3494). The family thinks Mrs. Beaufort ought to stick by her husband, respectably disappearing into obscurity. Recovering, Mrs. Mingott wants Ellen to come and visit her. May notes that it is a shame that Archer and Ellen will cross each other, since he will be in Washington while Ellen will be in New York. May assumes Mrs. Mingott has sent for Ellen to remind her of her duty towards her husband.