Pulitzer Book Club Inclusion Guide
"The Age of Innocence"
by Edith Wharton
INCLUSION MILESTONES
1921
• First Black women conferred doctorates: Sadie Alexander, Georgiana Simpson, Eva Dykes
• National Amateur & Athletic Fed founded to put girls, boys on "equal footing"
AUTHOR INSPIRATIONS
Born to a wealthy NYC family, Wharton spent much of her youth traveling in Europe. Wharton was a society insider who attended dances and soirées in Newport as well as NYC and married a rich man. She moved to Paris where she filed for divorce. Wharton was motivated to write The Age of Innocence in less than seven months for financial reasons.
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Featured Reader
– Share your key take-away about inclusion in this book in a sentence or two.
– Write a paragraph or two (up to 250 words) to describe your thoughts on exclusion/inclusion in the book, why you related or did not connect with the book, and why you think reading, inclusion and dialog about inclusion matter.
– Identify the name and website address of a cause you support with an inclusive mission.
Gilded Age divorced foreign countess struggles with convention and love.
Young husband scams wife; takes “business trip” to Boston.
First woman to win a Pulitzer fiction prize.
Lots there in 361 pages, 12 hours
Don’t be seduced or duped by convention or the herd.
Complete focus/skewer on apex white Gilded Age New Yorkers who bow to each other and convention.
Rich men entitled trophies; women ornamental, judged by who they married, outward appearance. Young man has affair with married woman before he is married; that behavior overlooked/condoned. Woman ultimately cast out of society because she is divorced foreigner. Low tolerance for intellectual conversations, artists, anyone “common.” Only person of color is “mullato maid.” Once uber wealthy banker takes down trusting peers as he is bankrupted.
Over the top meal, featuring either canvas-backs (aka duck) or terrapin (seriously??), two soups, and a hot and a cold sweet along with Roman punch (lemon/rum slushie).
“And of what account was anybody’s past, in the huge kaleidoscope where all the social atoms spun around on the same plane.”
Obnoxious, palatial setting. Borrow two footmen, get an unreasonable quantity of roses, and use your best calligraphy to create gilt-edged menu cards. Obviously, invite only A-listers and suggest full decolletage and short sleeves.
Discuss Wharton’s outreach to Sinclair Lewis who was denied the Pulitzer the year Wharton won: “When I discovered that I was being rewarded—by one of our leading Universities—for uplifting American morals, I confess I did despair.”
How do today’s 1% compare to Gilded Age characters?
Describe the insulation and isolation of the rich.
What was going on with the rest of the U.S. population while Gilded Age society were buying gowns in Paris, playing polo, going to the opera, dinner parties, Newport, etc.?
What Old New York customs make sense? Which outrage?
Why are foreigners targeted, then and now?
What has changed for women during the last 100 years?
What makes the matriarch in the novel stand out?
Compare how the wife and the countess interacted/interfaced.
What social equity do characters like the professor, the secretary to the Count, opera singer, and the journalist have?
Who respects others? Themself?
Why was the son able to marry as he wished? How is it possible to break the cycle of prejudice and hurtful customs?
Take New York Historical Tour: “New York in The Gilded Age: Heyday of High Society Tour.” Visit the Metropolitan, see Cypriot artifacts, decide if that museum amounted to anything. Arrive late at the Opera, ideally for a production of Faust.
Plan B: Either get married at Grace Church in NYC or make your vows at Edith Wharton’s turn-of-the-century home, The Mount, in Lenox, Massachusetts which Wharton designed along with its garden.
Hardcore readers can track down a conference or panel hosted by the Edith Wharton Society or visit Wharton’s grave at Versailles.
The Age of Innocence (1924 silent film, 1934, 1993); 1938 Broadway production.
Wharton wrote more than 40 books. Her first was non-fiction design and architecture book, The Decoration of Houses (1897). Wharton’s novels included The House of Mirth (1905), Ethan Frome (1911), and a four-part Old New York book series. She wrote many short story collections (including ghost stories), and non-fiction garden and travel books.