The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton and Martin Scorsese - Book Report/Review Example

Innocence Lost in Translation Edith Wharton’s famous novel of the doomed romance of Newland Archer andCountess Olenska is set in a period of time termed by the author as the age of innocence. Members of the upper classes of New York society were believed to behave according to a specific code of ideal behavior. Although the title refers to the Age of Innocence, it is rather the lack of innocence that existed within this society that the story is built upon. Being in such a world, the characters were constantly under pretense of innocence to hide their conniving natures. This resulted in the constant need to repress their emotions and what seemed to be an inability to express their true feelings. It was precisely this “element of repressed emotion, forced restraint and obsession” that drew film director Martin Scorsese to this classic Wharton story (Prose, 1993). Facing the difficulty of medium translation of the printed novel onto the silver screen, Scorsese tries to follow the feelings and emotions described in the book and develop a unique spirit of the epoch and values. Though the screen adaptation is similar in plat and depiction to the novel, the central theme of innocence is portrayed with a different touch and emphasis. Whereas Wharton depicts innocence by focusing on the sacrifice of Newland Archer and Countess Olenska under the pressure of the society which desires its members to appear innocent, Scorsese’s screen adaptation focuses on the love and repression of emotions and strays from the original theme of innocence as depicted by Wharton. The classic Wharton novel depicts the struggle of Newland and Ellen to comply with the social expectations of their class. Newland’s marriage with May was seen as a perfect match in the eyes of this society. Newland also felt May was an ideal candidate for the role of his wife. As was expected of a member of the upper class, May projected herself before her society in a manner which was deemed acceptable and ideal to the other members of this class. Newland is content with May as his future wife until the arrival of the Countess Olenska. The Countess was separated from her husband and had recently moved to America from Europe. As Newland tries to convince Ellen to avoid divorcing her husband, he develops a liking for her peculiarity and an attraction to her. Fearing that his attraction for Ellen would turn into love, Newland hastens his marriage with May. As Newland is attempting to run from his attraction to Ellen, Ellen is realizing that she also loves Newland. However, she refrains from having a relationship with him in recognition of the scrutinizing eyes of their society and its social code. Even after his loveless marriage to May, Newland is unable to suppress his feelings for the countess. Finally overcoming his fear of denying the social order that he grew up with, Newland persuades Ellen to consummate their relationship, but this anticipated tryst is abruptly called off with Ellen’s sudden decision to return to Europe. Newland is only called back to reality and the need to conform to expectations with May’s announcement that she is pregnant. Although he may be able to ignore the rules for his own welfare, he realizes that he must conform to expectations for the sake of his children. His discovery that May was behind the disruption of his previous plans shock him into the realization that “all this frankness and innocence were only an artificial product” (Wharton 38). It was this realization that seemed to shove him back into the world of social norms and order that he was brought up in and finally felt comfortable succumbing to. Owing to the pressures of his society, Newland sacrifices his love for Ellen and continues to lead a loveless life with May at the same time that Ellen sacrifices her love for Newland and returns to a loveless life in Europe and May remains adamant that she is not going to be a social outcast because of a wandering husband. Wharton’s novel brings forth the notion that the innocence the upper class prized so much was actually nothing more than a façade which enabled people to hide their real internal flaws from others. In many ways, this also served as a means by which individuals hid their flaws from themselves and thus were rendered incapable of doing anything to rectify them. The theme of innocence is depicted in the novel through the conflicts experienced by Newland and Ellen, who are compelled by the norms of society to give up their love for each other. “The social arbiters militate against the individual, forcing him to give up his happiness for the duty that they dictate, causing him to yield to his ideals, which they regard as impractical in the social order. Here, Ellen and Newland must sacrifice their ideal of love, since she is married” (Milne 124) and he is about to be and then is. The theme of innocence is also presented in the novel through the impact this sacrifice had on the lives of Newland and Ellen. Both of them had to sacrifice their desires in order to remain acceptable citizens within the social class settings in which they were most comfortable. “The importance of duty and the need to sacrifice personal pleasure if such pleasure is achieved at the expense of someone’s suffering is a recurrent theme in Wharton, as the turning point of The Age of Innocence demonstrates” (Peel 150). Under the influence of their society, Ellen and Newland give up their love for the sake of duty and morality at the same time that May must give up her own illusions regarding her marriage and do what she must in order to also remain within this society. Martin Scorsese’s screen adaptation of this story attempts to follow the novel faithfully in terms of plot and depiction of characters. He does this by creating vivid and distinctive portrayals of the main characters through extravagant, perhaps abstract, presentations of the different qualities of the main characters. Though he shares Wharton’s feelings and passion towards innocence, the screen adaptation differs in its focus on the love and repression of emotions. Rather than placing emphasis on the importance of innocence or the appearance of it, Scorsese emphasizes the concepts of repressed emotions and feelings. This element has been very adeptly captured and is, in fact, what drew Scorsese to this piece of literature. Although Newland and Ellen love each other intensely, they have to repress their emotions and hide their true feelings in order to live their lives according to the social order. In such circumstances, Ellen and Newland have to and could only satisfy themselves by glancing at each other in a crowded room. That even a glance is enough for these lovers to experience the joy of being with each other illustrates the degree to which their passions are constrained. Scorsese’s screen adaptation is thus centered around the sufferings and pain of Newland and Ellen in the course of their restrained love affair. Although Newland is deeply in love with Ellen and perhaps experiencing this type of strong emotion for the first time in his life, he is unable to muster enough courage to break the norms of his society to be with the scandalous countess. She has separated from her husband, but as long as she takes no lovers, it can be overlooked as an extended vacation abroad. Before he is married to May, he would have been risking some bruising to his social ego, but not to a degree that would have been insurmountable. However, the countess would no longer be acceptable and thus he would have to determine whether to live a divided life or disappear from his social circle altogether. Because he cannot face this choice, he rushes into his loveless marriage with May in order to give him an excuse to continue suppressing his natural emotions and desires. It is when he reconnects with Ellen after his marriage that Newland becomes unable to hide his emotions from himself. Despite his continued attempts to hide this overwhelming attraction and undeniable desires, Newland must finally succumb to his feelings and beg Ellen to have an affair with him. Throughout the film, Newland is portrayed as an individual who is pressured by his society to place his duty and social code of living above his own personal desires. Though amiable, Scorsese’s Newland is also vain and at times almost fatuous. His temporary inability to accept the social norms anticipated for a man of his status and present marital position in his pursuit of a forbidden romance is not the product of rebellion. It is instead a product of willful innocence. Newland’s perfect breeding underscores the fact that his dissatisfaction is merely a product of his conventional upbringing and the structure of his society. It reinforces the idea that his love for the countess was a product of this dissatisfaction and a desire for greater freedom for self-expression more than it was a love for the woman herself. “Newland is tortured throughout the film never able to fully communicate or physically express his sexual and romantic feelings toward the countess” (LoBrutto 336). Owing to his duty towards his children, the one May says she is pregnant with now and those likely to come in the future, Newland forsakes his love and stays on in a world of pretense and a lifetime of repression. Ellen has to face sorrow as well, as she loves Newland intensely but cannot marry him because of the social constraints that surround them. The thought that her affair with Newland will hurt May prevents her from continuing her relationship with Newland after he decides to marry May. Rather than face the reality of his marriage and her feelings for the groom, Ellen runs, attempting to “get as far from me as you could” (Scorsese, 1993) once the marriage has been finalized. Under Newland’s repetitive attempts to reach her, Ellen continues to resist him because of the repercussions they will face. She has her weak moment when she offers to take the key, to “come to him”, as a direct means of consummating their love, but then she returns the key again unused, again repressing her own desires in favor of social expectations. This occurs as news of May’s pregnancy reaches her and Ellen feels compelled to remove herself entirely from Newland’s life so he might live up to his expectations as a responsible husband and father. Just as it does for Newland, Ellen’s decision to act morally after the dictates of her society robs her of a future full of love and fulfillment. Scorsese’s screen adaptation of Wharton’s story emphasizes the repressed feelings of Countess Olenska, who dares to flout the rules of society by openly leaving her husband and her high status within European society. In spite of this, she decides it would be better to give up her love for Newland as a means of complying with the rules of a very similar and connected social circle in America. This illustrates the relative growth of the character as she first seeks to fulfill her need for happiness and then begins to realize how important it is to her to be accepted by her greater social circle. “It is hard to miss how completely Newland and Ellen, in attempting to comply with the dominant moral conventions of their society, fail to achieve personal happiness and also fail in any way to loosen social constraints that deny them whatever happiness might have been available to them” (Conrad 97). Ellen has already experienced the social scorn directed toward those who break social convention, regardless of the level of their personal misery or their need to find happiness and self-fulfillment before she appears in Newland’s life. Although her feelings for him may be as intense as his for her, her reluctance and reticence in engaging in an affair with him is undoubtedly impacted by this previous experience. In addition, the reasons for her separation from her husband are unclear and may have something to do with his being unfaithful to her given her sensitivity to her cousin’s feelings. In these two presentations of the story, there is a definite shift away from innocence and into cynicism between Wharton and Scorsese. Wharton’s novel depicts the influence innocence, and the ideals of innocence prized by the elite society of New York, has on the choices made by Newland and Ellen. Scorsese’s film, on the other hand, focuses the lens on the ideas of repression and restraint shown by Newland and Ellen in their relationship as they struggle to conform to their social expectations. Despite the parallel translation of the plot and its characters, it is this subtle difference on the angle of presentation that makes the biggest distinction from Wharton’s novel to Scorsese’s screen adaptation. The theme of innocence is manifested in Wharton’s novel as a given social code in which all individuals are presumed to exist with Newland and Ellen being the aberrations. To preserve society’s innocence, Newland and Ellen sacrifice their love for each other as a means of preserving the innocence of others. It requires the character of May, and her willful interference with Newland and Ellen’s developing relationship, to reveal the degree to which this presumption of innocence is false. Scorsese’s approach focuses on the underlying element of restraint and repression existent in all people within the characters of Newland and Ellen themselves. The appearance of Newland’s son, Dallas, at the end of the novel and screen adaptation introduces a new, unfolding ideal; an ideal of freedom which allows people to say what they mean and do what they want; an ideal which allows husband and wife to live in comradeship with one another and not in silent fear and wonder. Works Cited Conard, Mark. The Philosophy of Martin Scorsese. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2007. LoBrutto, Vincent. Martin Scorsese: A Biography. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2008. Milne, Gordon. The Sense of Society: A History of the American Novel of Manners. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1977. Peel, Robert. Apart from Modernism: Edith Wharton, Politics and Fiction before World War I. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005. Prose, Francine. “The New Season: Film; In ‘Age of Innocence’ Eternal Questions.” The New York Times. (September 12, 1993). September 29, 2009 http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9F0CEED81230F931A2575AC0A96598260> The Age of Innocence. Dir. Martin Scorsese. Perf. Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer, Wynona Ryder, Cappa Production, 1993. Wharton, Edith, Regina Barreca and Judith Saunders. The Age of Innocence. Signet Classics, 2008. Read More