Critics Flashcards
Elizabeth Ammons ‘doll’
‘May is a lovely human doll whose uselessness aggrandises her owner’s social standing’
Judith Fryer on change
‘Wharton saw the repression of the self in the old ways and the fragmentation of the self in the new ways’
merz herburg on archer and mays marriage
‘Archer and May’s marriage is bound by the tribal code of the elite’
Nancy Bentley on custom
‘custom is an active always-present web of force’
Pamela knight on archer locking may
‘Archer locks May in the virginal script he criticises’
Brian T Edwards on New York trapping characters
‘The novel examines the ways in which the constricted social space of Old New York suffocates its characters’
clare virginia silencing the free woman
‘Maintaining the status quo means silencing the free woman’
Jeanne boydstone archer fail
‘Newland Archer is a failed man’
Jeanne boydston on archers visions
‘It is a ‘vision of a woman’ which Archer chases; because he reads Ellen as this ‘vision’, she can therefore never be for him, a reality.’
V.S Pritchett silent hypocrisy
New York is a “prison of silent hypocrisy”.
Anne McMaster condemns and mourns
The Age of Innocence both condemns and mourns the loss of a vanished social order
