The recap
New York in the 1870s is a world of opera boxes, engraved invitations and rules so finely drawn that nobody needs to say them aloud. Newland Archer, a young gentleman of impeccable family, is engaged to May Welland, a lovely, conventional girl who suits his position perfectly. Then May's cousin returns from Europe: Countess Ellen Olenska, who has fled an unhappy marriage abroad and seems not to care what society whispers about her clothes, her friends or her past. As family loyalty draws Archer into her affairs, he finds himself drawn to the one person who makes him question everything he has been raised to value. Writing in 1920 about the world of half a century earlier, Wharton dissects old New York with cool irony and surprising tenderness, showing how much can pass between two people in a glance across a crowded room. The prose is elegant and exact, the restraint almost unbearable, and the longing it builds is among the most quietly powerful in American fiction.
Why read it
For anyone who loves longing more than consummation, and for readers who enjoy a sharp-eyed portrait of high society where the smallest gesture carries enormous weight.
Fun facts
- 01
It won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, making Wharton the first woman to receive the prize.
- 02
The Pulitzer committee had initially agreed to honor Sinclair Lewis's Main Street, but his book was rejected on political grounds and the award went to Wharton instead.
- 03
Wharton was 58 when the novel appeared, and she set it half a century earlier, in the Gilded Age New York of the 1870s.
- 04
Martin Scorsese's 1993 film starred Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer and Winona Ryder; it earned five Oscar nominations, including one for Ryder, and won for costume design.
“Each time you happen to me all over again.”
