Bohemian Rhapsody Lecture Seven The Age of Innocence
TOPIC ‘For all his aspirations and fantasies, Newland Archer learns nothing of reality.’ Comment on the ways in which this view bears out in the novel.
A R C H E R ’ S Q U E S T F O R MATURITY B E G I N S W I T H I N T E N S E D I S S A T I S F A C T I O N
H E RECO G N IS ES T HE POWERFUL ENGINE OF O L D N EW YO RK AND ITS COLD, ‘BURIED’ EXISTENCE
H E T H U S T R I E S T O B R E A K F R O M I T S PATTERNS UNIFORMITY CONFORMITY BROWNSTONE
WH Y CAN’ T YOU AND I STR IKE OUT F OR OUR SE LVE S? W E C A N ’ T B E H AV E L I K E P E O P L E I N NOVELS
It would be unfair to say that Archer will learn nothing of his reality. We see his growing understanding of his social environment and his place. Yet, his dilemma does bring him further from accepting his reality as he sinks deeper into his childish fantasies. He may well be a ‘failed Archer’ .
Archer’s Flame ✔ FREEDOM ✔ MYSTERY ✔ ADVENTURE ✔ PASSION To him, Ellen comes to represent everything outside Old New York
A W H O L E N E W W O R L D O F EMOTION ‘ thrill of a caress ’ words ‘ touched ’ him ‘the blood rose ’ ‘his spirits rose ’ ‘ heart beating insubordinately’ ‘ magically created’
R O M A N T I C VISIONS A S S I G N S O F I N N O C E N C E 3
THE INTRUSIVE NARRATOR WHEREIN THEN LAY THE RESEMBLANCE On the evening in question the little scene acquired an added poignancy by reminding him—he could not have THAT MADE THE YOUNG MAN’S HEART BEAT WITH A KIND OF RETROSPECTIVE said why—of his leave-taking from Madame Olenska after their confidential talk a week or ten days earlier. EXCITEMENT?
Narrator ‘THEY WERE client AND lawyer SEPARATING AFTER A TALK’
HE felt HE imagined HE thought Archer’s DELUSIONS
For a long moment she was silent; and in that moment Archer imagined her, almost heard her, stealing up behind him to throw her light arms about his neck. While he waited, soul and body throbbing with the miracle to come, his eyes mechanically received the image of... Julius Beaufort.
I S T H I S T H E REAL LIFE I S T H I S J U S T FANTASY
My Hero! An important part of this fantasy world is the conviction that Olenska is necessarily a helpless ‘damsel in distress’; Archer MISREADS her as such, despite her inherent independence and her resistance to the code - EMILY J ORLANDO.
The conditions from which she had fled were intolerable, past speaking of, past believing: she was young , she was frightened , she was desperate —what more natural than that she should be grateful to her rescuer? He felt himself drawn to her by obscure feelings of jealousy and pity , as if her dumbly- confessed error had put her at his mercy, humbling yet endearing her. 4
imagination A R C H E R ’ S PITIFUL VULNERABLE TRAGIC V I C T I M
A R C H E R A S R O M A N T I C HERO E L L E N ‘ A T [ H I S ] M E R C Y ’
A R C H E R ’ S LITERARY C O N C E P T I O N O F L I F E
Literary Allusions Alphonse Daudet Dante Rossetti Emily Dickinson Robert Browning
A P U R S U I T O F T H E IDEAL B E A U T Y O V E R R E A L I S M
THE WORD breathed suggests that it is only ‘in books’ that Archer finds life or what he wants from life. Archer’s reality is no reality at all: it is surreal, imagined, ‘haunting’, ‘enchanted’ and filled with ‘passions’, ‘tenderness’. Reality is ‘the face of Ellen’. 5
a He took it up, and found himself plunged in an atmosphere unlike any he had ever breathed in books; so warm, so rich, and yet so ineffably tender, that it gave a new and haunting beauty to the most elementary of human passions. All through the night he pursued through those enchanted pages the vision of a woman who had the face of Ellen Olenska (Ch 15).
A L L T H R O U G H T H E N I G H T H E P U R S U E D T H R O U G H T H O S E E N C H A N T E D PAGES T H E V I S I O N O F A W O M A N W H O H A D T H E F A C E O F E L L E N O L E N S K A
Warning Signs Signs XIV-XVII wharton`s narrator, ned winsett, mrs mingott, mrs archer, medora manson
Here was the truth , here was reality , here was the life that belonged to him ; and he, who fancied himself so scornful of arbitrary restraints, had been afraid to break away from his desk because of what people might think of his stealing a holiday!
‘down and out’ ironic name? literary aspirations ‘abandoned his real calling’ Ned Winsett AS CHARACTER FOIL
THE ROLE OF THE NARRATOR FOREWA R N O F FAILURE RELINQ U I SH H I S DESIRES A C C E P T H I S REALITY 6
AKRASIA ACTING AGAINST YOUR OWN WISDOM YOU ARE WRONG AND YOU KNOW IT OR heart OVER OVER head
thought pursued HIS ‘UNREALITY’ sanctuary vision fire
...he had built up within himself a kind of sanctuary in which she throned among his secret thoughts and longings . Little by little it became the scene of his real life, of his only rational activities; thither he brought the books he read, the ideas and feelings which nourished him, his judgments and his visions . 7
OUR HERO REFUSES AN ‘AWAKENING’ CONTINUING TO MISREAD ELLEN AS HIS HEROINE WHO TREMBLES AND CRIES ‘LIKE A CHILD’ WHEN IN FACT ARCHER IS SEEN AS THE CHILD.
“I shan’t be lonely now.’ ‘how stupid and unobservant I was!’ ‘I knew nothing of all this till...’ ellen’s wisdom & maturity
Ellen’s “Your vision of you and me together?” She burst REJECTION into a sudden hard laugh. “We’ve no right to lie to... ourselves.” 8
a sacrifice As we infer from the use of high-modality verbs, it is Ellen who realises how one ‘must’ and ‘mustn’t’ and ‘had to’: she understands one’s obligation to society. Ellen has learned her lesson; she has accepted ‘reality’.
We’ll look NOT AT VISIONS but at realities. Archer denies his fate up to the very end: ‘I don’t know what you mean by realities.’
Reality May and Archer will be married before Easter. Will he ‘submit’?
...this piece of fiction is an urgent, encouraging appeal for its readers to abandon unrealizable fantasies for the actual, deep pleasures that “real life” can a ff ord . Newland Archer is Wharton’s quintessentially American hero... [who] can learn about himself and his native land only an encounter with the perversions of ancient European civilizations - Ellen - can.
q The End
Recommend
More recommend
