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The Age Of Innocence Analysis

Decent Essays

The Age of Innocence is a story with the happiest of endings. Newland Archer’s struggle between passion and practicality, between Countess Ellen Olenska and May Welland, comes to an epic conclusion, confronting the effects of duty, marriage, promises, priorities, society, and lust.

Newland and May are engaged when Newland first meets Ellen, May’s cousin, who stirs up their New York society with her dramatic clothing and loose lifestyle. May is considerably plain when compared to her cousin, and as time passes, Newland starts to realize that himself. The intellectual conversations exchanged between him and the countess pale in comparison to the polite exchanges he receives with May. The more time Newland spends with Ellen, however, the more he realizes that he is in love with her. He quickly goes to his fiancée after this discovery, who was vacationing in Florida with her parents at the time, and urges that the wedding be moved up, for he knows that if he waits too long, he surely will bend to the will of Ellen and not go through with his engagement. He recognizes that it is his duty to society to be with May and he does all that he can to make sure that happens, even if he has to sacrifice what his heart truly desires, to be with Ellen.

The wedding gets moved up, they get married, and Ellen leaves New York. Newland and May go on to have kids and live the married life they originally planned to. When May dies of pneumonia several years later, their now grown and

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