Newland Archer is not only a cultivated intellect, but also an introspective thinker who reflects deeply on his own life. A concept that Newland constantly struggles with is his understanding of "reality", and a major journey exposed through Wharton's narrative is Newland's changing relationship with what he perceives as real and tangible versus imagined fantasy. Newland begins his journey believing that the prestigious New York society in which he grew up is false and materialistic, and that his true "reality" lies elsewhere, beyond the constraints of his small community. He leads a predictable life marked by spasmodic glimpses of the “real” life he dreams of. These daydreams, however, consistently end with surprising instances of Newland remembering the society around him. The crucial shift in Archer's mentality occurs at Ellen Olenska's farewell dinner, when he finally realizes that his "unreal" New York "clan" is actually his reality and that all life beyond is just an inaccessible fantasy. This moment marks the figurative "death" of Newland's fantasies, Wharton's way of conveying the message that realism trumps romanticism. Say no to plagiarism. Get a custom essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essay From the opening scene of Age of Innocence, Wharton depicts a faux clique of appearance-focused socialites, with Newland Archer presented as the “real” one who notices his falsity. The story opens at the opera house, a place where actors display unreal emotions and passion on stage, mirroring the repeated, inorganic, and unreal actions of the members of Archer's company. Newland observes the first "scandal" of the story, noting that his fiancée May's cousin, "poor Ellen Olenska", is accepted into the dressing room at the Mingott family opera. He "entirely approves of family solidarity, and one of the qualities he most admires in the Mingotts [is] their firm defense of the few black sheep that their impeccable stock had produced." Newland is not one to avoid a "black sheep" or social disgrace because of rumors, and he believes it would be "false prudery" or haughty dislike of Ellen to avoid her and reality disordered by his situation (9). He further highlights his disgust for the way his society ignores reality by commenting "Mrs. Welland asks to be spared anything 'unpleasant' in her story" and "winces at the idea that it may -to be that attitude of mind which [keeps] the air of New York so pure” (61). . Newland's idea of ​​"real life" is full of unpleasantness, and the way the New York elite pretend that this discomfort does not exist causes Newland to "reconcile his instinctive distaste for human baseness with his equally instinctive pity for human frailty” (61). He is bothered to the point of "disgust" by this artificial ignorance of reality, describing it as being part "wickedness" and part "fragility" or weakness. He condemns his society and his family for their ignorance, and when his sister accuses him of calling their mother an "old maid," Archer "[wants] to shout back: 'Yes, she is, just like the van der Luyden, and that is what we all are when it comes to being touched by the tip of Reality's wing” (55). He is convinced that the life that upper-class New Yorkers live is artificial, and by using the pronoun "we" he is also referring to himself, implying that he must escape the unreality in which he lives. an unreal artificiality in the way people communicate as well. While he sits ata table, shrouded in superficial, appearance-focused comments such as "What can you expect from a girl who was allowed to wear black satin to her coming-out ball?" (26), he characterizes New York society as “a sort of hieroglyphic world, where reality is never said, nor done, nor even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs” (29). Communication between members of one's community is discreet and nonverbal, leading to misinterpretations, with "the real thing" rarely being understood fully or correctly. Newland has a growing apprehension for the future that society has mapped out for him; he will marry May Welland, maintain a respectable and “pleasant” reputation, and remain at the top of the “small and slippery pyramid” (64) of New York’s societal hierarchy. He believes his society lacks "reality" in the sense of love and passion – with a "shudder of apprehension", Newland sees his marriage becoming "what most other marriages around him [are] : a boring association of material and social interests together through ignorance on the one hand and hypocrisy on the other” (29). The "ignorance" he has in mind is the wife's duty to ignore the reality that her husband is having affairs with other women, and the "hypocrisy" is the husband's way of allowing himself to have mistresses. Newland fears that life as May Welland's husband would lead him down this path of insincere "association" and poignantly considers: "once married, what would become of that narrow margin of life in which his real experiences were experienced? (80). He believes that marrying May, a symbolic commitment to preserving his fragile elite society, means sacrificing "real experiences", implying that life within his clan is not reality. He fears that he will end up trapped in this unreal and guarded routine of resistance to reality, and he feels more and more "as if [he] [was] buried alive under his future" (87). What Newland seeks is a reality outside the confines of his future. insular and “unreal” community, and for him, the embodiment of this reality is the mysterious and unconventional Ellen Olenska. In contrast to the “tedious association” he predicts with May, Newland feels genuine passion and attraction for Ellen: “her lightest touch…delighted him like a caress” (42). She offers a refreshing sense of reality, frequently revealing the whole truth (often in poor taste). When she describes her shabby “bohemian neighborhood,” for example, she says: “in any case, it’s less gloomy than the Van der Luydens’.” This frank joke gives Newland "an electric shock, for few of the rebellious spirits would have dared to describe the van der Luydens' stately home as gloomy" (47). For Newland, Ellen is honest and real, and is attracted by her ability to confront facts. She is also able to handle the "unpleasant", demonstrating her ability to understand reality when she discusses her husband, Count Olenski, "as if there were no sinister associations attached". Her nonchalant approach to the tainted relationship with her husband shocks Archer, and he "looks at her in bewilderment, wondering whether it was levity or dissimulation that allowed her to address the past so easily" (68). . It is unusual for a woman in Archer's society to handle the "unpleasant" in the way that Ellen can, and for Newland this is attractive. Wharton presents an irony in describing Newland as someone who denounces the petty and "unreal" ways of those around him. because in fact, he is a romantic; the least realistic of all. He constantly drifts into fantasies about a non-existent life full of "real" love and "real"» passion, leaving him disconnected from the real world in front of him. Newland can first be defined as a romantic by the literature he reads and the way he interprets it. The reader often sees Newland imagining himself in idyllic love scenes depicted by Romantic poets like Dante, Petrarch, and Tennyson. Wharton describes Newland imagining "what it would have been like to live in the privacy of salons dominated by Mrime's speeches... but such things were inconceivable in New York" (65). He dreams of scenes that don't correspond to New York and longs for the "intimacy" of another world. At the end of chapter fifteen, Newland comes across a copy of Rossetti's “The House of Life” and feeds his romantic desire by envisioning Ellen Olenska as the poet's idealized lover: “He [picks it up] and [finds himself] immersed in an atmosphere unlike any he [has] ever breathed in books; so warm, so rich and yet so ineffably tender that it [gives] a new and bewitching beauty to the most elementary of human passions. All night he [pursued] through the enchanted pages the vision of a woman who had the face of Ellen Olenska” (87). Newland's realistic view embodies his confusion between reality and fantasy, and his inability to distinguish the two. By describing the intimate "atmosphere" into which reading transports him as "new," he implies that true "haunting beauty" is a sensation he has not yet experienced in his real life with May. As the story progresses, Newland displays an uncontrollable obsession. with Ellen. His daydreams of her are realistic, representing more of a reality to him than his actual life with May. While traveling to Newport with May and her family, he is sent in search of the Countess and spots her standing at the end of a pier. As soon as he sees her, inner contemplation begins: "But now it was the Welland house and the life he was supposed to lead there that had become unreal and irrelevant, and the brief scene on the shore, when he had stood uncertainly, halfway to the bank, was as close to him as the blood in his veins” (133). The real life he lives with May is now not only fake in the artificial sense, but it is "unreal and irrelevant", lacking any real feeling or sensation for Archer. Ellen becomes the embodiment of everything that is real to Archer, and as it becomes harder and harder for him to see her, he becomes more attached. In Boston, he tells Olenska longingly, “you gave me my first glimpse of a real life, and at the same time you asked me to continue with a false life” (148). The "real life" he's referring to is the genuine, genuine love he thinks he shares with Ellen, and the "fake life" is the relationship he seems to be stuck in with May. The “real life” that he finds in Ellen exists even internally, even though she is far away: he had built within himself a sort of sanctuary in which she sits among his thoughts and secret desires. Little by little it became the scene of his real life... Outside, in the scene of his real life, he moved with a growing sense of unreality and inadequacy, coming up against familiar prejudices and traditional views as a distracted person. the man continues to bump into the furniture in his own room. Absent, that's what he was: so absent from all that was most real and so close to those around him that he was sometimes surprised to find that they still imagined he was there" ( 159). Newland has reached a point where he feels closer to Ellen, even in inaccessible fantasies, than to May, who is the reality of his "real life." His inner fantasy became the "scene of his real life", demonstratinghis distorted perception of reality. In his real life, he "blunders" as a "distracted man", imagery that suggests a wandering, inattentive, death-like corpse. It's an apt description for Newland as he nears his figurative death. As Newland's fantasies become more and more frequent, similarities can be found in the way they all end. His daydreams are continually interrupted by startling reminders that bring him back to the "false and insincere" high society life he knows. When he visits the van der Luyden house in Skuytercliff, he "[imagines] Ellen, almost [hears] her, sneaking up behind him to throw her light arms around his neck." Just as he reaches a heightened sense of reality in his reverie, "soul and body throb with the miracle to come", Archer's "eyes [receive] mechanically the image of a man in a thick coat with his fur collar turned up...the man was Julius Beaufort” (84). Beaufort acts as a painful reminder of many things; he is married to a woman from a prominent family, but is rumored to have other affairs on several occasions, one of them being with Ellen. This makes Beaufort both a vision of the kind of inauthentic man Newland fears he will become, and an obstacle preventing Newland from pursuing a relationship with the woman he associates with "true" love. The way Archer's eyes "mechanically receive the image" of Beaufort demonstrates that he is still content to follow the movements of real life, still believing that his reality lies elsewhere. Newland abruptly emerges from a fantasy when he goes to Newport with his newlywed May for a party. He walks through a garden, with Ellen occupying his thoughts, and sees a pink parasol which he is convinced belongs to Ellen. “The parasol attracted him like a magnet: he was sure it was his… Archer brought the handle to his lips. He heard a rustling of skirts against the crate, and remained motionless, leaning on the handle of the parasol, his hands clasped, and letting the rustling come closer without looking up. He'd always known this was bound to happen... "Oh, Mr. Archer!" cried a strong young voice; and looking up, he saw before him the youngest and tallest of the Blenker girls, fair and ample, in disheveled muslin” (137). Newland is surprised to discover that the owner of the parasol and the approaching “rustle of skirts” is not Ellen, but a “bloated and disheveled” young girl. Newland begins to realize that his realistic glimpses of what he feels is "reality" are not always correct - in this case, he foolishly kisses the handle of the parasol, only to discover that it isn't even the umbrella's handle. 'Ellen. In this way, Wharton exposes the ridiculousness of Archer's romanticism and his embarrassment at realizing it. Archer realizes a crucial shift in his understanding of reality at his wife's dinner in honor of Ellen Olenska's final departure for Europe. While Newland does not participate in the conversation, "[floating] somewhere between the chandelier and the ceiling", he realizes with a start, "in a vast flash composed of many broken glimmers, that for all of them, he and Madame Olenska were lovers. ... He thought he had been, for months, the center of countless silent watching eyes and patiently listening ears. » Newland now realizes that the clan is smarter than he thought; from the beginning, they observed and understood his secret desire for Ellen. He also realizes that May's motives for the dinner are not so innocent: "the separation between him and his partner in guilt had been achieved, and now the whole tribe rallied around his wife on the unspoken assumption that no one knew..