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The young man was sincerely but placidly in love. He delighted in the radiant good looks of his betrothed, in her health, her horsemanship, her grace and quickness at games, and the shy interest in books and ideas that she was beginning to develop under his guidance. (She had advanced far enough to…

[...] He reviewed his friends’ marriages—the supposedly happy ones—and saw none that answered, even remotely, to the passionate and tender comradeship which he pictured as his permanent relation with May Welland. He perceived that such a picture presupposed, on her part, the experience, the versati…

In the words of Katherine Mansfield's review, the characters in The Age of Innocence 'are human beings arranged for exhibition purposes'. Initially Mansfield commends Wharton's equilibrium of irony and romance: '... to keep these two balanced by all manner of delicate adjustments is so much a mat…

[...] He concludes with a an incisive recognition of her dilemma which is realised in her presentation of Archer: 'Mrs Wharton's triumph is that she has described these rites and surfaces and burdens as familiarly as if she loved them and as lucidly as if she hated them.'

In other words, whateve…

[...] The very materiality of old New York is resistant to change, and it is indeed recorded by Wharton in impressive detail, prompting the reviewer William Lyon Phelps to declare, 'I do not remember when I have read a work of fiction that gives the reader so vivid an idea of the furnishing and ill…