Age of Innocence Revisited

The Old New York society in The Age of Innocence is very superficial. What is ironic is that while it appears to be an orderly, peaceful, and calculated society at a glance, it is riddled with deceit, chaos, and ruled by unquestioned "conventions on which life was modeled".  Though these conventions help being order, they also hold them back from progressing and "were in fact only a humbugging disguise of the inexorable conventions that tied things together and bound people down to the old pattern".  They are described as “tribal” as they have unwavering loyalty to these customs simply because their predecessors followed them. One convention the society follows is the assumed role of women in society. The women in the novel are in a perpetual state of innocence. They are raised not to question what they do not understand and they are incapable of identifying the inequalities that face. To maintain the women's innocence, they grow up sheltered. However this raises the question which is better, innocence or experience? While the women in The Age of Innocence are presumably protected from the dangerous aspects of society, they also are caged and end up trapped in this state. Men are also allowed to have a past while women are not as Mr.Archer describes "it was his duty as a decent fellow, to conceal his past from her, and hers, as a marriageable girl, to have no past to conceal" Because the women have been "caged" for so many generation, they do not know the freedom they are missing, and thus they have no desire to change it. Mr. Archer wrestles with this thought and even exclaims "Women should be free--as free as we are". He sees many of the flaws and the hypocrisy in society. However, according to William Blake, society is doing these women a huge disservice as he believes that the “perfect state” would a balance of innocence and experience. Blake also believes human sacrifice is the basis of social organization. In The Age of Innocence, women sacrifice their freedom in order to keep social organization, even when they unknowingly do so. The restrictive nature of society strangles the imagination which Blake believes is essential to human existence.

Most of the people who live in the Old New York society firmly follow its customs as it is how they were raised. However two characters in particular, Countess Olenska and Newland Archer, seem to question things that other characters take for granted. Mr. Archer critiques the social system and specifically the way women are treated. He is angry about “the hypocrisy that would bury alive a women of her age if her husband prefers to live with harlots”, the double standard in which society overlooks the corrupt deeds that men commit but scold women if they were to do the same. Newland is actually torn between following the customs because it is what society expects him to do or speaking out against the injustice he perceives and face criticism.