Trying It On: Narration and Masking in The Age of Innocence

The innocent, fair May Welland and the experienced, dark Ellen Olenska appear to be direct opposites of each other, representing the familiar virgin/whore binary. This essay examines Wharton’s text as it consistently questions this binary through formal and thematic interrogations of various distinctions. In addition to the opposition between May and Ellen, there is the problematic distinction between narrator and character, which the novel’s use of free indirect discourse brings to the fore. Further, the text uses multiple figures of masking or “trying on” of disguises, questioning the distinction between masks and the people who wear those masks and between the actual and the mimetic. The thematic oscillation between woman as traditionally conforming, innocent virgin on the one hand and threatening, corrupting temptress on the other takes place on the formal level as the narration calls into question the reality of any meaningful distinction between apparently oppositional binaries.