La edad de la inocencia

The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton's famous novel published in 1920, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1921. In this work, the author portrays the New York high society of the 1870s. For a long time it was the most requested novel in public libraries and a best seller in bookstores. Edith Wharton gives us an axis of three very well defined and differentiated characters: the promising lawyer belonging to one of the great families of New York Newland Archer, engaged to the sweet and conservative May Welland, in turn cousin of Countess Olenska, recently arrival from Europe after parting ways with a dark and unfaithful Polish nobleman. Newland Archer is presented at first as a man aware of having had dubious morals (as befits any man of his time) but critical of the high society that surrounds him, with its hypocrisy and cynicism and therefore determined to act nobly with his future wife, until his infatuation with Countess Olenska shakes the foundations of his moral and social principles. At the bottom of this extraordinary story of great passion lies the conflict between two worlds: that of the old American patrician families and that of the nouveau riche, who, at the end of the novel, have already seized customs and spirits. . Martin Scorsese made a film version of The Age of Innocence in a popular movie.