Edith Wharton 
Age of Innocence 

The Age of Innocence is a masterpiece of Edith Wharton, a famous American writer, who won the Pulitzer Prize of 1921. The main plot of the book took place in the upper class in New York in the late 1870s and early 1880s. It was the place where Wharton spent her childhood and youth and where she grew up, entered society, got engaged and broke her engagement, then married Edward Wharton from Boston, and spent the first few years of her marriage. After 40 years, as a novelist, when she recalled the society in which she had been brought up and restrained, her feelings were complex, with both affection and sober criticism. The writer assimilates the upper class in New York of that age to a small pyramid which is sharp and slippery. It is difficult to gain a foothold on it. At the top of the pyramid, there were only two or three families of real aristocratic descent: the Dagonets in Washington Square was an orthodox aristocratic family in the County; Mr. van der Luyden, direct descendant of the first Governor of Holland, who had married several aristocrats in France and England; and the Ranins who had married Count Douglas. They are of the upper class but they are obviously in a declining stage.