Newland Archer is not only a cultured intellect, but an introspective thinker who deeply considers his own life. One concept that Newland constantly struggles with is his understanding of “reality,” and one of the most important journeys exhibited through Wharton's fiction is Newland's changing relationship with what he perceives as real and tangible versus imagined fantasy. Newland begins his journey believing that the esteemed New York society he grew up in is false and materialistic, and that his true “reality” lies elsewhere, beyond the constraints of his small community. He lives a predictable life, marked by spasmodic glimpses into the “real” life he dreams of. These daydreams, however, consistently end in surprising instances where Newland remembers the society around him. The fundamental shift in Archer's mindset occurs during Ellen Olenska's farewell dinner, when he finally realizes that his "unreal" New York "clan" is actually his reality, and any life beyond it it is simply an unattainable fantasy. This moment marks the figurative “death” of Newland's fantasies, Wharton's way of conveying the message that realism prevails over romanticism. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay From the opening scene of Age of Innocence, Wharton depicts a false, appearance-driven socialite clique, with Newland Archer presented as the “real” one who notices their falseness. The story opens at the opera, a place where actors display unreal emotion and passion on a stage, mirroring the rehearsed, inorganic, and unreal actions of members of Archer's society. Newland observes the first "scandal" of the narrative, noting that his fiancée May's cousin, "poor Ellen Olenska," is accepted into the Mingott family opera box. He "endorses [wholly] family solidarity, and one of the qualities he most admire[s] in the Mingotts [is] their resolute championing of the few black sheep which their blameless stock had produced." Newland is not the type to shun a "black sheep," or disgrace, from society because of rumors, and believes it would be "false modesty," or an arrogant aversion to Ellen, avoiding her and the complicated reality of his situation ( 9). She further highlights her disgust at the way her society ignores reality by commenting “Mrs. Welland's request to be spared from all that [is] 'unpleasant' in her history,” and she “winces to think that [it is] perhaps this attitude of mind that [keeps] the air of New York so pure” (61 ) Newland's idea of ​​"real life" is full of unpleasantness, and the way New York's elite pretend this discomfort doesn't exist causes Newland to "reconcile his instinctive disgust at human baseness with his equally instinctive pity for human frailty" (61). He is annoyed to the point of "disgust" by this artificial ignorance of reality, describing it partly as "cowardice" or wickedness, and partly as "fragility" or weakness. Condemnation his society and his family for being so ignorant, and when his sister accuses him of calling their mother an "old maid," Archer "[feels] as if he's shouting back, 'Yes, she is, and so am I the van der Luydens, and so are we all, when it comes to being touched by the tip of the wing of Reality'” (55). He is adamant that the life that upper-class New Yorkers live is artificial, and by using the pronoun "we" he also refers to himself, implying that he needs to break out of the unreality in which he lives. Archer comments on an unreal artificiality even in the way people communicate. As he sits at a dining table wrapped in commentarysuperficial and appearance-driven like "What can you expect from a girl who was allowed to wear black satin to her debut ball?" (26), defines New York society as a "kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing has never been said, done or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs" (29). Communication between members of its community is discreet and nonverbal, leading to misinterpretations, "the real thing" is rarely understood completely or correctly. Newland has growing trepidation about the future that society has presented to him; he will marry May Welland, maintain a respectable and “pleasant” reputation, and remain at the top of the “slippery little pyramid” (64) of New York's social hierarchy. He thinks his society lacks “reality” in the sense of love and passion – with a “shiver of foreboding” Newland sees his marriage becoming “what most other marriages around him [are]: a dull association of material and social interests supported together by ignorance on the one hand and hypocrisy on the other” (29). The “ignorance” he thinks of is the wife's duty to ignore the reality that her husband is having affairs with other women, and the “hypocrisy” is the husband's way of allowing himself to have mistresses. Newland fears that a life as May Welland's husband will lead him down this path of insincere "partnership" and poignantly considers: "once married, what would become of this narrow margin of life in which his real experiences were lived ?" (80). He believes that marrying May, a symbolic commitment to preserving his fragile elite society, means sacrificing “real experiences,” implying that life within his clan is not reality. He worries that he will eventually be trapped in this unreal, sheltered routine of resisting reality, and feels increasingly "as if [he is] being buried alive beneath his future" (87). What Newland seeks is a reality outside the confines of his future. insular, “unreal” community, and for him the epitome of this reality is the mysterious and unconventional Ellen Olenska. Contrary to the “boring association” he envisages with May, Newland feels real passion and attraction for Ellen: “her lightest touch…moved him like a caress” (42). He has a refreshing sense of reality, often revealing the whole (often unpleasant) truth. When he describes his seedy "bohemian neighborhood," for example, he says, "it's less gloomy than the Van der Luydens anyway." This sincere line gives Newland “an electric shock, for there were few rebellious spirits who would have dared to call the van der Luydens' stately home dark” (47). For Newland, Ellen is honest and real and is attracted by her ability to face facts. She is also able to handle the “unpleasant,” showing her capacity for reality when she mentions her husband, Count Olenski, “as if there were no sinister connection.” Her casual way of dealing with the tainted relationship with her husband shocks Archer, and he "[looks] at her perplexed, wondering whether it was levity or dissimulation that allowed her to touch the past so easily" (68). It is unusual for a woman in Archer's society to deal with the "unpleasant" as Ellen does, and to Newland this is attractive. Wharton presents an irony in describing Newland as someone who decries the mean and "unreal" ways of those around him, because he is indeed a romantic; the least realistic of all. He constantly drifts into fantasies about a non-existent life full of "real" love and "true" passion, leaving him disconnected from the real world in front of him. Newland can be defined first and foremost as a romantic by the literature he reads and the way he interprets it. The reader often sees Newland imagining himself in idyllic love scenes portrayed byromantic poets such as Dante, Petrarch and Tennyson. Wharton describes Newland as imagining "what it would have been like to live in the intimacy of drawing rooms dominated by the chatter of Mrime...but such things were inconceivable in New York" (65). He dreams of scenes that do not fit New York and longs for the “intimacy” of another world. At the end of chapter fifteen, Newland comes across a copy of Rossetti's “The House of Life” and fuels his romantic desire by imagining Ellen Olenska as the poet's idealized lover: “He [takes it back], and [finds himself] immersed in an atmosphere different from those he [has] ever breathed in books; so warm, so rich and yet so ineffably tender as to [give] a new and disturbing beauty to the most basic of human passions. Throughout the night [he pursues] through the enchanted pages the vision of a woman who had the face of Ellen Olenska” (87). Newland's realistic vision embodies his confusion between reality and fantasy and his inability to distinguish the two. Describing the intimate "atmosphere" that reading transports him into as "new," he implies that true "haunting beauty" is a sensation he has yet to experience in his real life with May. As the narrative progresses, Newland displays an uncontrollable obsession. with Elena. His daydreams about her are realistic and more of a reality to him than his real life with May. While on a trip to Newport with May and her family, he is sent to look for the Countess and sees her standing at the end of a pier. As soon as he sees it, he begins internal contemplation: “But now it was the Welland house, and the life he was expected to lead there, which had become unreal and irrelevant, and the brief scene on the shore, when he had stood undecided, half of the shore, was as close to him as the blood in his veins” (133). The real life he lives with May is now not only false in an artificial sense, but is "unreal and irrelevant", devoid of real feelings or sensations for Archer. Ellen becomes the epitome of all that is real to Archer, and as it becomes harder for him to see her, he becomes more attached. In Boston, he says longingly to Olenska, "you gave me my first taste of a real life, and at the same time asked me to continue with a fictitious life" (148). The "real life" he's referring to is the authentic, true love he thinks he shares with Ellen, and the "fake" one is the relationship he seems to be stuck in with May. The “real life” he finds in Ellen also exists internally, when she is not even remotely close: he had built within himself a sort of sanctuary in which she towers among his secret thoughts and desires. Little by little it became the scene of his real life... Outside of it, in the scene of his real life, he moved with a growing sense of unreality and insufficiency, clashing like an absent-minded person with family prejudices and points of view. traditional. the man continues to bang against the furniture in his room. Absent: that's what he was: so absent from all that is most densely real and close to those around him that it sometimes surprised him to find that they still imagined he was there” (159). Newland has reached the point of feeling closer to Ellen, even in unattainable fantasies, than to May, who is the reality of his “real life.” His internal fantasy has become the “scene of his real life,” demonstrating his distorted sense of where reality lies. In his real life he "makes mistakes" by calling him an "absent-minded man," images that suggest a wandering, careless, death-like corpse. This is an apt description for Newland as he approaches his figurative death. As Newland's fantasies become more and more frequent, similarities can be found in how they all end. His daydreams are continually extinguished by memoriessurprising ones that take him back to the "false and insincere" life of the high society he knows. When he visits van der Luyden's house in Skuytercliff, he "[imagines Ellen], almost [hears her], creeping up behind him to throw her light arms around his neck." Just as he achieves a heightened sense of reality in his daydream, "body and soul throbbing for the miracle to come," Archer's eyes "mechanically receive the image of a heavily clad man with his fur collar turned up. .that man was Julius Beaufort” (84). Beaufort serves as a painful reminder of many things; he is married to a woman from a prominent family, but he is repeatedly said to have other affairs, one of which is with Ellen a vision of the kind of man inauthentic that Newland fears he will become, and an obstacle that will prevent Newland from pursuing a relationship with the woman he associates with “true” love how Archer's eyes mechanically "receive the image" of Beaufort proves that he is still simply going through the motions of real life, still believing his reality is elsewhere. Newland suddenly steps out of a fantasy again when he visits Newport with his bride May for a party. He walks through a garden, with Ellen busy in her thoughts, and sees a pink parasol that he is convinced is Ellen's. “The parasol attracted him like a magnet: he was sure it was his… Archer brought the handle to his lips. She heard a rustle of skirts against the counter and remained still, leaning on the handle of the umbrella with her hands clasped, and letting the rustle get closer without raising her eyes. He had always known this was bound to happen... "Oh, Mr. Archer!" exclaimed a strong young voice; and looking up he saw before him the youngest and eldest of the Blenker girls, blond and unkempt, dressed in bedraggled muslin” (137). Newland is surprised to discover that the owner of the parasol and the approaching "rustling of skirts" is not Ellen, but a "bloated and bedraggled" young girl. Newland is beginning to realize that his realistic views of what he feels is "reality" are not always correct: in this case he foolishly kisses the handle of the parasol, only to discover that it isn't even Ellen's. In this way Wharton exposes the ridiculousness of Archer's romance and his embarrassment in realizing it. Archer achieves a fundamental shift in his understanding of reality during his wife's dinner in honor of Ellen Olenska's final departure for Europe. While Newland remains detached from the conversation, “[floating] somewhere between the chandelier and the ceiling,” he realizes with a start, “in a vast flash composed of many broken flashes, that to them all he and Madame Olenska were lovers . ...He imagined that he had been, for months, the center of countless silently watching eyes and patiently listening ears.” Newland now realizes that the clan is smarter than he thought; they have always observed and understood his hidden desire for Ellen. It also occurs to him that the reasons for May's dinner are not so innocent: "the separation between him and the accomplice of his guilt had been achieved, and now the entire tribe was mobilized against his wife with the tacit assumption that no one knew nothing, or had ever imagined anything, and that the occasion of the entertainment was simply May Archer's natural desire to take an affectionate leave of her friend and cousin. May's party appears to be an innocent farewell to Ellen, but in reality is a celebration of the liberation of Ellen, a threat to New York's rigid social code is May's way of recognizing her triumph as a “wife,” the woman who gets to be with Newland sees this passive competitiveness as the..