Laboratory but Affettuoso

Naturalism in literature, still popular and widely appreciated nowadays, is a crucial part of the evolution of American literature. In this essay, I’ll explain naturalism from my point of view by referring to some information I found and analyze a few clips of The Age of Innocence in depth to seek the naturalistic technique in it.
Naturalism, a prominent literary movement in the mid-19th-century France, spread all its way to many countries’ literature circle and exerted profound effect on the development of the later literature. It is a completely different tune from literally realism while it provided warm-bed for the emergence of the later literal category, temporary literature in America. Though it didn’t last for a long time, plus no systematic formula for it was created, its influence and how popular it was with the readers and critics can be easily seen nowadays.
As one of the most well-known naturalists, Zola, once said, “Naturalism, in literature…is the return to nature and to man, direct observation, correct anatomy, the acceptance and the depiction of that which is. The task is the same for the scientist as for the writer. Both have to abandon abstractions for realities, ready-made formulas for rigorous analysis. Hence no more abstract characters in our words, no more history of everyone, the web and woof of the daily life…” We could clearly see that naturalists tend to depict the society and people in the most objective way, trying to be detached from the story. Being merely a narrator, not part of the story. Like scientists, naturalistic authors often concentrate on the fact. “What you see is what you get”, like this old saying goes, they go beyond the scientists for just one more step-write them down as literature rather than scientific report.
Apart from being objective, pessimism is another major feature of naturalism. Naturalist tend to lead readers to believe that the character’s fate has already been determined by their family background and the social environment they’re in. Worse off, the nature is indifferent to human’s struggle against it. The authors often take the low classes as their works’ main characters, writing about their bitter struggle against the meant-to-be tragic fate and the unjust caste system, but as always, few happy endings.
The book I’m going to analyze is the all-time greatest, Pulitzer winner of Mrs. Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence. From how Mrs. Wharton wrote this book and what kind of perspective she took when telling the story, we can trace certain defining characteristics of naturalisms. Though different from the majority, the characters in this book are of fancy elite class, readers still can find it filled with pessimism. Coincidently, this great contradiction strengthens the tragic atmosphere in this book.
First, to quote Regina Barreca from University of Connecticut, “Wharton’s novel supplies the map, the key, and the emotional compass allowing the reader to observe the progress of Newland Archer, his wife, May Welland, and their cousin Ellen Olenska, as they make their journey through the currents and the eddies of wealthy New York in the 1870s.” Wharton pictured a whole and detailed scenario of the elite families in New York City and gave readers plenty of hints and used a number of satire to indicate what she truly meant. Then Professor Barreca also suggested that Wharton was both an insider and outsider in this masterpiece. Providing that Wharton was also born in a wealthy family in New York, where she could lead a luxurious life, she could be a total insider to create an extravagant lifestyle for the rich according to the real life she used to lead in the past. At the same time, being perfectly sophisticated with all the conventional etiquette as well as the unwritten customs, taboos and boundaries in this self-centered community, she was able to define every character’s mind and convey their emotions correctly. And most importantly, successfully distinguished the significance of those complicated relationships in this elite social circle, which is bound by sociology and their ancestors’ blood lineage. Being an insider doesn’t mean getting her own emotions involved. She was to provide the hard-core material for the book and specify the self-contradict thoughts and struggle of these seemingly born-to-be carefree people. Being an outsider, no personal perspectives or emotions.
When I first read this book, I was surprised that I could closely feel the emotions of these wealthy people in those spacious but empty palace-like rooms despite the emotionless but particular descriptions of the scene. It’s the same with the characters’ mental activity. Mrs. Wharton described their helplessness, struggles, anger, sadness, contempt and all the other mingled thoughts like an automatic robot who had no feelings, systematically and chillily telling all she had seen in those active brains and leaving us with easy access to experience their lavish emotions and minds. I selected and tried to look deep into several typical and classic segments which aroused much of my sympathies and successfully put me into the vivid story site. It’s a pity that I don’t major in literature so I’m not sure if my analysis and explanation were reasonable, but I’ll try my best to express what I saw and experienced in those delicately written segments.
First, like what I’ve said in the previous paragraphs, naturalism literature pays much attention on how to depict stuff just the way it is, without any abstract description. And Mrs. Wharton’s enthusiasm for concrete details can be found in much of this book. Her description of the preparation for the newly wed couple’s first dinner is typical.
But a big dinner, with a hired chef and two borrowed footmen, with Roman punch, roses from Henderson’s, and menus on gilt-edged cards, was a different affair, and not to be lightly undertaken. As Mrs. Archer remarked, the Roman punch made all the difference; not in itself but by its manifold implications-since it signified either canvasbacks or terrapin, two soups, a hot and a cold sweet, full décolletage with short sleeves, and guests of a proportionate importance.
There’s more to illustrate how detailed they were.
May, they told him, was in the dining room inspecting the mound of Jacqueminot roses and maidenhair in the center of the long table, and the placing of the Maillard bonbons in openwork silver baskets between the candelabra. On the piano stood a large basket of orchids which Mr. van der Luyden had had sent from Skuytercliff. Everything was, in short, as it should be on the approach of so considerable an event.
It’s a great tradition for a young couple to deliver their first big dinner and the scale of it, the dishes and decorations, even a bottle of the meticulously selected Roman punch, all determine how others will comment this couple and both of their families’ reputation in the future. It’s important to take all the celebrities into consideration about whom to invite and whom to neglect, and that decision involves the guests’ ancestors’ status, also how they earned their fortune, whether inherited from their wealthy and respectful forefathers or just a nouveau riche that are despaired by the elite who have been noble for generations. It’s a huge honor for the newlywed to have the van der Luyden couple, the top of the elite pyramid, on the dinner table. It’s decent for the couple to hover around the dining hall, talk keenly to each distinguished guest and keep them feel warmly welcomed for the whole night…
These social conventions and grand ceremonies are the most effective and recognized means for the families to show that they will stand still in this ever-changing and descending social circle. Their distinguished ancestors and blood lineage, even their birthplaces, can be their strongest weapons to defend their reputations and lives. In this chapter about The Archers’ dinner, Mrs. Wharton listed a list of the celebrities’ names, explaining their relationships, and wrote about everyone’s expressions, tones and their comment on the event, even other people’s behavior. These all made up a huge, nagging but invisible web that traps all the members of this society, no matter they’re willing or not.
How effective the way Mrs. Wharton implies this truth is, to quote Larry Rubin, “This apparently scientific, methodical approach is manifested particularly in Mrs. Wharton’s extensive use of technical terms and images from sociology and anthropology”. This also can be traced where Wharton tells about how Mrs. Mingott struggled through her years as a widow (Chapter 2) and introduces Mr. Beaufort to the readers (Chapter 3).
This feature contributes to the detailed description of those characters’ dilemma, and these dilemmas stress the twists and bitterness in this complex society in return. A conspicuous instance is the self-contradict thoughts of Newland Archer when juggling between the affair with Ellen and the marriage to May, his beautiful and sensitive wife.
In the Chapter 30, a usual night of Newland and May, when Newland, so tortured and upset by the reality, opened the windows, which are supposed to be shut, to get some fresh air from the awkward atmosphere in the room, Mrs. Wharton wrote:
After he had leaned out into the darkness for a few minutes he heard her say: “Newland! Do shut the window. You’ll catch your death.”
He pulled the sash down and turned back. “Catch my death!” he echoed; and he felt like adding: “But I’ve caught it already. I am dead-I’ve been dead for months and months.”
And suddenly the play of the word flashed up a wild suggestion. What if it were she who was dead! If she were going to die-to die soon-and leave him free! The sensation of standing there, in that warm familiar room, and looking at her, and wishing her dead, was so strange, so fascinating and overmastering, that its enormity did not immediately strike him. He simply felt that chance had given him a new possibility to which his sick soul might cling. Yes, May might die-people did: young people, healthy people like herself: she might die, and set him suddenly free.
Mrs. Wharton’s close look into the hero’s thinking arouse readers’ sympathy so easily that everyone feels that he/she was part of the story or even he/she is Newland himself -amazed by the exotic beauty of Ellen, dulled by the all-the-same daily routine, tortured by the bitter reality… These mingled feelings are so vivid that we are not surprised when this gentleman of all time was so radically vicious to think about the death of his wife, instead we feel pity for him.
Not only desperate with the hopeless affair with Ellen, Newland was also pretty frustrated with the great conflict that he had negative attitudes to this old-fashioned and backwards society but there’s nothing he could do or to put it in a more realistic way, he was kind of a coward that dared not to put up a fight because he was so dependent on the status and fortune that his ancestors had granted him. He fell in love with Ellen because she was somehow an alien or rebel to those old New York social traditions, divorcing her dissipated husband, making friends with people who were classes that leveled beneath them, and seldom followed the routine and conventions. She lit up the unrealistic hope for Newland that there might be one day he could break away from this morbid society and embrace the true freedom rather than the “luxurious routine of their elders”, sometimes so crazy that he even planned on eloping with Ellen but he obviously overestimated his ability to maintain his life when exiled by the society that had nurtured and shaped him.
Newland felt trapped, he struggled a lot, and he knew in the bottom of his heart that it was hopeless for him to combat these obstinate forces. Thanks to his noble European ancestors and the accumulated fortune of his forefathers, Newland was granted the life that the ordinary could have never imagined, but in return, this kind of exquisite life constrained him to a sternly fixed walk of life. Through these implications, Mrs. Wharton shows that it was these old-fashioned traditions and strict blood relationship that have kept these families flourished for centuries. Like what Mrs. Archer said, “If we don’t all stand together, there’ll be no such thing as society left”.
The two selected parts, in my opinion, can perfectly demonstrate Mrs. Wharton’s techniques in naturalism. Every sentence in this book could be sufficient enough to see the society system and relationships in depth. Larry suggests that “The social life of New York is recorded in this book with ‘an anthropologist’s thoroughness’, and street addresses, décor, and costume are noted with laboratory precision.” The word “laboratory” picked out the most distinguished point of naturalism literature-to picture the reality and facts precisely. The detailed but detached descriptions of facts and characters’ thoughts, which conveyed the majority of the emotions and implications, helped made The Age of Innocence the everlasting classic in naturalism literature, also a must-have item on the must-read lists.

1. Larry, Rubin. “Aspects of Naturalism in Four Novels by Edith Wharton”. Twentieth Century Literature, Vol.2. No.4, 1957 2. Martin, Esslin. “Naturalism in Context”. The Drama Review:TDR, Vol.13, No.2, Naturalism Revisited, The MIT Press, Winter, 1968 3. Edith, Wharton. The Age of Innocence. Penguin Books Ltd. 1962