The Marriage Is a Bust... Or Is It?

Roxane Gay starts with a choice: why does Edith Wharton, who lavishes pages on meals and dresses, dispatch Newland and May's wedding so fast in The Age of Innocence? She reads the chapter 19 sentence that does it, the one that gets the couple down the Mingott stair, through the rice and satin slippers and into their reserved compartment with time to spare. Her point: these people needn't make plans, because the plans were made for them long ago.

Then Newport, which Gay finds so cinematic you can smell the salt air, and the moment on the pier where Newland wills Ellen to turn around and she doesn't. Remember it, Gay says; it may matter later. From there she follows Newland into two lives, dutiful husband and man nursing his feelings for Ellen, and to the lie about business in Boston that buys the pair their only unfettered hours. She asks whether Wharton's refusal to let them touch keeps you interested or frustrates you the way it frustrates them.