For your second essay of the semester, you will focus on Edith Wharton's Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel, The Age of Innocence. I want you to write an argumentative, analytical, and interpretative essay of at least twelve hundred words. That is, I want you to focus on a topic in the novel, and then form your opinion about that topic; this opinion will be your thesis statement for the essay. If you are in doubt about what a thesis statement should do, then visit my web site: thesis statement. Once you have formed your thesis, you should choose passages from the novel to support that opinion. As you support the argument, you will have to analyze and interpret the passages you use to show how they validate your thesis. A word of caution: this essay should not be a mere summary of the events within the novel. This approach would be a waste of time because you and I have read the novel. Re-telling it would be a bore--and a useless exercise. So I don't want you to tell me what happens as much as I want to know about what you believe the meaning and significance are about the actions in the story. In other words, what is the sub-text of the novel? What is the writer implying, not what is the writer being explicit about? Choose one of the topics below, and create a thesis that reflects your opinion about that topic. Place your thesis in a prominent position in the essay (don't bury it in the middle of a paragraph), and be firm in your wording of it. The thesis will then set the direction for the remainder of the essay, which should support that opinion. Use the standard MLA form of documentation to cite the quotations you take from the text. If you are in doubt about what MLA documentation means, then visit my web site for assistance. Be sure to select the quotations prudently; your quoted material should not comprise more than fifteen percent of the paper. In addition, you should use three outside sources--critics of the novel--to support your paper. Cite these critics both in-text and in the works cited page. You should also visit my web site that explains how I evaluate your essays. Topics Newland Archer, the focal character of Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence, often feels stifled (even imprisoned) by the society in which he was born. This world consists of "faint implications and pale delicacies" (Wharton 14), of conspiring clans and tribes, of prescribed behavior and form. Although Wharton is devastating in her depiction of this world, she also seems to have a grudging loyalty to it. Argue that as her alter ego Newland Archer finds security--even comfort--in this prison, despite his eagerness to escape it.   Newland Archer is the focal character in The Age of Innocence. With few exceptions, his perception of the world is the readers' perception. For instance, through Archer, readers see May Welland as "the young girl who knew nothing and expected everything" (Wharton 38). Repeatedly Archer believes that she is innocent, superficial, cold, and unimaginative, just as he sees the Countess Olenska as mysterious, experienced, artistic, and sensual. Argue that Archer's perception of New York is not Wharton's perception, that she meant his view to have its limitations, and through it she uses irony to convey her themes.   The narrator tells us that May Welland is a "creation of factitious purity, so cunningly manufactured by a conspiracy of mothers and aunts and grandmothers and long-dead ancestresses, because [she] was supposed to be what [Newland Archer] wanted, what he had a right to, in order that he might exercise his lordly pleasure in smashing it like an image made of snow" (41). Using this quotation--but not limiting yourself to it--argue that Edith Wharton believes that women are more responsible than men are for the females' subservient position in nineteenth century New York society. In addition, discuss the motivations that you believe lie behind this responsibility.   Although on the surface of Edith Wharton's rigid world, women seem to be its victims--and appear to silently endure their men's infidelities--Wharton's women may indeed be much stronger and more in control than we at first believe. Argue that Wharton's women are the engines behind New York society in the 1870's, that they are doers, not subservient victims. Use at least two different characters to support your view.   At the end of The Age of Innocence, Newland Archer travels to Paris with his son. In Paris, the son reveals his (and his mother's) knowledge that Archer gave up what he most wanted in the world--Ellen Olenska. Then both father and son go to the Countess' apartment, outside of which Archer sits on a bench, never going up the five flights to see her. What is Archer's reason for not seeing the Countess--and what theme might Wharton be highlighting by Archer's last act of will? If none of the above topics appeals to you, then create your own topic. In doing so, be sure to choose something argumentative, and clear the topic with me before you begin the paper. Good luck.