The Age of Innocence (1993)

directed by Martin Scorsese

Mireille Crocco

A man and a woman climb into a carriage outside the Pennsylvania Terminus in Jersey City. It’s a bright, cold winter day in the early 1870s; snow flurries twirl in the afternoon sunshine. There’s a palpable nervousness as the pair settle, like teenagers with a crush. They glance at each other, smile without showing teeth. He breaks the tension: “You know, I hardly remembered you.” Her surprise makes him chuckle. She responds playfully, “Hardly remembered?” He regains his composure, “I mean each time it’s the same. You happen to me all over again.” They hold each other’s gaze. “Yes, I know. For me too,” she replies in a flushed whisper.

The carriage takes off towards New York City; they’ll have two hours together, “maybe a little more.” The camera pans to their laps. He removes his black leather glove and takes her hand in his, turning it so he can undo the little gold buttons that hold her soft, brown suede glove snug against her pulse. He brings her wrist to his lips, kissing the tender skin and, lost in the warmth between them, pulls her into an embrace so desperate with longing she can’t help but give in, pulling away only when the light of a passing carriage shines in theirs.

*

Bright overhead lights illuminate the long hours at my desk in the basement executive office of a 5-star hotel in New York City, where I’m confronted with a large computer monitor and a long list of to-dos. When it’s especially busy, it takes all my self control not to yank the phone from the wall every time it rings. I am surrounded by chattering colleagues gushing over the household names staying in the rooms and suites above us—the total cost of sleeping at this hotel often amounts to a down payment on a house after just a few nights. Otherwise, I have the sisyphean task of answering emails: missing breakfast credits, reservation enquiries, etcetera.

I watch the clock. I watch the inbox knowing the moment I click to another screen is the moment I’ll get a notification. There is no love story here. Gratitude to be employed, yes, but more than anything, there’s an overwhelm of desperation and longing for something richer, something outside the bounds of societal constraints.

*

Not much has changed in the couple centuries that separates today from the late 1800s, even with all our civil and technological advancements. The Gilded Age lives on in the two party system linked by the common goal of more for themselves in spite of what they promised their constituents and the ever widening wealth canyon between the Haves and Have-Nots. No member of the elite class would willingly give up an iota of power if it meant benefiting the very people upon whom their wealth was built. Money rules, always has.

It was with great surprise, then, that I found myself empathising with the protagonist of Martin Scorcese’s opulent 1993 film, The Age of Innocence. Newland Archer has money and a coveted place in the upper echelons of Gilded Age New York society, yet a need for something outside the austere orders of his place nags at him.

About ninety minutes before Archer gets in that carriage at Pennsylvania Terminus, he’s sitting in an opera box at the New York Academy of Music. Faust, an opera about a man who gives his soul to the devil in exchange for a life of knowledge and passion, plays out on stage. Archer is a well-respected gentleman; while he “upholds family and tradition,” privately he “enjoys challenges to convention.” He knows society is a precarious dance, a performance which must continue for the sake of those delicate creatures strapped in their silks and lace, so as to perpetuate the expectation of virginal innocence to which Victorian women were held.

In an opera box on the other side of the packed theater sits the beautiful ingénue May Welland, Archer’s fiancée. She and her mother are accompanied by Countess Ellen Olenska, May’s cousin. 

The Countess’s return to New York after many years in Europe has society bristling—indeed, that night at the opera, all eyes are on her. She is unconventional for a woman: living alone, traveling alone, wanting to sue her abusive husband for divorce. The Countess sees what Archer sees, the fetid core of the elites. She understands everyone is performing but unlike him she doesn’t follow, preferring to embrace her independence even if it means having to endure the overt snubbing of everyone in town. Through their many tête-à-têtes, the Countess gives Archer a “glimpse of a real life” fluid with knowledge and passion. She will be the one to join Archer in the carriage about ninety minutes later. 

*

I assume many privileged millennials like me growing up had at least one working parent as a role model for what we should be aiming for as adults. Most of us were also probably told that a good college education would be the ticket to a good life, and maybe with enough grit and pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, a place amongst the elites of our day. But mainly, we were training for a performance of our own—carrying on society’s expectation of orderly career men and women, putting to shame anyone without a degree, or worse, without a job. May anchors Archer to “all that was best in their world,” as our parents did. They wanted our happiness so they indoctrinated us with what had worked for them.

But after living through several once-in-a-generation economic collapses, the performance doesn’t quite have the same sheen it did when we were younger. I assume most of us are burned out, in debt (because of those degrees we had to get), and have anchors of our own: steady but unfulfilling jobs because generally, the opposite of employment means being ostracized from society. Our challenges to convention are the darkly sarcastic memes and tweets we smirk at because we are living their punchlines.

May is innocence embodied, while the worldly Countess has been wisened by cruel experience. She is Archer’s intellectual equal, she stands her ground and is fearlessly vulnerable with him. They fall in love. Of course nothing can come of it. Archer’s milieu has too strong a hold on him—his family, his career, the position he enjoys in society are all too precious to throw to the wind.

To break off his engagement and run off into the sunset with the Countess would have him ostracized from society. His challenges to convention are the stolen moments they share, unsatisfying and much too brief.

*

Even though Archer feels like he’s “being buried alive under his future,” he does what is expected of him and marries May. Even though I feel I’m “being buried alive” under my future when the alarm goes off every morning, I do what is expected of me and go to work. He settles into the “dull duty” of a married man in high society, prioritizing appearances over personal desires. I settle into the “dull duty” of doing as good a job as possible at something I don’t enjoy because my only other choice is unemployment.

By the time Archer and the Countess find themselves in the carriage, he is completely disillusioned with his life. In an act of desperation, Archer confesses his desire: “Somehow I want to get away with you.” He yearns for permission that these wild ideas are acceptable, perhaps an encouraging nod from the Countess signaling she is his accomplice. Instead, she counters, “I think we should live in reality, not dreams.”

Reality, in all its sobering disappointment. Archer could blow up his life and disappear with the Countess. He has the money to do it, after all. They’d probably experience a blissful string of months, maybe a year, but how long could that dream last, really? Shunned by everyone and everything he knows, Archer would come to depend on the Countess for his every need—she would be his lover, best friend, confidant, parent. She would come to resent him and eventually it would be over.

My job, with its benefits and cushy comforts, could be easily replaced with an algorithm. I have no trouble imagining my days free from the shackles of the inbox, to do with my hours as I please. The temptation to say goodbye forever to all of it, move to a cabin in the woods, become the witch everyone gossips about but secretly envies because I’ve actually done it—thrown caution to the wind for a life of knowledge and passion—is overwhelming. But at this time in my life, I can’t afford to. The cold hand of wanting keeps me screwed to my office chair. Conformity makes itself known in the knots of my shoulders, the dull pain of my hips. 

We watch from the sidelines as this other life parades before our eyes, frantically trying to find a way to join in. Every second the parade gets a little further from us, we justify our choice to watch the fire eater instead of making moves to become one ourselves. Maybe Archer was not meant to live his dream of bohemia on the other side of the world with the woman he loved. Maybe they got as far as they could in the time shared together. And maybe I am not meant to live my dream of an unconventional artistic life—most cannot. We settle because of the potential agony of destroying all we hold dear, family and bank accounts alike, by daring to take the leap.

*

When the Countess decides to go back to Europe for good just after May announces her first pregnancy, Archer lives, the longing for what could have been silently following him through his days. He and May attend the usual social events. They raise their children, he is a present and attentive father.

Even with the burden of the commute and the pointlessness of most of my tasks, I live. I’m in good health, there’s food in the fridge, close friends to commiserate with. From a bird’s eye view, I am frolicking in a lush meadow of success, I have everything I was repeatedly told growing up would make for a good life.

Years later, after their children have grown, May passes. The opportunity to reconnect with the Countess presents itself when Archer’s son insists he accompany him on a trip to Paris. Times have changed, the rigidity of Archer’s youth has long been forgotten. He’s in his 50s with plenty of life still before him. But in his mind, the “flower of life” has dropped its last petals—it is less painful to reimagine the past than to face what is. For Archer, the Countess “had become the complete vision of all that he missed.” He sends his son to visit with her instead. After a few moments alone outside her apartment building, he turns his back and walks away.

The “flower of life” beckons more urgently each day, yet I fear following my nose for it blooms in uncertainty. Archer never had a choice—his fate, played out in the 1920 Edith Wharton novel The Age of Innocence, was decided from the start. As far as I know, mine isn’t. My days are haunted by an ache heavy with the potential of what could be.

I am not as brave or bold as I hoped. I am a thirty-three year old woman with a painful urge to act, waiting for the moment when I finally get over myself. Time passes. I empty my inbox and watch as it fills up again.

Mireille Crocco is a writer based in NYC. She regularly contributes to Voice Noted magazine and her poems have appeared in Bullshit Lit, Existe Magazine, and Meari Mag, among others, under the pen name Miro. When Mireille isn’t putting words on the page, you can find her lost in a book. You can connect with her on Instagram @miroreadsbooks.