(1920)
The story begins in New York in the 1870''s. Ellen Osenka, a former
soceity girl, has eft her titled
Polish
husband abroad because of his dissipation and returned to New York. Here she meets Newland Archer, a young lawyer engaged to her pretty cousin, May Welland. Archer and Ellen realize a communion of ideas and a stimulation of thought in each other''s company, but Archer feels that he cannot with integrity break with his shallow young fiancee May, and marries her. Ellen''s family becomes deeply concerned with her refusal to respond to the overtures of her husband because they dread, above all things, the scandal of a divorce. Archer is enlisted to persuade Ellen not to go to court. She consents, but realizing the hopelessness of her situation, decides to go to Paris to live. At May''s farewell party for her, Archer sees that the family secretly suspects him of being Ellen''s lover. He is disgusted by the artificial standards of his
soceity, but determines never to see Ellen again. Years later, he visits Paris with his son, but does not see her, preferring his memories. Mrs. Wharton freceived the Pulitzer Prize for this novel.