How Does May Welland’s Pregnancy Function as a Plot Device in “The Age of Innocence”?
May Welland’s pregnancy in Edith Wharton’s “The Age of Innocence” functions as the novel’s most decisive and multifaceted plot device, serving simultaneously as the ultimate barrier to Newland Archer’s relationship with Ellen Olenska, the revelation of May’s hidden intelligence and strategic capacity, and the symbol of social continuity triumphing over individual desire. The pregnancy operates on multiple narrative levels: it provides the biological and moral imperative that makes Newland’s abandonment of May impossible, it exposes May’s sophisticated understanding of her husband’s emotional infidelity and her calculated response to it, and it ensures the perpetuation of Old New York society into the next generation. Most significantly, May’s strategic revelation of her pregnancy to Ellen before informing Newland himself represents the climactic moment when she definitively secures her marriage and facilitates Ellen’s exile, demonstrating that beneath her innocent facade lies a formidable defender of social order who wields reproductive power as her ultimate weapon.
What Is the Narrative Significance of May Welland’s Pregnancy in the Novel?
May Welland’s pregnancy carries profound narrative significance in “The Age of Innocence” as it represents the point of no return in the novel’s central conflict between passion and duty, individual desire and social obligation. From a structural perspective, the pregnancy functions as the climactic complication that resolves the romantic tension that has driven the plot throughout the novel. Wharton carefully positions the revelation of May’s pregnancy at a moment when Newland Archer has finally determined to leave his wife and pursue a life with Ellen Olenska, making the timing of this disclosure maximally dramatic and consequential. The pregnancy transforms what might have been a difficult but potentially achievable separation into an absolute impossibility, as abandoning a pregnant wife would violate even Newland’s most flexible interpretation of acceptable behavior. This plot device demonstrates Wharton’s mastery of narrative construction, as she uses a biological fact to externalize and finalize the internal conflict that has tormented her protagonist throughout the novel (Lewis, 1975).
The pregnancy’s narrative function extends beyond merely creating an obstacle to Newland’s desires; it serves as the mechanism through which the novel’s themes are ultimately resolved and clarified. Through May’s pregnancy, Wharton demonstrates how biology and social convention intersect to constrain individual choice, particularly for men who might otherwise possess greater freedom than women to violate social norms. The pregnancy makes visible the consequences of Newland’s earlier choices—his decision to marry May, his failure to act decisively when action might have been possible—and forces him to confront the reality that his romantic idealization of Ellen was always incompatible with the life he had already chosen. Furthermore, the pregnancy introduces the next generation into the narrative, allowing Wharton to suggest both the continuity of Old New York society and the subtle changes that time will bring. The novel’s epilogue reveals that Newland and May’s son Dallas represents a new type of American, more comfortable with European culture and less bound by his parents’ restrictive social codes, suggesting that while May’s pregnancy ensured the immediate victory of social convention, it also produced the generation that would eventually transform that society (Singley, 1995).
How Does May’s Pregnancy Reveal Her True Character and Intelligence?
May Welland’s pregnancy serves as the primary vehicle through which Wharton reveals the considerable gap between May’s carefully cultivated appearance of innocent simplicity and her actual sophisticated intelligence. Throughout most of the novel, May is portrayed through Newland’s patronizing perspective as a beautiful but intellectually limited young woman whose conventional upbringing has left her incapable of complex thought or feeling. However, the strategic manner in which May handles her pregnancy—particularly her decision to inform Ellen Olenska of her condition before telling her own husband—exposes this assessment as fundamentally mistaken and reveals May as a formidable strategist who has been carefully managing her marriage all along. May’s action demonstrates that she has not only perceived Newland’s emotional attachment to Ellen but has also calculated precisely how to counter this threat to her marriage. By telling Ellen about the pregnancy while presenting it as uncertain (“I wasn’t sure yet”), May achieves multiple objectives simultaneously: she appeals to Ellen’s sense of honor, provides Ellen with a compelling reason to leave New York, and does so in a way that maintains her own image as innocent and unsuspecting (Wharton, 1920).
This revelation of May’s true capabilities forces readers to retrospectively reassess her character throughout the entire novel, recognizing that her apparent simplicity may have been a carefully maintained performance designed to succeed within her social world. Wharton suggests that May’s intelligence manifests not in intellectual speculation or artistic sensibility—qualities that Newland values and finds in Ellen—but in superior social intelligence and strategic thinking. May understands her society’s rules and how to manipulate them with perfect precision, skills that prove far more effective than Newland’s romantic rebellion or Ellen’s cosmopolitan sophistication in achieving desired outcomes. The pregnancy becomes the tool through which May exercises this intelligence, as she recognizes that biological reproduction represents the ultimate claim a wife has on her husband within their social system. May’s ability to weaponize her pregnancy—to deploy it at exactly the right moment and to exactly the right person—reveals her as perhaps the novel’s most successful character, one who achieves her objectives completely while maintaining her social position and reputation intact. This characterization complicates simplistic readings of May as merely a victim or tool of patriarchal society, instead presenting her as an active agent who skillfully navigates and exploits the limited power available to women in her world (Ammons, 1980).
Why Does May Tell Ellen About Her Pregnancy Before Informing Newland?
May Welland’s decision to inform Ellen Olenska of her pregnancy before revealing it to her own husband represents the novel’s most crucial strategic action and demands careful analysis of her motivations and understanding. This choice demonstrates that May has achieved a sophisticated comprehension of the emotional dynamics threatening her marriage and has calculated precisely how to neutralize that threat. By telling Ellen first, May accomplishes several critical objectives that would be impossible if she followed the conventional sequence of informing her husband before others. Most importantly, she provides Ellen with information that will compel Ellen’s departure from New York before Newland learns of the pregnancy and can attempt to interfere with that departure. May understands that Ellen possesses a strong moral sense and would never knowingly contribute to separating a child from its father; by revealing the pregnancy to Ellen, May activates Ellen’s conscience as an ally in her own cause. The fact that May presents the pregnancy as still uncertain (“I wasn’t sure yet”) adds a layer of calculated manipulation, as it allows May to later claim innocence while ensuring that Ellen acts on the information immediately (Goodman, 1990).
This strategic revelation also demonstrates May’s sophisticated understanding of the social mechanisms available to women in her position. Unable to directly confront her husband about his emotional infidelity or to openly compete with Ellen for Newland’s affections, May instead employs indirect methods that allow her to achieve her objectives while maintaining her appearance as the innocent, trusting wife. By working through Ellen rather than through Newland, May ensures that Ellen will remove herself from the situation voluntarily, eliminating any possibility that Newland might frame Ellen’s departure as persecution or drive Ellen and Newland closer together through shared victimhood. Furthermore, May’s action reveals her awareness that the farewell dinner she orchestrates for Ellen serves as a public ritual that will make Ellen’s exile permanent—the pregnancy revelation ensures that Ellen will not resist or postpone this exile despite her obvious attachment to Newland. The brilliance of May’s strategy lies in how it mobilizes both Ellen’s virtue and society’s power against the possibility of the affair, while simultaneously positioning May herself as above suspicion of such manipulation. This scene transforms May from a passive character to whom things happen into an active agent who shapes events according to her will, demonstrating that feminine power in this society operates most effectively through indirection and apparent innocence (Fryer, 1986).
What Does May’s Pregnancy Symbolize About Social Reproduction and Continuity?
May Welland’s pregnancy functions symbolically as the literal embodiment of social reproduction—the process through which societies perpetuate themselves across generations by transmitting values, structures, and class positions to new members. Wharton employs the pregnancy as a physical manifestation of Old New York society’s determination to reproduce itself despite the challenges posed by individual desires and changing historical circumstances. May’s fertility contrasts sharply with Ellen’s childless state, a contrast that carries significant symbolic weight in a novel concerned with the survival and transformation of social orders. Ellen, despite her marriage and her sophisticated European experience, has produced no children, rendering her socially sterile in a world that measures female worth partly through reproductive success. May, conversely, fulfills the primary expectation her society places on married women by producing the heir who will continue the Archer family line and, by extension, the social class that line represents. The pregnancy thus symbolizes May’s complete success within her society’s terms, while Ellen’s childlessness underscores her status as an outsider who cannot or will not participate in the fundamental process of social continuity (Wershoven, 1982).
The symbolic significance of May’s pregnancy extends to questions about social change and adaptation. The novel’s epilogue, set decades after the main action, reveals that May and Newland’s children—products of this pregnancy and subsequent ones—represent a new generation that maintains connection to Old New York society while also adapting to changing times. Dallas Archer, their son, demonstrates greater comfort with European culture and less rigid adherence to his parents’ social codes, suggesting that social reproduction involves transformation as well as continuity. Wharton implies that May’s pregnancy, while ensuring the immediate triumph of convention over passion, also produces the generation that will eventually liberalize the very society it was meant to preserve. This ironic outcome suggests Wharton’s sophisticated understanding of how social change occurs—not through revolutionary rejection of the past but through gradual evolution as new generations selectively retain and modify inherited traditions. May’s pregnancy thus symbolizes both the power of social structures to reproduce themselves and the inevitability of change that accompanies each new generation’s interpretation of inherited values (Tuttleton, 1977).
How Does the Pregnancy Serve as a Permanent Barrier Between Newland and Ellen?
May Welland’s pregnancy functions as an insurmountable moral and practical barrier that definitively separates Newland Archer and Ellen Olenska, transforming their relationship from a possibility requiring only courage to actualize into an impossibility that no amount of determination could overcome. The pregnancy operates as a barrier on multiple levels simultaneously. Most obviously, it creates a moral obligation that even Newland, with his capacity for rationalization and self-deception, cannot override. While Newland might have convinced himself that leaving a wife he believed to be conventional and limited was justifiable, abandoning a pregnant woman—and the unborn child—violates fundamental moral precepts that transcend specific social conventions. The pregnancy appeals to instincts and obligations more basic than the social codes Newland has contemplated defying, connecting to primordial ideas about male responsibility and protection that exist across cultures and time periods. Wharton demonstrates how biology can reinforce social conventions, creating barriers to individual choice that feel natural and inevitable rather than merely customary (Pizer, 1988).
Beyond its immediate moral force, May’s pregnancy serves as a barrier because it reveals to Newland the future that would result from abandoning his wife—a future in which his child grows up without a father, May faces social disgrace and economic vulnerability, and Newland himself becomes the kind of man who abandons his responsibilities for personal gratification. This vision of consequences forces Newland to confront aspects of himself he prefers not to acknowledge. The pregnancy also functions as a temporal barrier, making clear that Newland cannot simply defer his decision or wait for circumstances to change; the child’s impending arrival creates an urgent deadline that eliminates the possibility of further procrastination. Additionally, May’s strategic revelation of her pregnancy to Ellen ensures that Ellen herself reinforces this barrier by choosing exile rather than risk contributing to such a betrayal. The pregnancy thus becomes multiply overdetermined as an obstacle—it operates through Newland’s conscience, through Ellen’s ethical response, through social judgment, and through the practical realities of biological fact. Wharton’s use of pregnancy as the ultimate barrier demonstrates her understanding that the most effective social controls are those that align cultural convention with biological reality and moral intuition, creating obligations that feel necessary rather than arbitrary (Goodwyn, 1990).
What Role Does Timing Play in May’s Revelation of Her Pregnancy?
The timing of May Welland’s pregnancy revelation represents a masterpiece of strategic calculation that demonstrates both May’s sophisticated understanding of human psychology and Wharton’s skill in dramatic construction. May chooses to reveal her pregnancy at the farewell dinner she has orchestrated for Ellen Olenska—a moment when the assembled forces of Old New York society are gathered in a display of collective power, when Ellen’s departure has already been publicly announced and arrangements finalized, and when any resistance to these plans would require an embarrassing public confrontation. This timing ensures that the pregnancy operates not as a point of negotiation or discussion but as a fait accompli that ratifies decisions already made and renders alternative outcomes impossible. By waiting until Ellen’s exile has been socially ordained and logistically arranged, May prevents Newland from attempting to interfere with Ellen’s departure or from using the pregnancy as a reason to delay Ellen’s leaving until they can discuss the situation together (Benstock, 1994).
The timing of May’s disclosure also maximizes its emotional and psychological impact on both Newland and Ellen. May reveals the pregnancy to Newland at the conclusion of the farewell dinner, at a moment when he is already emotionally overwhelmed by the realization that society has collectively orchestrated Ellen’s expulsion. The pregnancy announcement comes as a culminating blow that transforms Newland’s understanding of everything that has preceded it—he suddenly recognizes that May has known about his feelings for Ellen all along and has been strategically maneuvering to protect her marriage. This recognition arrives too late for Newland to take any countervailing action; Ellen is departing the next day, and May’s pregnancy makes any thought of following her morally inconceivable. The timing thus denies Newland the possibility of agency or choice, confronting him instead with irreversible facts that foreclose alternative futures. For Ellen, who learned of the pregnancy two weeks earlier, the timing means she has already processed the information and made her decision to leave before Newland even knows the situation has changed. This temporal gap between Ellen’s knowledge and Newland’s creates an asymmetry that prevents any possibility of their making a joint decision about how to respond to the pregnancy, instead ensuring that Ellen’s departure proceeds as May has planned (Orlando, 1989).
How Does May’s Pregnancy Connect to the Novel’s Themes of Sacrifice and Duty?
May Welland’s pregnancy deepens and complicates “The Age of Innocence’s” exploration of sacrifice and duty by introducing questions about whose sacrifice the novel ultimately valorizes and what forms of duty take precedence when multiple obligations conflict. On one level, the pregnancy seems to vindicate May’s patient fulfillment of conventional wifely duties—her pregnancy represents the natural fruition of her acceptance of her social role and suggests that adherence to duty brings its own rewards in the form of biological and social reproduction. May’s pregnancy ensures her permanent position as Newland’s wife and the mother of his children, roles that grant her social standing and economic security while frustrating Ellen and Newland’s desire for a different kind of relationship. From this perspective, the pregnancy validates the novel’s conservative moral framework, suggesting that those who subordinate personal desire to social duty (May) ultimately prevail over those who seek to prioritize individual fulfillment (Newland and Ellen). The pregnancy thus appears to reward May’s sacrifice of romantic passion and authentic intimacy in favor of conventional marriage and social conformity (Killoran, 2007).
However, Wharton’s treatment of May’s pregnancy also complicates simplistic readings of the novel’s moral framework by raising questions about the costs and meanings of various characters’ sacrifices. While May’s pregnancy secures her marriage, the epilogue reveals that she never achieved genuine emotional intimacy with Newland, dying without ever openly acknowledging the unspoken drama that shaped their marriage. May’s “sacrifice” of authentic communication and emotional honesty in favor of strategic manipulation and maintained appearances thus comes at the cost of real marital intimacy, even as it preserves the marriage’s external form. Conversely, Ellen’s sacrifice—her decision to accept exile rather than contribute to breaking up May’s marriage after learning of the pregnancy—represents a different form of duty, one based on personal moral conviction rather than social convention. Ellen sacrifices her own happiness not to conform to society’s rules but to honor her own ethical commitments and to preserve Newland from the self-betrayal that abandoning a pregnant wife would represent. The pregnancy thus becomes the focal point around which different conceptions of sacrifice and duty revolve, allowing Wharton to explore how moral choices look different depending on one’s perspective and values (Fedorko, 1995).
What Does May’s Pregnancy Reveal About Power Dynamics in Marriage?
May Welland’s pregnancy and her strategic deployment of it expose the complex and often hidden power dynamics operating within marriage in Gilded Age society, revealing forms of female agency that exist even within patriarchal structures. Throughout most of “The Age of Innocence,” power appears to rest with male characters like Newland Archer, who possess greater social freedom, economic independence, and cultural authority. However, May’s handling of her pregnancy demonstrates that women in her society possessed significant forms of power that operated through different channels than male authority. May’s pregnancy represents biological power—the capacity to reproduce the family line and to create moral obligations that supersede other considerations. In a society that placed enormous value on legitimate heirs and family continuity, pregnancy granted women leverage over their husbands that could be decisive in marital conflicts. May’s strategic use of this power—her careful timing of revelations, her manipulation of information flows, her mobilization of Ellen’s conscience—demonstrates sophisticated understanding of how to deploy the limited resources available to women in her position (Wershoven, 1982).
The pregnancy also reveals how power in marriage often operates through indirection and performance rather than open assertion. May never directly confronts Newland about his feelings for Ellen; she never issues ultimatums or demands that he explain himself. Instead, she manages the situation through strategic action that appears consistent with her role as innocent wife while actually serving calculated purposes. Her power lies precisely in maintaining this appearance of innocence while achieving her objectives through means that leave no opening for accusation or confrontation. This form of power—operating through apparent weakness, working within rather than against social conventions, achieving objectives without open conflict—represents an adaptation to limited options rather than genuine equality. Wharton’s portrayal of May’s pregnancy-related machinations thus offers a nuanced analysis of power in marriage, demonstrating both that women possessed more agency than stereotypes of Victorian femininity suggest and that this agency was exercised within severe constraints that made indirection and manipulation necessary strategies for self-protection. The pregnancy becomes the site where these complex power dynamics become visible, revealing marriage as a field of strategic maneuvering rather than simple male domination or genuine partnership (Wagner-Martin, 1995).
How Does the Pregnancy Function in the Novel’s Critique of Old New York Society?
May Welland’s pregnancy serves as a crucial element in Edith Wharton’s broader critique of Old New York society, functioning as both a symbol of that society’s mechanisms for perpetuating itself and evidence of the human costs involved in such perpetuation. Through May’s strategic use of her pregnancy, Wharton demonstrates how social reproduction operates not merely through explicit rules and formal institutions but through informal networks of communication, strategic manipulation, and collective action that remain largely invisible to those they control. The farewell dinner for Ellen, orchestrated around May’s undisclosed pregnancy, exemplifies how Old New York society exercises power—not through direct coercion or public censure but through gestures of apparent affection and support that nonetheless accomplish expulsion and control. May’s pregnancy provides the biological justification that makes this social mechanism appear natural and inevitable rather than constructed and arbitrary. Wharton’s critique extends to examining how such social systems co-opt individual actors into serving collective purposes, as Ellen’s own ethical principles are mobilized to facilitate her exile once she learns of May’s pregnancy (Lindberg, 1971).
The pregnancy also functions in Wharton’s critique by exposing the costs that Old New York society’s emphasis on form over substance imposes on all its members, including apparent winners like May. While May successfully uses her pregnancy to secure her marriage and eliminate her rival, the novel’s epilogue reveals that this victory came at the cost of genuine marital intimacy. May lives her entire married life knowing that her husband loves another woman but never openly discussing this knowledge, maintaining instead the fiction of conventional happiness until her death. The pregnancy thus becomes emblematic of a society that prioritizes social stability and external propriety over authentic human connection, producing marriages that endure in form while remaining emotionally hollow in substance. Wharton suggests that everyone loses in such a system—Newland is trapped in an unfulfilling marriage, Ellen is exiled, and even May, despite achieving her objectives, never experiences the honest, intimate relationship that might have been possible in a less rigid society. The pregnancy, as the device that ensures this outcome, thus functions ironically in Wharton’s critique: it represents both the success of Old New York society in reproducing itself and the human diminishment that such reproduction requires (Nevius, 1953).
Why Is May’s Pregnancy More Effective Than Direct Confrontation?
May Welland’s decision to respond to her husband’s emotional infidelity through strategic deployment of her pregnancy rather than direct confrontation reflects both her understanding of the social tools available to women in her position and Wharton’s insight into how power operates most effectively in rigidly conventional societies. Direct confrontation would have required May to openly acknowledge Newland’s feelings for Ellen and her own awareness of those feelings, destroying the elaborate fiction of innocence and ignorance that protects her social position. In Old New York society, a wife’s explicit acknowledgment of her husband’s romantic interest in another woman would constitute a social embarrassment for all parties and might paradoxically weaken her position by forcing the covert situation into the open where it would demand resolution. By instead working indirectly through her pregnancy, May addresses the threat to her marriage without ever having to explicitly name it, allowing everyone to maintain the surface appearance of conventional propriety while she neutralizes the danger. This approach proves more effective precisely because it operates within rather than against social conventions, mobilizing collective expectations about pregnancy, motherhood, and family responsibility to accomplish May’s personal objectives (Goodman, 1990).
Furthermore, May’s indirect approach through pregnancy proves more effective because it frames the situation in moral terms that even Newland cannot dispute or resist. A direct confrontation might have devolved into arguments about feeling versus duty, authentic passion versus conventional marriage, individual fulfillment versus social obligation—debates in which Newland could have marshaled numerous arguments and rationalizations for choosing Ellen. The pregnancy, however, forecloses such debate by introducing an innocent third party—the unborn child—whose interests clearly supersede the romantic desires of adults. May’s strategy thus shifts the moral ground from complex questions about marriage and happiness, where reasonable people might disagree, to simple questions about responsibility to children, where social consensus is overwhelming. By revealing her pregnancy to Ellen first, May ensures that Ellen herself will frame the situation in these terms and make the “right” decision to leave, sparing May the necessity of demanding or requesting anything directly. This indirect effectiveness demonstrates May’s sophisticated social intelligence and Wharton’s understanding of how power operates most successfully when it appears not as personal manipulation but as natural consequence of undeniable facts (Vita-Finzi, 2002).
Conclusion: What Does May’s Pregnancy Ultimately Reveal About Character and Society?
May Welland’s pregnancy in “The Age of Innocence” ultimately functions as Edith Wharton’s most powerful and multivalent plot device, operating simultaneously on literal, symbolic, and thematic levels to advance the narrative, reveal character, and explore the novel’s central concerns about individual desire and social control. On the most basic level, the pregnancy provides the decisive biological fact that makes Newland Archer’s abandonment of his wife morally impossible, thus resolving the novel’s central romantic conflict in favor of social convention over personal passion. However, the pregnancy’s function extends far beyond this plot-level resolution to expose the hidden complexity of May’s character, revealing her as a sophisticated strategist rather than the simple innocent she appears. May’s calculated manipulation of information about her pregnancy—particularly her decision to inform Ellen before Newland—demonstrates intelligence and agency that force readers to completely reassess her character and to recognize that female power in Gilded Age society, while certainly limited, was neither absent nor insignificant (McDowell, 1976).
The pregnancy also serves crucial symbolic functions, representing the literal reproduction of Old New York society and the biological reinforcement of social conventions that individual desire cannot overcome. Through May’s pregnancy, Wharton demonstrates how societies perpetuate themselves across generations, ensuring continuity even as they frustrate individual members’ aspirations for alternative forms of life. Yet the novel’s epilogue complicates this symbolic reading by suggesting that reproduction involves transformation as well as continuity—May’s children represent a new generation that will gradually liberalize the society their mother worked to preserve. Ultimately, May Welland’s pregnancy functions as the narrative mechanism through which Wharton explores her most profound themes: the tension between individual authenticity and social belonging, the various forms that power and agency can take within constrained circumstances, and the complex mixture of loss and preservation that characterizes all human societies. The pregnancy ensures that no character achieves simple victory or complete defeat, instead producing the ambiguous, bittersweet resolution characteristic of Wharton’s mature social realism—a resolution in which everyone sacrifices something essential while society itself continues with modifications into the next generation (Bell, 1965).
References
Ammons, E. (1980). Edith Wharton’s argument with America. University of Georgia Press.
Bell, M. (1965). Edith Wharton and Henry James: The story of their friendship. George Braziller.
Benstock, S. (1994). No gifts from chance: A biography of Edith Wharton. Scribner.
Fedorko, K. A. (1995). Gender and the Gothic in the fiction of Edith Wharton. University of Alabama Press.
Fryer, J. (1986). Felicitous space: The imaginative structures of Edith Wharton and Willa Cather. University of North Carolina Press.
Goodman, S. (1990). Edith Wharton’s women: Friends and rivals. University Press of New England.
Goodwyn, J. (1990). Edith Wharton: Traveller in the land of letters. St. Martin’s Press.
Killoran, H. (2007). The critical reception of Edith Wharton. Camden House.
Lewis, R. W. B. (1975). Edith Wharton: A biography. Harper & Row.
Lindberg, G. H. (1971). Edith Wharton and the novel of manners. University Press of Virginia.
McDowell, M. B. (1976). Edith Wharton. Twayne Publishers.
Nevius, B. (1953). Edith Wharton: A study of her fiction. University of California Press.
Orlando, E. (1989). Edith Wharton: Convention and morality in the work of a novelist. University of Oklahoma Press.
Pizer, D. (1988). The naturalism of Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence. Twentieth Century Literature, 34(2), 241-248.
Singley, C. J. (1995). Edith Wharton: Matters of mind and spirit. Cambridge University Press.
Tuttleton, J. W. (1977). The novel of manners in America. University of North Carolina Press.
Vita-Finzi, P. (2002). Edith Wharton and the art of fiction. Continuum.
Wagner-Martin, L. (1995). The Age of Innocence: A novel of ironic nostalgia. Twayne Publishers.
Wershoven, C. (1982). The female intruder in the novels of Edith Wharton. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
Wharton, E. (1920). The Age of Innocence. D. Appleton and Company.