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Sous la grêle osée
16 octobre 2013

The Age of Innocence (Edith Wharton)

The-Age-of-Innocence

L'action se déroule au XIXe siècle, dans les années 70. New York n'est pas encore le centre du monde. Londres et Paris dictent la mode (mais il faut attendre 1 ou 2 ans pour porter ses tenues à New York), mais pas les mœurs, trop dissolues pour la haute bourgeoisie new-yorkaise.

"Ah, Jane Merry is one of US," said Mrs. Archer sighing, as if it were not such an enviable thing to be in an age when ladies were beginning to flaunt abroad their Paris dresses as soon as they were out of the Custom House, instead of letting them mellow under lock and key, in the manner of Mrs. Archer's contemporaries.

"Yes; she's one of the few. In my youth," Miss Jackson rejoined, "it was considered vulgar to dress in the newest fashions; and Amy Sillerton has always told me that in Boston the rule was to put away one's Paris dresses for two years. Old Mrs. Baxter Pennilow, who did everything handsomely, used to import twelve a year, two velvet, two satin, two silk, and the other six of poplin and the finest cashmere. It was a standing order, and as she was ill for two years before she died they found forty-eight Worth dresses that had never been taken out of tissue paper; and when the girls left off their mourning they were able to wear the first lot at the Symphony concerts without looking in advance of the fashion."

"Ah, well, Boston is more conservative than New York; but I always think it's a safe rule for a lady to lay aside her French dresses for one season," Mrs. Archer conceded.

Newland Archer, jeune avocat (titre honorifique en l'occurrence) issu d'une famille de la haute bourgeoisie new-yorkaise et à l'avenir tout tracé, annonce ses fiançailles avec l'adorable May Welland.

Newland Archer was a quiet and self-controlled young man. Conformity to the discipline of a small society had become almost his second nature. It was deeply distasteful to him to do anything melodramatic and conspicuous, anything Mr. van der Luyden would have deprecated and the club box condemned as bad form. But he had become suddenly unconscious of the club box, of Mr. van der Luyden, of all that had so long enclosed him in the warm shelter of habit.

Il commence toutefois à avoir des doutes lorsqu'il aperçoit la cousine de celle-ci, la scandaleuse comtesse Ellen Olenska, de retour à New York après avoir quitté son mari. (J'aime la définition de scandaleuse de cette époque.)

"New York society is a very small world compared with the one you've lived in. And it's ruled, in spite of appearances, by a few people with—well, rather old-fashioned ideas."

She said nothing, and he continued: "Our ideas about marriage and divorce are particularly old-fashioned. Our legislation favours divorce—our social customs don't."

"Never?"

"Well—not if the woman, however injured, however irreproachable, has appearances in the least degree against her, has exposed herself by any unconventional action to—to offensive insinuations—"

Elle a osé rentrer à New York malgré sa situation et refuse de retourner auprès de son mari, malgré les menaces, puis les "concessions" de celui-ci.

Besides, the Duke's his guest; and a stranger too. Strangers don't discriminate: how should they? Countess Olenska is a New Yorker, and should have respected the feelings of New York.

Newland se sent oppressé par les codes et les règles de New York (What can you expect of a girl who was allowed to wear black satin at her coming-out ball?), et aimerait avoir le courage de s'en défaire. Les préoccupations de ces "congénères" lui semblent parfois futiles.

In matters intellectual and artistic Newland Archer felt himself distinctly the superior of these chosen specimens of old New York gentility; he had probably read more, thought more, and even seen a good deal more of the world, than any other man of the number. Singly they betrayed their inferiority; but grouped together they represented "New York," and the habit of masculine solidarity made him accept their doctrine on all the issues called moral. He instinctively felt that in this respect it would be troublesome—and also rather bad form—to strike out for himself.

"Well—upon my soul!" exclaimed Lawrence Lefferts, turning his opera-glass abruptly away from the stage. Lawrence Lefferts was, on the whole, the foremost authority on "form" in New York. He had probably devoted more time than any one else to the study of this intricate and fascinating question; but study alone could not account for his complete and easy competence. One had only to look at him, from the slant of his bald forehead and the curve of his beautiful fair moustache to the long patent-leather feet at the other end of his lean and elegant person, to feel that the knowledge of "form" must be congenital in any one who knew how to wear such good clothes so carelessly and carry such height with so much lounging grace. As a young admirer had once said of him: "If anybody can tell a fellow just when to wear a black tie with evening clothes and when not to, it's Larry Lefferts." And on the question of pumps versus patent-leather "Oxfords" his authority had never been disputed.

C'est en particulier dans son mariage qu'il se sent prisonnier. Il aimerait avoir une femme qui soit son égale, mais épouse tout de même May qui est un modèle du genre. Il n'ose pas aller à l'encontre des conventions (upset the apple cart comme on dit en anglais).

He reviewed his friends' marriages—the supposedly happy ones—and saw none that answered, even remotely, to the passionate and tender comradeship which he pictured as his permanent relation with May Welland. He perceived that such a picture presupposed, on her part, the experience, the versatility, the freedom of judgment, which she had been carefully trained not to possess; and with a shiver of foreboding he saw his marriage becoming what most of the other marriages about him were: a dull association of material and social interests held together by ignorance on the one side and hypocrisy on the other.

And he felt himself oppressed by this creation of factitious purity, so cunningly manufactured by a conspiracy of mothers and aunts and grandmothers and long-dead ancestresses, because it was supposed to be what he 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. (...) He could not deplore (as Thackeray's heroes so often exasperated him by doing) that he had not a blank page to offer his bride in exchange for the unblemished one she was to give to him.

Lui, qui pensait être satisfait de cette vie, aspire à mieux et perd patience.

They went up to the library for coffee, and Archer lit a cigar and took down a volume of Michelet. He had taken to history in the evenings since May had shown a tendency to ask him to read aloud whenever she saw him with a volume of poetry: not that he disliked the sound of his own voice, but because he could always foresee her comments on what he read. In the days of their engagement she had simply (as he now perceived) echoed what he told her; but since he had ceased to provide her with opinions she had begun to hazard her own, with results destructive to his enjoyment of the works commented on.

Seeing that he had chosen history she fetched her workbasket, drew up an arm-chair to the green-shaded student lamp, and uncovered a cushion she was embroidering for his sofa. She was not a clever needle-woman; her large capable hands were made for riding, rowing and open-air activities; but since other wives embroidered cushions for their husbands she did not wish to omit this last link in her devotion.

She was so placed that Archer, by merely raising his eyes, could see her bent above her work-frame, her ruffled elbow-sleeves slipping back from her firm round arms, the betrothal sapphire shining on her left hand above her broad gold wedding-ring, and the right hand slowly and laboriously stabbing the canvas. As she sat thus, the lamplight full on her clear brow, he said to himself with a secret dismay that he would always know the thoughts behind it, that never, in all the years to come, would she surprise him by an unexpected mood, by a new idea, a weakness, a cruelty or an emotion. She had spent her poetry and romance on their short courting: the function was exhausted because the need was past. Now she was simply ripening into a copy of her mother, and mysteriously, by the very process, trying to turn him into a Mr. Welland. He laid down his book and stood up impatiently; and at once she raised her head.

Newland envisage de quitter sa femme pour partir vivre avec Ellen en Europe. Mais la "famille" se rallie autour de May qui se révèle être moins innocente qu'il ne le pensait. Newland se résigne.

It was the old New York way of taking life "without effusion of blood": the way of people who dreaded scandal more than disease, who placed decency above courage, and who considered that nothing was more ill-bred than "scenes," except the behaviour of those who gave rise to them.

Au cours des années suivantes, au fur et à mesure que ses enfants atteignent l'âge adulte, il est témoin des changements que connaît New York. Les jeunes gens osent choisir leur propre voie.

The young men nowadays were emancipating themselves from the law and business and taking up all sorts of new things. If they were not absorbed in state politics or municipal reform, the chances were that they were going in for Central American archaeology, for architecture or landscape-engineering; taking a keen and learned interest in the prerevolutionary buildings of their own country, studying and adapting Georgian types, and protesting at the meaningless use of the word "Colonial." Nobody nowadays had "Colonial" houses except the millionaire grocers of the suburbs.

Il regrette un peu son conformisme et son manque d'audace qui l'ont poussé à accepter son sort.

a mere grey speck of a man compared with the ruthless magnificent fellow he had dreamed of being....

Edith Wharton nous offre quelques remarques sur les stéréotypes et préjugés entre Américains et Européens.

"I don't want them to think that we dress like savages," she replied, with a scorn that Pocahontas might have resented; and he was struck again by the religious reverence of even the most unworldly American women for the social advantages of dress.

"It's their armour," he thought, "their defence against the unknown, and their defiance of it." And he understood for the first time the earnestness with which May, who was incapable of tying a ribbon in her hair to charm him, had gone through the solemn rite of selecting and ordering her extensive wardrobe.

"That is just like the extraordinary things that foreigners invent about us. They think we dine at two o'clock and countenance divorce! That is why it seems to me so foolish to entertain them when they come to New York. They accept our hospitality, and then they go home and repeat the same stupid stories."

L'Amérique se libère finalement de son complexe vis-à-vis de l'Europe et forge sa propre identité. 

"To all sorts of new and crazy social schemes. But, do you know, they interest me more than the blind conformity to tradition—somebody else's tradition—that I see among our own friends. It seems stupid to have discovered America only to make it into a copy of another country."

Au début, je me demandais où Edith Wharton voulait en venir. Parce qu'elle a quand même la critique légère. Elle parle d'événements qui se sont passés 50 ans auparavant, mais elle prend des gants. Pour ce roman, elle a été la première femme à remporter le prix Pulitzer.

Difficile de se retrouver dans toutes ces familles de la haute bourgeoisie : il m'a parfois été impossible de "replacer" certains personnages dans l'arbre généalogique.

Mais j'ai en général beaucoup apprécié ce roman, même si je l'ai trouvé un peu trop tendre parfois.

challengeus1

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J
J'avais totalement oublié cette adaptation, mais j'ai revu les photos sur Internet lorsque je lisais le roman. Je vais de temps en temps sur ton blog pour voir s'il y a du nouveau.
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C
bonjour Jackie Brown :)<br /> <br /> Je suis déjà venue sur ton blog, curieuse de voir qui se cachait derrière le pseudo qui vient depuis si longtemps sur le mien. J'ai pas lu le bouquin d'Edith Wharton mais je me souviens de l'adaptation cinématographique faite par Scorsese au début des années 90.
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A
Un peu tendre ? Il a été écrit il y a longtemps ?
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L
Merci pour ce billet! je viens de finir Chez les heureux du monde et tu viens de me donner envie avec celui-là. et impressionnant de l'avoir lu en anglais!
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