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Example research essay topic: Life In Death Van Der - 1,570 words

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New York Society, in Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence (1920), is paradoxically immortal and mortal. Like the Olympic pantheon of mythological Greek antiquity, New York Society cavorts and carouses, bickers and condemns while it feasts on ambrosia and canvas-backs. Newland Archer's sister is the gossipy Cassandra; his wife is the huntress Diana. And he, by all instances of the society around him, should be Diana's archer twin: Apollo.

He, too, should be "immortal, " that is, "like a god", "a deity", "never aging", "perfect", "alive although dead", "icy", "condemning" and "aloof. " Surprisingly for Newland and the expectations of his society, after meeting Ellen Olenska he recognizes through the contrast between her and New York that he, like her, is different from the others in New York's pantheon. He, too, is "mortal, " that is, "human", "aging", "imperfect", "feeling", "compassionate" and "warm." Once Catherine, the great matriarch of the pantheon, is able to fall from immortality and become a mortal, there is a possibility for Archer to leave the pantheon and live a mortal existence himself. But despite his realization of this possibility, Newland never leaves the pantheon to take on a mortal existence. His inability to freely act on his desires casts the "icy perfection" of immortality in a new light: immortality becomes a form of paralysis.

He, ironically, is trapped in his immortality like a soul in a statue. Through the dichotomous metaphor of immortality and mortality, Wharton is able to cast New York and her hero (or perhaps, more precisely, anti-hero) Newland Archer as paradoxically "god-like" yet paralyzed. When Wharton first describes the characters of New York society, they are always conceived of as immortal in some way. Beginning with Catherine Min gott, her "immense accretion of flesh" rewarded her by "presenting to her mirror an almost unwrinkled expanse of firm pink and white flesh. " So, Catherine, despite her very old age, manages to escape wrinkles. She is not alone in escape aging, a sign of her immortality. For example, Mrs.

van der Luyden's "portrait by Huntington" is still "a perfect likeness though twenty years had elapsed since its execution. " Wharton further emphasizes this point: "Indeed, Mrs. Van der Luyden... might have been the twin sister of the fair and still youngish woman drooping against a gilt armchair [in the painting]... " In fact, Mrs. van der Luyden's youth is so eerie that, "She always, indeed, struck Newland Archer as having been rather gruesomely preserved in the airless atmosphere of a perfectly irreproachable existence, as bodies caught in glaciers keep for years a rosy life-in-death. " Her husband, Mr.

van der Luyden, also has the same quality of being alive but dead. His home is like a place for the living dead: "As Archer rang the bell, the long tinker seemed to echo through a mausoleum; and the surprise of the butler who at length responded to the call was as great as though he had been summoned from his final sleep. " Indeed, van der Luyden's home always, "looms up grimly, even in the summer. " In his grim state of being alive but dead he is a sort of immortal. His immortality is made even clearer when, later, Mr. van der Luyden is described as Ellen's "protecting deity. " Everything about this ruling family of New York society seems to insist upon their life-in-death nature, or their immortality. Another member of the pantheon, May Welland, is also described as an immortal. When she first enters the Beaufort's ballroom, "in her dress of white and silver with a wreath of silver blossoms in her hair, she looked like a Diana just alighting from the chase. " When Newland visits May in St.

Augustine, May, "walks beside Archer with her long swinging gait; her face wears the vacant serenity of a young marble athlete. " In both instances, May is described as an immortal, something beyond human. She is described as being "superhuman" in Newland's mind for pledging to give him up if he truly loves someone else. Newland later tries to understand what makes her seem so immortal. He guesses that "perhaps the faculty of unawareness was what gave her the look of representing a type rather than a person; as if she might have been chosen to pose for a Civic Virtue or a Greek Goddess. " May is, in some sense, the most immortal of the immortals, since even on her honeymoon she is as icy and frozen as ever: "She looked handsomer and more Diana-like than ever The inner glow of happiness shined through like a light under ice. " Later, when May suggests that Ellen would be happier with her husband than in New York, Newland condemns her suggestion saying, "Watching the contortions of the damned is supposed to be a favorite sport of the angels; but I believe even they don't think people happier in hell. " Here he suggests that May is like an angel watching Ellen suffer. The archery tournament is the most vivid example of May's godliness. When she comes out of the tent to the tournament, "She has the same Diana-like aloofness as when she had entered the Beaufort ballroom on the night of her engagement. " Her "nymph-like ease" makes her stand out from the other participants.

Also, she, like Mrs. van der Luyden is able to defy the aging process: "In the interval not a thought seemed to have passed behind her eyes or a feeling through her heart; and though her husband knew that she had the capacity for both he marveled afresh at the way in which experience dropped away from her. " As another attribute of her godliness, May never shows pain; her only wounds are imaginary: "[Archer thinks] if May had spoken out her grievances (he suspected her of many) he might have laughed them away; but she was trained to conceal imaginary wounds under a Spartan smile. " May is always young; she is always innocent and without visible pain. As final testimony to her ability to defy age, she dies quickly and mysteriously of pneumonia after she weans her second child. Ellen's mortality stands out in stark contrast to May's immortality. Ellen ages, cries and feels. Early in the novel, "It was generally agreed that Ellen had lost her looks. " Even Archer agrees that her "early radiance is gone.

The red cheeks have paled; she is thin, worn, a little older-looking than her age, which must have been nearly thirty. " Her mortality is emphasized by the fact that she ages; and it is made even more apparent when compared to the cast of gods who never age. Further, Ellen is the only character (besides Newland) who cries. Her first sadness is revealed when she explains to Newland her frustration of "the real loneliness, " which is "living among all these kind people who ask one to pretend. " Her humanism and sympathy for others is also quite exceptional in her society of gods. Ned Winsett points out that Ellen bandaged and rescued his little boy: "My little boy fell down chasing his kitten, and gave himself a nasty cut. She rushed in bareheaded, carrying him in her arms, with his knee all beautifully bandaged, and was so sympathetic and beautiful that my wife was too dazzled to ask her name. " Ned, a mortal, is the first to recognize Ellen's beauty. No one among the pantheon recognizes her beauty except Newland, of course, and Catherine after her stroke.

Ellen's aging, sympathy and humanism cast her as a mortal against the backdrop of immortal New York. Catherine is the only one among the gods of New York that seems to "fall" from immortality. In the beginning of the novel, she seems as immortal as the rest with her vast flesh keeping her skin smooth and pink and wrinkle-free, despite her old age. As if conscious of her position in the pantheon, Catherine has a grand mural of the Olympiad painted on her summer home. She also speaks like a god, condemning Ellen to her fate: "'And now it's too late; her life is finished. 's he spoke with the cold-blooded complacency of the aged throwing earth into the grave of young hopes. " Her ability to judge, condemn and bury alive is seen in her treatment of Ellen and then later Mrs. Beaufort.

But soon after her abandonment of Mrs. Beaufort, Catherine suffers a stroke. Unlike Mr. Welland whose sickness is a sham induced to protect the reputation of his bad doctor, Catherine is the first character in the novel to really become ill and almost die; in this sense, she is the first of the "immortals" to fall from godliness.

Her body, which once never aged, now shows physical signs of deterioration. She "looked paler with darker shadows in the folds and recesses of her obesity. " Also, her temperament has changed from being the cold, callous goddess to a more understanding "mortal" woman. Wharton describes the change in Catherine: "The growing remoteness of old age, though it had not diminished her curiosity about her neighbors, had blunted her never very lively compassion for their troubles; but, for the first time, she became absorbed in her own symptoms and began to take a sentimental interest in certain members of her family to whom she had hitherto been contemptuously indifferent. " After her change, Catherine's fi...


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Research essay sample on Life In Death Van Der

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