We've got your back. With the Tough-O-Meter, you'll know whether to bring extra layers or Swiss army knives as you summit the literary mountain. (10 = Toughest)
Basecamp (4)
The Age of Innocenceis an easy story to follow, written in the kind of urbane, intelligent, humorous prose you would expect for the voice-over of a Jane Austen movie.
But, like the voice-over to a Jane Austen movie, the prose can be a tad stuffy, and the content can be bewilderingly outdated. How much do you know about "private broughams… the spacious family landau, or the humbler but more convenient "brown coupe" (1.3)? Not a ton? Nope, us neither.
But, because of the anthropological writing style of The Age of Innocence, it's easy enough to piece together what broughams, landaus, and coupes are (vehicles) and more importantly what they mean to society. Good old Edith Wharton isn't miserly when it comes to adjectives, so you can figure that a brougham is a fancier vehicle than a landau and a coupe is the least fancy of all.
Remember that The Age of Innocence wasn't written for an audience that has an intimate working knowledge of landaus and broughams. In 1920 everyone was racing around in those newfangled horseless carriages. If you've ever watched a movie set fifty years ago and had to figure out what Telex machines were purely on context, you have all the ammunition you need to tackle The Age of Innocence.
Also, remember that part of the point of The Age of Innocence is to not understand all the references. In Newland Archer's society, "they all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs" (6.4). So if you find yourself staring blankly at the pages trying to figure out why anyone would know or care what the difference between a landau and a brougham is… you're not alone. Most of the characters in The Age of Innocence are similarly in the dark, and just playing along.