Who is the narrator, can she or he read minds, and, more importantly, can we trust her or him?
Third Person (Limited Omniscient), Third Person
In The Age of Innocence, the narrative voice switches between a totally objective point of view and the limited perspective of an individual character, primarily Newland Archer. The totally objective point of view helps the reader get a sense of the historical period. Remember that even for people reading the first edition of the novel, the 1870s New York society Wharton describes is already fifty-year-old ancient history.
The narrator's peek into Newland Archer's perspective gives us a sense of his emotional mayhem (seriously, this guy needs a vacation and a therapist) often letting the reader check out thoughts and feelings he's trying to keep locked up. Take a look at this sentence:
Newland Archer stopped and turned away angrily to light his cigar. "Women ought to be free—as free as we are," he declared, making a discovery of which he was too irritated to measure the terrific consequences. (5.53-4)
Archer's statement doesn't sound all that shocking to Wharton's readers, who have experienced the suffragette movement. "Terrific consequences" is total exaggeration: what could possibly be the "terrific consequences" of letting women be as free as men? Here, the narrator is poking fun at Archer's failure to understand that what he said was spot-on.