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Quiz about Who Knows Whartons The Age of Innocence

Who Knows? Wharton's "The Age of Innocence" Quiz

Edith Wharton's prize-winning novel brings alive 'old New York' in the contexts of international customs. While social settings are key, Wharton's characters rule. How many of them can you identify by how they know things?

A multiple-choice quiz by Windswept. Estimated time: 4 mins.

Author
Windswept

Time
4 mins

Type
Multiple Choice

Quiz #
293,667

Updated
Dec 03 21

# Qns
10

Difficulty
Average

Avg Score
7 / 10

Plays
318

Question 1 of 10

1. Who is a male character who finds himself with two women in his life? He also early on shows himself as being a bit patronizing. His emotional caution ultimately costs him the woman he most loves.

Hint

Newland Archer

Mr.. Welland

M. Riviere

Count Olenska

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Question 2 of 10

2. Who is the woman who told Newland Archer that she earlier had revealed that she (his wife) was pregnant?
In the way this wife told it, it revealed to her husband that she was aware of his secret, passionate love with Ellen. Her telling effectively ended the relationship between Newland and Ellen. Ironically, the passage below reveals that she was not even sure she was pregnant. Who is this secretly powerful character?

"Her color turned deeper, but she held his gaze. 'No, I wasn't sure then--but I told her I was. And you see I was right!' she exclaimed, her cool blue eyes wet with victory." Hint

May

Mrs. Lovell Mingott

Ellen

Medora

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Question 3 of 10

3. Who says, quite shocked, "But, I say, Dad: do you mean you won't come up at all?"
This conversation takes place in Paris near the entrance of a building where Ellen lives. Hint

Newland Archer

Dallas Archer

Mr Beaufort

Paul Bourget

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Question 4 of 10

4. Which character voices a troubled sense of the world: "One can't be alone for a minute in that great seminary of a house, with all the doors wide open, and always a servant bringing tea, or a log for the fire, or the newspaper." ? Hint

Janie

Nastasia

May

Ellen Olenska

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Question 5 of 10

5. Who is the matriarch of New York society who is called a "monstrous obesity"? Hint

Madame Nilsson

Mrs. Struthers

Mrs. Manson Mingott

Mrs. Welland

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Question 6 of 10

6. Who is the woman who belongs to a social class far lower and much ruder than Ellen Olenska? Hint

Miss Blenker

Mrs. Struthers

Medora

Mrs. van der Layden

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Question 7 of 10

7. Who is the French intermediary who comes to the United States to try to cut a deal with Ellen Olenska? Hint

Dr. Bencomb

M. Riviere

Lawrence Leffert

Mrs. Lovell Mingott

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Question 8 of 10

8. Who is the character who laments that somehow life had gone beyond him?
This character will conclude that life was more real in his mind than in the world, deciding, "It's more real to me here than if I went up." Hint

Dallas Archer

Dr. Carver

Julius Beaufort

Newland Archer

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Question 9 of 10

9. Who finds that the manners and ways of old New York are a mystery? This is a character who had known both the world of New York and a marriage in France.

"Is New York such a labyrinth? I thought it so straight up and down--like Fifth Avenue. And with all the cross streets numbered! If you knew how I like it for just that--the straight-up-and downness, and the big honest labels on everything." Hint

Mr. Letterblair

Ellen Olenska

Professor Sillerton

Mrs. van der Luyden

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Question 10 of 10

10. Who is the character who reflects about his marriage that "all his carefully built-up world would tumble about him like a house of cards"? Hint

Newland Archer

Duke of Austrey

Lovell Mingott

Mr Jackson

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Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

Answer: Newland Archer

Newland thinks, "He meant her (thanks to his enlightening companionship) to develop a social tact and readiness of wit enabling her to hold her own with the most popular married women of the 'younger set,' in which it was the recognised custom to attract masculine homage while playfully discouraging it. If he had probed to the bottom of his vanity (as he sometimes nearly did) he would have found there the wish that his wife should be as worldly-wise and eager to please as the married lady...."

Notice all the parentheses surrounding that information about how he really is.

2. Who is the woman who told Newland Archer that she earlier had revealed that she (his wife) was pregnant? In the way this wife told it, it revealed to her husband that she was aware of his secret, passionate love with Ellen. Her telling effectively ended the relationship between Newland and Ellen. Ironically, the passage below reveals that she was not even sure she was pregnant. Who is this secretly powerful character? "Her color turned deeper, but she held his gaze. 'No, I wasn't sure then--but I told her I was. And you see I was right!' she exclaimed, her cool blue eyes wet with victory."

Answer: May

The language reveals that May was aware of her own power. "She went on, in tones so clear and evenly-pitched that each separate syllable tapped like a little hammer on his brain." This scene is full of secret knowledge, innuendo, and brutal suffering.

3. Who says, quite shocked, "But, I say, Dad: do you mean you won't come up at all?" This conversation takes place in Paris near the entrance of a building where Ellen lives.

Answer: Dallas Archer

Conversations between father and son in the novel are generally stilted, as the following dialogue shows,
"'I say. Father, what was she like?' Archer felt his colour rise under his son's unabashed gaze. 'Come, own up: you and she were great pals, weren't you? wasn't she most awfully lovely?' 'Lovely, I don't know. She was different.'"

Answer: Ellen Olenska

Newland always saw Ellen as somehow "foreign," "different."

5. Who is the matriarch of New York society who is called a "monstrous obesity"?

Answer: Mrs. Manson Mingott

Mrs. Mingott becomes a caricature in the novel. Archer describes a visit to her as follows: "an amusing episode to the young man."
Mrs. Mingott's powers were insufficient to protect Ellen, however, in this increasingly materialist world--as this statement shows, "Even her devoted champion, old Mrs Manson Mingott, had been unable to defend her refusal to return to her husband."

6. Who is the woman who belongs to a social class far lower and much ruder than Ellen Olenska?

Answer: Miss Blenker

The Blenker family is described as being "volatile," one daughter described as "blonde and blowsy, in bedraggled muslin."

7. Who is the French intermediary who comes to the United States to try to cut a deal with Ellen Olenska?

Answer: M. Riviere

M. Riviere says rather passionately that he does not want the Countess to go back to her husband.

8. Who is the character who laments that somehow life had gone beyond him? This character will conclude that life was more real in his mind than in the world, deciding, "It's more real to me here than if I went up."

Answer: Newland Archer

"Something he knew he had missed, the flower of life. But he thought of it now as a thing so unattainable and improbable that to have repined would have been like despairing because one had not drawn the first prize in the lottery."

Newland, like some other heroes of this time period, feels himself encircled, unable to make a difference. He senses that he is "like a prisoner in the centre of an armed camp."

Before the end, Newland even senses his own failure, finding himself, "the dwindling figure of a man to whom nothing was ever to happen."

9. Who finds that the manners and ways of old New York are a mystery? This is a character who had known both the world of New York and a marriage in France. "Is New York such a labyrinth? I thought it so straight up and down--like Fifth Avenue. And with all the cross streets numbered! If you knew how I like it for just that--the straight-up-and downness, and the big honest labels on everything."

Answer: Ellen Olenska

At one frustrated moment in the novel, Ellen asks, "Is there nowhere in an American house where one may be by oneself?"

10. Who is the character who reflects about his marriage that "all his carefully built-up world would tumble about him like a house of cards"?

Answer: Newland Archer

Archer thinks his wife "childishly amused at the vain efforts of the eight bridesmaids to discover where their mysterious retreat was situated." This newly-wed refers to his wife as "the simple girl of yesterday," whose eyes "revealed only the most tranquil unawareness."

Source: Author Windswept

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