Though I prefer Ellen (everyone does, really), I do appreciate how well written May is, mostly because of the ambiguity: is she really so sweet, dim, and guileless? Or is there a truly calculating, crafty mind in that pretty head of hers?
It's hard to say if May is really a deliberate villain or not. Still, she reminds me quite a bit of Lucy Steele from "Sense and Sensibility". Lucy in the story is not well educated and you'd probably have to bribe her to read a book. Yet she has one thing that no amount of education can teach: cunning. Lucy knows how to sense people's vulnerabilities, read between the lines in any situation, and can use these skills to manipulate her way into getting what she wants. She can get any opponent out of her way without raising a finger; all she has to do is smile, flatter, rinse and repeat. It's a maddening combination of sick and admirable.
WARNING! SPOILERS!
May is the same way. She may not know the difference between a poem by Keats and her toenail, but she can read people better than even Newland or Ellen can. She knows there's an attraction, so she takes matters into her own hands. May tells Ellen what is at the time a bold-faced lie (that May is pregnant)... but then it becomes a truth, so there's nothing Newland can do about it, and May triumphs in how it's serendipitously worked in her favor. If May had confessed this and had not been pregnant at all, Newland could have divorced her, no problem. But May WAS pregnant, and now Newland is more trapped than ever. It's utterly infuriating, but you can't help but be a little impressed by May's cunning.
May might be conventional and boring, but stupid and unimaginative she most certainly isn't.
"Will you stop feeling sorry for yourself?! It's bad for your complexion!"-"Sixteen Candles"
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artihcus022
16 years ago
It's utterly infuriating, but you can't help but be a little impressed by May's cunning.
That's Martin Scorsese's opinion strangely enough. He says that he's impressed at how May transforms into a powerful woman even if by conventions and social dictates she has no power at all.
May might be conventional and boring, but stupid and unimaginative she most certainly isn't.
No one ever called her stupid or evil. Just scary in her total absorption into that superficiality and using that identity to hold on to her power. That smile at the end of that tracking shot where Archer realizes he's been had is one of the scariest, most unforgettable images in film history. An amazing piece of acting by Winona Ryder there, you can see the mask and you can see through it at one and the same time.
The thing about May is that she's at one hand a product of that society where daughters of high middle-class aren't encouraged towards education but towards marriage, being a mother and raising children but on the other hand she also cunningly uses this to trap Newland who obviously sees and comprehends more than that. She spends her entire life trying to maintain that image of hypocrisy to the point that she tells her son on her deathbed about how Archer was a good husband who gave up the thing he wanted most when she asked, just so that she can appear good and "die thinking the world is a happy place". She's basically a bird in a gilded cage who makes sure to trap other people in that world too.
"Ça va by me, madame...Ça va by me!" - The Red Shoes
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Cello1949-2
16 years ago
As those who have seen my posts on another thread already know, I am one of the rare ones who does not prefer Ellen to May. When I first was introduced to this movie and book, I was not drawn to Ellen, and that feeling has not changed. She's a sad figure, coming from Europe where the social customs are so different, and settling in New York, only to find snobbery and people who have so much money, they have the luxury of time to think about things that don't really matter. I can feel sympathy for her, after reading about her "nomadic" parents who "lavished on her an expensive but incohensible education." But, I do not "prefer" her.
Edith Wharton, I believe, meant this as a satire, with more of a feminist perspective.
Women didn't have a lot of choices in May's world, not and maintain their social status and dignity. And she was just what Newland wanted, until he discovered Ellen. "What a life it was going to be, with this whiteness, radiance, goodness at one's side!" -- Newland's thoughts while dancing with May at the Beaufort's ball.
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springhill49635
16 years ago
She spends her entire life trying to maintain that image of hypocrisy to the point that she tells her son on her deathbed about how Archer was a good husband who gave up the thing he wanted most when she asked, just so that she can appear good and "die thinking the world is a happy place".
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Yes, and May’s hypocrisy extends beyond her grave trapping Newland forever. She tells their son that his father gave up Ellen when she asked him to but of course she never actually asked him she simply forced the issue with her pregnancy and ultimately lied to Dallas. When Dallas tells his father of May’s deathbed assertion “It seemed to take an iron band from his (Newland’s) heart to know that, after all, that someone had guessed and pitied. …And, that it should have been his wife moved him indescribably.” This is the final blow in severing Newland’s attachment to Ellen and he is left with only his “stifled memories” instead of “ a quiet harvest of friendship, of comradeship in the blessed hush of her nearness.” These are the subtle ironies that makes "Age Of Innocence" such a masterpiece.
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txpixies
16 years ago
The main thing that IMO put May in a wonderful light and Newland in a horrible one is MAY gave him every out BEFORE they were married. May is the one who wanted to give him more time to figure out if he truly wanted to be married to her the rest of his life or if there was another woman to be with her. Newland chose to hurry the marraige up knowing he was already falling for Ellen. Newland was the one who did everything to twist May's arm into speeding the marraige up. He made his choice and then regreted it later. I feel absolutely NO pity for Newland and feel anger and sad for May. So I agree 100% with the OP in this thread. May was in no way a villian IMO.
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dwp2
16 years ago
May is my favorite character of the main three. It's very difficult to sympathize with Newland. He values his own intelligence over his wife's, yet he's always the one who's behind on what's going on. Ellen is always one step ahead of his thinking (she understands the outside world), and so is May (who best understands the rules of New York society). The ladies in the story get it - they get who they are, when and where they live, and what's important in life. Archer lives in a fantasy where, even if he'd gotten what he wanted, he'd still have been unhappy. I agree that he chooses his life with May, even though May gives him an out and Ellen gives him the space to make the choice without undue influence from her. From my perspective, Newland creates his own drama with only minimal encouragement to do so.
I don't think this is just a matter of modern sensibilities either. Transplant the personalities to 2009, and Ellen still wouldn't steal her cousin's husband and the father of her cousin's baby. That would be Jerry Springer show material, even now.
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freakinfreak-120-276211
10 years ago
When Dallas tells his father of May's deathbed assertion It seemed to take an iron band from his (Newland's) heart to know that, after all, that someone had guessed and pitied. 'And, that it should have been his wife moved him indescribably.' This is the final blow in severing Newland's attachment to Ellen and he is left with only his 'stifled memories' instead of a quiet harvest of friendship, of comradeship in the blessed hush of her nearness.
I would say that May was reaching out from beyond the grave anticipating such an eventuality and so passed on a message via Dallas that would force Newland to the conclusion that she "pitied" him. IMO, May is as manipulatively crafty as they come.
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Rex16
9 years ago
Yes, and May’s hypocrisy extends beyond her grave trapping Newland forever. She tells their son that his father gave up Ellen when she asked him to but of course she never actually asked him she simply forced the issue with her pregnancy and ultimately lied to Dallas. When Dallas tells his father of May’s deathbed assertion “It seemed to take an iron band from his (Newland’s) heart to know that, after all, that someone had guessed and pitied. …And, that it should have been his wife moved him indescribably.” This is the final blow in severing Newland’s attachment to Ellen and he is left with only his “stifled memories” instead of “ a quiet harvest of friendship, of comradeship in the blessed hush of her nearness.”
I don't think it was hypocrisy on May's part. I think that the unspoken language of New York society was so much a second nature to May that in her mind, her indirect ways of begging Newland to stay with her - her insistence that he kiss her, pressing his hand to her cheek, and ultimately saying that he can't go without her because of their unborn baby - really amounted to asking Newland in plain language that he give Ellen up. Newland, whose forthrightness was part of what drew him to Ellen, didn't appreciate the extent to which May knew about his love for Ellen, and therefore didn't see the true meaning behind her words and gestures. That's why he says that May "never asked".
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freakinfreak-120-276211
8 years ago
I disagree with you when you say Newland "didn't appreciate the extent to which May knew about his love for Ellen, and therefore didn't see the true meaning behind her words and gestures. That's why he says that May 'never asked'."
I think he knew very well that she had trapped him from any possibility of escape, albeit inadvertently, after divulging both that she had learned of her pregnancy on the morning of the dinner, and that she had lied to May two weeks before about this very fact.
His correction of his son that May "never asked" was, therefore, not so much literal, but metaphorical, in that she had never given him a choice in the matter.
Like you said, she didn't need to ask. All she had to do was insist on a kiss, press his hand against her face, before finally pushing the nail in his coffin by insisting that he wouldn't be going anywhere now that she was expecting his child.
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Sugarminx
9 years ago
in the blessed hush of her nearness
Good God! What a line!
So put some spice in my sauce, honey in my tea, an ace up my sleeve and a slinkyplanb
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marigolden76
10 years ago
She's basically a bird in a gilded cage who makes sure to trap other people in that world too.
I love that line. Especially with the time period being the Gilded Age.
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