Do You Want What You Want? Edith Wharton’s ‘The Age of Innocence’
Reviewing a Classic Story of Divided Affections
When Edith Wharton won the Pulitzer in 1921 for The Age of Innocence, she expressed dissatisfaction. “When I discovered that I was being rewarded . . . for uplifting American morals, I confess I did despair,” she wrote Sinclair Lewis.
The Pulitzer jury chose against Wharton’s novel. The jurors actually picked Lewis’s bestselling satire, Main Street, whic…
