The Age of Innocence: Foreshadowing 2 key examples

The opening line of The Age of Innocence sets the scene by describing how Faust was being performed at the Academy of Music in New York in the early 1870s. This is an allusion to the 1859 opera written by Charles Gounod based on the German legend about an unhappy man (Faust) who sacrifices his soul to the devil in exchange for knowledge and pleasure. The opera added some twists and turns, including Faust seducing an “innocent” young woman named Marguerite who eventually kills their love-child and dies after Faust abandons her.

For much of the novel, Archer views May as overly sheltered and naïve. It is not until the end of the novel that Archer realizes she has known about him and Ellen all along and is far more perceptive than he ever believed her to be. May’s perceptiveness at the end of the novel is actually foreshadowed about halfway through when she reveals that she is aware of the previous affair Archer had with the married Mrs. Rushworth:

“You mustn’t think that a girl knows as little as her parents imagine. One hears and one notices—one has one’s feelings and ideas. And of course, long before you told me that you cared for me, I’d known that there was some one else you were interested in; every one was talking about it two years ago at Newport. And once I saw you sitting together on the verandah at a dance—and when she came back into the house her face was sad, and I felt sorry for her; I remembered it afterward, when we were engaged.”

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