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Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.

The novel depicts the life of the upper class in New York City in the 1870s, a decade before the advent of electric light, telephones, and automobiles. It was still a time when origins were considered the most important thing. Wharton herself grew up in just such a self-absorbed society.

The society, built on the strict customs of old New York, is stirred up by the free and unconventional Ellen Olenska, who has returned from Europe and turns Newland Archer's previous values ​​upside down.

The writer describes the struggles of the timid moral dissident with discreet irony, in which the author's famous friend Henry James is evident.