Archetypal And Mythological Criticism Research Assignment

Archetypal and Mythological Criticism
The Age of Innocence is one of the books of Edith Wharton, which steps back from previous harsh and gritty subject matters to return to times the author remembered from her childhood. The cast of characters is quite extensive, but the novel itself follows Newland Archer throughout his life as a lawyer in New York, so normally those characters are seen from his perspective only. Archetypes are specific character types which are often seen throughout literature, where they serve both as a means to identify characters easily, and also to give clues to that character’s particular function in the story.
Possibly the strongest recurring archetype is the mother archetype, the “symbols of the mother in a figurative sense” (Jung 14) as well as in a literal one. This is possibly because some themes of the novel revolve around the changing of behaviour and social mores between generations, but there are a number of older women who feature prominently in the novel.
The mother archet...