the age of innocence

​A man sits on a park bench and looks at the coruscating windowpane of a nearby apartment. The apartment belongs to a woman he loved but couldn’t marry(because gentlemen in nineteenth century NewYork had certain mores to adhere to.) The person who’s gotten the man here is his own grown up son. The son has just finished informing what his recently passed away mother had confided to him. In the son’s words, “when she asked you to, you gave up the one thing you wanted most."
“She never asked me,” replies the man, with just a tinge of irritation in his voice. The point being, his wife never asked him because such a need never arose.
As the man stares at the apartment, a vision of its supposed occupant crosses his mind. He’s transported to an evening twenty-five years back when she’d stood at a pier, smiling, holding a parasol that couldn’t quite prevent the mellow deluge from a setting sun.
Ultimately, our sombre man gets up from the park bench and walks away. He’s decided not to meet her after all. Whether it’s because he doesn’t want to sully an image he has for so long treasured, or it’s because he’s come to prefer his exquisite pain over an actual union, we can only guess.
- The above is the closing scene from Martin Scorsese’s most underrated film: The Age of Innocence. Apparently, this was an age when it kind of sufficed to peel off a woman’s glove and hold her hand.
But let not that kind of kitsch get to you on Valentine’s.