Episode 291: The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, Ch. 22-End

Summary

The Literary Life Podcast – Episode 291

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, Ch. 22–End

Hosts: Angelina Stanford, Thomas Banks
Date: August 26, 2025

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Overview

In this episode, Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks complete their discussion of Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence (Chapters 22–end). The hosts analyze the novel’s final third, focusing on Wharton’s nuanced portrayal of late-19th-century New York society, the shifting dynamics between characters, and the novel’s elegiac tone as it contemplates the passing of an era. The conversation explores themes of duty, pretense, societal change, and the limits of individual desire. The hosts also reflect on how Wharton achieves a subtle, unsentimental farewell both to her characters and the world they inhabit.

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Main Discussion Points & Insights

1. Wharton’s Masterful Ending

• Praise for the Conclusion:
  • “The last chapter is now one of my favorite last chapters in American fiction.” – Thomas Banks (02:44)
• Both hosts agree Wharton avoids melodrama and preachiness, instead delivering a quiet, emotionally resonant, and ambiguous farewell to her characters—one that resists easy moralizing or simple romantic resolution.

2. Themes and Literary Techniques

Elegy for a Lost World

• Wharton writes not to judge but to document a vanished social order—a world “frozen in ice,” now thawing:
  • “If I were to write a novel... about the particular social milieu in which we were raised... I don’t think I would be able to write quite so with quite so much detachment as she does, or with quite... so much elegance.” (18:19, Thomas)
• The hosts see the novel as an elegy, with Wharton refusing to state directly whether the loss of this world is for better or worse.

Duty vs. Desire, Reality vs. Illusion

• Archer’s conflict is emblematic of broader societal changes—his struggle is as much between worlds as between women.
• Wharton, by keeping Archer and Ellen’s relationship unconsummated, maintains the focus on social, not just personal, drama:
  • “We're not supposed to read this as some love triangle... that is not what she's trying to do here. Archer is torn between two worlds.” (15:49, Angelina)
• Ellen embodies directness and honesty, while May operates through pretense and social coding—yet their roles subtly invert as the book progresses.

Social Codes and Subtlety

• New York society’s restrictive codes—never making a scene, communicating in hints—are both stifling and, in some ways, protective.
• “Everything’s code” between Newland and May; they are “trained” to speak obliquely (35:41).
• “It was the only word that passed between them on the subject, but in the code in which they’d both been trained...” (36:10, Thomas)

3. Key Scenes & Character Arcs

Boston & Beyond: Spaces of Possibility (19:48–22:44)

• Boston, Washington, and Newport serve as symbolic backdrops—spaces where Newland and Ellen might exist outside Old New York’s constraints.
• Yet, as Angelina notes, “there is no place for them to exist as them and be in New York. This would be to leave New York.”

Inversion of Innocence (30:21–32:36)

• Ellen’s “scandalous” past belies a profound honesty and purity.
• May, initially the ingénue, is revealed as more shrewd and calculating, orchestrating Ellen’s departure with feminine “strategies.”
• “May, for all her innocence and ignorance, turns out Newland’s the one who’s been kept in ignorance.” (31:16, Angelina)
• May’s crucial revelation of her pregnancy (or claim thereof) is a masterstroke that ensures Archer’s loyalty and triggers Ellen’s self-sacrifice.

Family as Character

• “The main character is the family, capital F.” (31:53, Angelina)
• Complex discussions of “the family” as a tribal entity—enforcing loyalty by including and excluding members.

The Museum Scene & The Relics of Self (63:38–65:12)

• Archer and Ellen at the museum, surrounded by artifacts labeled “use unknown,” mirror the imminence of their own world’s obsolescence.

The Farewell Dinner & The Power Shift (75:01–80:54)

• The family orchestrates Ellen’s exit to protect "the family" and avoid scandal.
• Archer realizes too late that his imagined agency has been outmaneuvered by May and her allies.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Every comfortable society... will always be shot through with a certain measure of polite falsity.” (45:24, Thomas)
• “Otherwise, we’re only Newland Archer, the husband of Ellen Olenska’s cousin and Ellen Olenska, the cousin of Newland Archer’s wife, trying to be happy behind the backs of the people who trust them.” (52:13, Ellen, cited by Angelina)
• “She’s more generous than I... She really is an outstandingly generous character...” (53:00, Thomas, on Ellen)
• “He looked about at the familiar objects in the hall as if he viewed them from the other side of the grave.” (68:13, Angelina)

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The 26-Year Leap: The Final Chapter (81:20–end)

• The hosts single out the book’s epilogue—26 years later—as “the crown of the book.”
• Archer’s children, especially Dallas, represent a new era—less bound to appearances, more candid, and in some ways, freer.
• Archer and Ellen’s relationship remains, even at this late date, unconsummated and “under glass.”
  • “It’s more real to me here than if I went up,” Archer decides, sitting outside Ellen’s home in Paris rather than entering. (88:32)
• The act of not meeting Ellen again becomes an act of acceptance, a recognition of the irrevocability of the past.
• This ending is rich with ambiguity—neither tragic nor bitter, but quietly elegiac.

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 05:00–09:46: Commonplace quotes (Chesterton and Lewis on tradition, art, and culture)
• 14:12–18:23: Wharton’s detached, documentary approach to her own social class
• 19:48–22:44: The symbolism of location: Boston, Newport, New York, Washington
• 23:28–24:32: Ellen and Newland’s spiritual connection; “You happened to me all over again.”
• 30:21–32:36: Transformation of May’s and Ellen’s characters
• 35:41–36:11: Example of coded marital conversation
• 44:59–46:51: The changing perception of “making a scene” and social pretense, then vs. now
• 63:38–65:12: The museum as metaphor for loss and obsolescence
• 75:01–80:54: The farewell dinner, May’s victory, and the family’s silent judgment
• 81:20–94:24: Final chapter—Archer’s later life, generational change, refusal to see Ellen

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Analysis of Style, Tone, and Wharton’s Achievement

• The hosts repeatedly praise Wharton’s “light touch," discipline, and artistic restraint—her refusal to settle scores with a world that hurt her.
• Her narration is compared to a keen documentarian: “She’s showing us the relics of this society.” (84:12, Angelina)
• The ending is characterized as “quietly brilliant," with both sadness and acceptance, eschewing melodrama and closure in favor of thematic resonance.

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Concluding Thoughts

• The Age of Innocence is “a parable of America” that presents societal change without polemic or bitter nostalgia.
• Wharton’s refusal to let Archer and Ellen unite, even when free, encapsulates the heartbreak and irreversibility of cultural transformation.
• “It doesn’t exist anymore, and you can’t go back again,” Angelina notes, capturing the episode’s insight into Wharton’s larger vision.

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Selected Notable Quotes From the Episode

“We’re not supposed to read this as some love triangle... Archer is torn between two worlds.”
—Angelina (15:49)

“Every comfortable society... will always be shot through with a certain measure of polite falsity, I suppose.”
—Thomas (45:24)

“It’s more real to me here than if I went up.”
—Angelina, reading Newland’s thought at the end (88:32)

“She’s more like a documentarian... just here’s this world and it doesn’t exist anymore.”
—Angelina (84:12)

“This isn’t like... it’s an elegy, but that doesn’t mean it’s a tragedy.” —Thomas (62:54)

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Closing Poem (read by Thomas Banks | 97:11)

Ask Me No More by Alfred Lord Tennyson

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For more in-depth conversations and bonus content, visit the hosts at HouseOfHumaneLetters.com and support the podcast on Patreon.

Transcript

[A]

This is not just another book chat podcast. Lifelong reader Cindy Rollins joins teachers Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks for an ongoing conversation about the science, skill and art of reading. Well, explore the lost intellectual tradition and discover how to fully enter into the great works of literature. Learn what books mean while delighting in the sheer joy of imagination. Each week we will rescue story from the ivory tower and bring it to your couch, your kitchen and your commute. The Literary Life is for everyone because in the words of Stratford Caldecott, to be enchanted by story is to be granted a deeper insight into reality. Join us for an ever unfolding discussion of how stories will save the world. This is the Literary Life Podcast. Hello and welcome back to the Literary Life Podcast, continuing today with our series series on Edith Wharton's the Age of Innocence. I'm Angelina Stanford and here with me is a man who I can tell you has a even better library than Newland Archer.

[B]

Though I don't have quite as many exclusive club memberships. No, he does have that on me.

[A]

That's. I won't ask how many countesses in the closet.

[B]

Yeah, I know. Yeah. If anyone needs me, I'll be in smoking room.

[A]

Trust me, I would not take it like May well, and I wouldn't just silently bat my eyes and plot behind your back. Stoic.

[B]

She's very stoic about that. Yeah.

[A]

All right, today we are going to finish up Edith Wharton's book the Age of Innocence, but not. We're not going to be finished with the these characters though, because next week we'll have Atle on and we're going to talk about Martin Scorsese's film. And of course, Atley's already done his research and discovered there are other film versions and things. So. Well, we'll be talking about that next week, but today we're going to try to carry on with this novel, which I have to say, and as I know we have to do commonplace quotes and all that first, but I had forgotten how good it was.

[B]

I have to say that the last chapter is now one of my favorite last chapters in American fiction. Or just maybe just fiction.

[A]

I'll just say, so good.

[B]

Really, really a fine ending.

[A]

All right, well, we'll come back to that in just a minute. We'll tease you there. But before we get to that, just remind you that this is a ad free podcast. We are 100% member supported and our Patreon members are what allows us to keep this podcast going for free as well as our day jobs as teachers at the House of Humane Letters. We use some of those funds to keep this podcast going as well. So just a reminder, you've already heard us talk about Heather's amazing Coleridge webinar that's going to coming up August 27th. Ella's amazing class on the grammar of the natural world is going to be starting in September20. But we are so busy over here at the House of Humane Letters, we have even yet another thing to announce. And this, honestly, I have to say, is nothing short of a coup. Mr. Banks and I, we discovered this professor by listening to some lectures of him. And I was just kind of like this. I like this guy. He's brilliant. I like the way he thinks. And one day he needs to come and work for us. So long story short, here he is doing something for us. Guys, guys, I'm so excited about this. We have a webinar coming up September 17, live or later as everything we do by the one and only Dr. Michael Drought. Now, Michael Drought is the Francis A. Shirley professor of English and the Director of the center for the Study of the Medieval at Wheaton College in Massachusetts. He has been teaching there since 1997. He is an amazing scholar, a fantastically knowledgeable and also entertaining speaker, which, trust me, that is not, not a common thing to pull. I could listen to Dr. Drought, read the phone book. I could listen to him just talk about anything. He is absolutely fantastic and I'm so, so pleased to collaborate with him and to be able to have him share his incredible wealth of knowledge with us. So this is a hold on to your hats, guys, because we have never offered anything on this topic before. And when he and I were talking about, you know what, what are your needs? What are some areas you'd like to see covered, I did not hesitate to say, do something on the Norse tradition, because of course, Lewis and Tolkien keep saying that the Norse are so important, and now we're going to get to dive in with him. So his webinar is called the Viking World, Old Norse Literature, Culture and Influence. And guys, I'm going to read to you his description here, and you're going to get a sense of his cheekiness and his sense of humor and how entertaining he is going to be as a speaker. This is fantastic. From 800 to 1066, the people we know as the Vikings reshaped the history, politics, politics and culture of Europe, raiding, conquering, settling and trading from Byzantium in the east to North America in the west and Iceland to the coast of Spain and Italy. Eight hundred years later, the rediscovery of their literature and mythology took European culture by storm, inspiring artists, writers and composers throughout the Romantic period to this day. Images of warriors in horned helmets, beautiful Valkyries, future determining norns and frenzied berserkers shape our perception of the people and culture of medieval Scandinavia. But which of these perceptions or stereotypes are true anyway? What was the actual culture of the Vikings like? Did they really wear horned helmets? No. Horns are a huge handicap in combat. Did they really drink meat from the skulls of their enemies? No. The meat always leaks out through the eye sockets. Was their culture really as crazy as it is depicted? No. The reality is far more extreme. In this overview of Viking and Old Norse culture, we will try to answer these and other questions by focusing on how we know what we know about the remarkable people of the North. Our primary evidence will be what they told us about themselves in writings in their own language, poetry and prose, primarily from medieval Iceland, that her survived to the present day. The ancient, stylistically simple and mythologically profound poetry of the elder Edda, the baffling complex works of the later skalds, the Rye, cleverness of Snorri Sturlinson's pros explanations of mythology and history, and the laconic but deeply insightful narratives of the sagas combined to allow us to glimpse the fascinating individuals behind the dramatic images. From their words we come to understand, at least somewhat, the remarkable people of medieval Scandinavia.

[B]

It's amazing. I remember just as a personal anecdote, I remember the first time a teacher of mine referred to Snorri Sturluson. I thought they were joking because I refuse to believe anyone with that name could possibly have existed. But it's a wonderful name.

[A]

The Grays.

[B]

It's one of those rare names that just makes you feel in a better mood. So it always does to me.

[A]

It makes you smile and name it Snow.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Yeah, there you go.

[B]

It'd have to be like kind of a lazy and obese and just sits around like making up sort of decoratively.

[A]

There myths and things like that. Guys, go to HouseOfHumaneLettersRightNow.com click on webinars and enroll for this because for 18 you're getting a college class, honestly a graduate level class. And where, where else are you going to find that? So I'm just thrilled. I'll be there. You'll be there. Our cat Snorri will be there with, with Bell. All right, now segueing from that into our usual commonplace quotes. Mr. Banks, do you have one for us?

[B]

I do indeed. This is from a travel book, which was written by G.K. chesterton in the 1920s, shortly after he returned from a lecture tour of the United States. And for the most part, Chesterton enjoyed himself. And I would say it is a more friendly than not depiction of a well spoken and articulate and observant foreigner upon our republic and its social mores and popular culture, with a few exceptions. And Chesterton really did not like American ad culture. The sort of American commercial pushiness.

[A]

You don't say. Yeah, he'd have been a bit overwhelmed in Times Square.

[B]

Well, famously he described Times Square as, well, being beautiful to anyone who cannot read. And here he is. So he's talking about the shallower side of American urban culture in the 1920s. And he says it is at least as possible for a Philadelphian to feel the presence of William Penn and Benjamin Franklin as for an Englishman to see the ghosts of Alfred and Beckett. Tradition does not mean a dead town. It does not mean that the living are dead, but that the dead are alive. It means that it still matters what Penn did 200 years ago or what Franklin did a hundred years ago. I never could feel in New York that it mattered what anybody did an hour ago.

[A]

Wow. What year did you write that?

[B]

I think that's mid-1920s, around 1925.

[A]

So around the same time that Edith Wharton is reflecting on this, actually within a decade. Yeah. And by the time you get to the end of this book, you realize that New York is now moving at a dizzying pace.

[B]

It is indeed.

[A]

Whereas, interestingly, it's consistently described as being frozen in the frozen and like sculptures and people are cold and lifeless. Man, I was catching all that imagery.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And now it's thought out in the.

[B]

1920S, even the world of Newland Archer must come to an end.

[A]

Indeed. Indeed. All right, My quote is yet Another passage from C.S. lewis's essay that I've been talking about these last few weeks. Christianity and literature. And I just love me some good CS Lewis snark. And for example, you know, he was once invited to speak at Cambridge on Renaissance literature, and he famously said the Renaissance didn't exist. You know, he loves to come in and say what. What you want me to say. I'm not going to say. I'm going to throw you a curveball. I'm going to correct your assumptions. He does the same thing here. So he starts this off saying, I was invited today to give a speech on Christian literature, and I'm here to tell you there is no such thing. So here's a quote from the beginning of that. And this is very, I think, significant for us and for our listenership to wrestle with, because that's something that gets so tossed around. Is this a Christian work of art? And he's going to point out there's simply good art and bad art. There is no such thing as Christian or non Christian art, just like there's no such thing as Christian tables or non Christian tables. They're simply functioning tables. But we get. We get very, very caught up in that. One of the things, like to joke about is every now and then I'll have some. Someone will say, okay, so this book, it was true, but is it biblical truth? To which I always respond, is there a category of which it's true and it's not biblically true? I mean, I just have categories of it's true or it's false. Those words don't need any adjectives. But I digress. All right, so here's CS Lewis. I think Christian literature can exist only in the same sense in which Christian cookery might exist. It would be possible, and it might be edifying to write a Christian cookery book. Such a book would exclude dishes whose preparation involves unnecessary human labor or animal suffering, and dishes excessively luxurious. That is to say, its choice of dishes would be Christian. But there can be nothing specifically Christian about the actual cooking of the dishes included. Boiling an egg is the same process whether you are a Christian or a pagan. In the same way, literature written by Christians, for Christians would have to avoid mendacity, cruelty, blasphemy, pornography, and the like. And it would aim at edification, insofar as edification was proper to the kind of work in hand. But whatever it chose to do would have to be done by the means common to all literature. It could succeed or fail only by the same excellences and the same faults as all literature. And its literary success or failure would never be the same thing as its obedience, our disobedience to Christian principles.

[B]

That is a very lucid passage indeed. By the way, is that relatively early in his career that he's writing this?

[A]

Oh, I. You know what? I'll have to.

[B]

It seems to me that it is, but I.

[A]

You're gonna make me go back through the preface. This is going to make for riveting podcasting. I'm gonna have to go through.

[B]

He must have been a fascinating lecturer in person. One of those things that stands out in his non fiction writing is.

[A]

People.

[B]

Talk about Lewis's winsomeness and his friendsliness, but he also has kind of a. I don't know. It's an unlabored air of authority about him, which you look for in a good professor.

[A]

Okay, that was a good call. 1939.

[B]

1939.

[A]

Okay, so this is literature was read to a religious society in Oxford and it was reprinted from a collection from 1930-9. Rehabilitations and other Essays. So, yeah, you're right, this is early on. Yeah, very good. All right. One hardly knows where to start. There we went so long last time. And then of course, our audience said that they loved that, but I kind of don't want to go this well, I'm. Famous last words. We're not going to go that long this time. And then of course, you know, it'll be 10 o' clock tonight. We're still going to be podcasting.

[B]

Likely so.

[A]

Yeah, likely so. But wow, this last act of this book was amazing. So let's start. Maybe we'll go through some of the significant themes, scenes, rather scenes, and then see if we can't tie it all together a little bit. So chapter 22, this is when Archer goes to the house where Ellen is staying and he thinks she's there and he kisses the parasol again. You know, the throwback to the. To the kissing the ribbons from the theater play. What stuck out to me there was that you have a cupid with no bow in the house hanging on the outside. Right. The arrowless cupid. Oh. So that fits into everything we've been talking about. And who is the archer and who is the hunted and who is the hunter? And I think with his name being Archer, and you feel like he's shooting Cupid's arrows here or being shot by Cupid's arrows. And the twist comes, of course, that it's May, who is also named Archer, who is the Diana, who is the one who wins. Wins the archery contest. And of course, when we get to the end, she has completely hit the bullseye. And he uses a lot of language about feeling trapped and ensnared and she. She got him.

[B]

She takes what she wants in an unexpected way. Yeah, yeah, well, and we'll get to that. But. But yes, it is. And it's interesting also how, and this is something I think only an expert could do, how almost perfectly Wharton avoids falling into cheap melodrama or melodramatic language throughout this whole story.

[A]

Glad you brought that.

[B]

It's been so easy to do.

[A]

It's so easy to do. And so one of the things I've really tried to get across to our listeners is this is. We are not Supposed to read this as some love triangle and be like, well, is it right to leave his wife? Or, he needs to follow his heart? Because that is not what she's trying to do here. She's using this as a parallel. Archer is torn between two worlds. He's having to make choices. And I really appreciate it. Well, I think one of the things that happens is by keeping their relationship completely unconsummated, she helps to keep the conversation from going there. Like, well, it's wrong to commit. I mean, obviously it's wrong to commit adultery. Edith Wharton knows that. You know, she's not suggesting that we should pity Newland Archer because he can't follow his heart. This really is about a choice between two different worlds. The worlds of May and the worlds of Ellen Alinska.

[B]

Yeah. And this is a book in which. I mean. Yes, we said before, you know, as in Jane Austen, all the characters are social characters who cannot be understood except in relation to one another. And we're almost entirely concerned with the social consequences for certain patterns of behavior rather than their moral. Their real, objective moral meanings, if you will.

[A]

No, that's exactly right. And it's not that you disregard your morality when you enter art, it's that you understand, however, that there's an artistic purpose here. It's not just case studies for us to have theological or philosophical questions. Yeah.

[B]

She hasn't foregrounded ethical dilemmas. I think if George Eliot had written this book, she might have. There might have been longer disquisitions about that kind of thing.

[A]

Because Eliot, as much as I love her, she can be very didactic. She can fall into preachiness.

[B]

Yeah, she's very earnest. We'll put it that way. Very earnest. I think the Bronte sisters, in their way. Very earnest as well.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

There's a bit more detachment with Edith Warden.

[A]

I think so, too.

[B]

Yeah. Even though she's so close to her world, she's a product of this world she's describing. She seems oddly. It would be like. I was just. I was so impressed reading this because if I were to write a novel, or you were to write a novel about the particular social milieu in which we were raised, and there were, you know, characters kind of like, you know, the peers and adults we grew up around, I don't think I would be able to write quite so. With quite so much detachment as she does, or with quite. I mean, certainly not with so much elegance either, because I just can't write like her.

[A]

But, you know, that struck me too, like.

[B]

Yes, it demands a certain discipline.

[A]

There's things about her life which one could be tempted to read into the book. But I for one did not feel like this was. Well, first of all, it's just too intentionally ambiguous at the end. Yeah, she's not settling saying, you know, this world hurt me.

[B]

Yeah. I mean she's not celebrating it really on the one hand or deplorable pouring it on the other. It's. Yeah, it's.

[A]

It's more sophisticated that.

[B]

Yeah, like a more. I don't know, she almost more like a documentarian.

[A]

Yes. But again, to go back to what we said in the first episode, this is an elegy. She is documenting a world that no longer exists. And one of the things that I found so fascinating about her and this connects to what you're saying is she kind of stopped short of saying whether or not it was good that this world was lost, but we'll come back to the end. So. Yeah, I agree. So in chapter 22, there's talk about family and tradition and a little bit of an eye roll and we kind of have to go through some of these traditions even though we don't really like it. But this is sort of how things are done. And it's contrasted with the more bohemian characters again. So the next thing that happens is though of course he follows Ellen to Boston. And that covers a couple of chapters, chapter 23 and chapter 24. First, let's just talk about the significance of Boston. If this is American literature and American society. Boston is kind of the birthplace of.

[B]

America and kind of our first intellectual capital as well. And the center from which radiated out sort of our first real aristocracy or the closest we came to an aristocracy, at least in the North. I mean the so called Boston Brahmins of the 19th century. And as for the. The intellectual world, that's where American Transcendentalism really has its birth. I mean, not that all of this is completely relevant here, but. But yeah, America's America's first school of, I guess, native born intellectuals who really styled themselves as American and not just a sequel to European. Ralph Waldo Emerson of course is kind of at the center of that.

[A]

Well, so when we think about the locations in America that are mentioned here, Newport and New York, which of course that's the center of their world, but then Boston and Washington.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

So she's ticking off the big names.

[B]

And I was thinking Newport, with you know, its, its famous resorts and you know, wealthy, wealthy enclaves, it, it still is kind of serves the same function in today's world in New England as it did back then because we see it's already sort of a, you know, a place where you have your summer home on the beach sort of place in.

[A]

There are intimations in some of these chapters that already it is losing its fashionableness. But it's just where people go.

[B]

Right.

[A]

It's interesting to me that the places where he. Well, he never has an assignation with her, but the places where they speak intimately to one another are not New York.

[B]

Ah, boss proven.

[A]

And I'm going to follow you to Washington. And because it's very clear they even explicitly say there is no place for them to exist as them and be in New York. So this would be to leave New.

[B]

York and I mean there is. He's escaping or thinks he's escaping or kind of half wants to escape and it's not his wife. I mean you never get the sense that. That he's making any great sacrifices being married to May. It's not as though he enforced his hand here. It's like he wants to escape from the entire.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

The entire social universe of which he is a part and a fixture.

[A]

Yes. Yeah, I saw a few people struggling with, you know, what's his deal? Is he just bored? I don't think it's boredom. I think it's. He's bored with a life of pretense that has no real depth. You know, he fakes going to work. They. Everything's just a pretense. And I think the fact that he retreats to his library as well as being a nod to Mr. Bennett in pride and Prejudice is a nod to that. He does have a desire for a life of the mind. He's interested in art, literature. But to do that is to retreat from the society of old New York.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, it's. It's kind of interesting. It also raises the question would. I don't even know if she intends this really. Would he be happy if he were able to affect that escape?

[A]

She doesn't answer that, but yeah.

[B]

No, she doesn't answer it certainly, but yeah. And it's one of those things. I. I don't know. I'm not certain that he would.

[A]

Well, let's come back to that. When we look at the end for certain, the choice he makes. Well, it's a sort of further emphasize that when he sees her in Boston and that's when he's just really. He has that weird thing where he's like. Every time he sees her, it's like seeing her anew. I loved that line, you happened to me all over again.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Right. I kind of forget you.

[B]

He has one of the rare, actually romantic lines in the book.

[A]

Such a great line.

[B]

It stands out for that reason.

[A]

It really does. But what seems to be going on to them is something other than just a physical passion. And then. And he tries to make these distinctions in his mind. We're not like the Lefferts. This is not a common thing. And there's a line there where he says. I think it's when he's sitting next to her in the carriage in Boston that he. He's almost unaware of her physical presence, of her body, bodily presence. That's it. Like, there's it against the world that she represents an openness of freedom that he doesn't feel. He feels stifled. Like his wedding was described in terms like a funeral. Like he's dying. Right. It's a frozen society. And he feels free with her. And, of course, at one point in the book, they're gonna become very close to just becoming, you know, ordinary physical lovers like everybody else. And that's that moment when they look at each other like enemies. Right. So the introduction of that kind of. Kind of ruins it.

[B]

But again, this goes back to. I mean, it was chapter one or chapter two where she introduced him as a man who enjoyed a thing more in the anticipation. Anticipation of it then in the possession.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And this is. I mean, it's. In a weird way, it's kind of true of his relationship to May and of his relationship to Ellen.

[A]

That's exact. That's exactly right.

[B]

Oh, I got that one right.

[A]

Well, he says at some point, I'm getting my chapters all mixed up. But he says at some point, something like, she was only that version of May when we were courting and now there's no need for her to be that. And so she's not that anymore. Right. So it's this. And I think it is in the context of the thing, once attained, loses its pleasure. I think that is something to think about as we look at the ending of this book. But I forgot I had marked a significant line in chapter 22. So when he's thinking about, you know, is Ellen at this house? And I don't think she's there, but I just want to go see the house. He says this. And I think this is very interesting when you think about the ending of the book. He had wanted, irrationally and indescribably, to see the place where she was living and to follow the movements of her imagined figure as he had watched the real one in the summer house. That's exactly what he does at the end. He sits on that bench and imagines what her life is like in the house. And then that's enough for him. And then he leaves.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. And once again, that seems to illustrate that he's much more fascinated with what she represents than who she is.

[A]

That's right. Perhaps that's right. But we'll come back to that. Okay, so they have a conversation. They basically admitted their feelings for each other, but she is like, right out the gate, this is never gonna happen. I'm not gonna hurt these people that love me. And he thinks, whoa, whoa, whoa. We. We both feel this way. Let's just leave. Let's just run off together. And. And. But his kind of being forthright with her, I think that's also another thing. Right? All these forthright conversations with her versus the hinting around with May. And close to actually saying something direct, he gets so excited and he feels there's that line like there's an open door. And then she goes back to just obfuscating. And he says, and the door has closed. I think that's. That's another thing too. Ellen is open and honest and direct. At one point he says, I think that you're the most honest woman.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That. That's ever lived. But she says, I'll only stay here as long as we both hold out on our feelings. If we act on this, I'm gonna leave. So she never holds out the possibility we'll be together. I mean, at one point he says.

[B]

She'S not leading him on at all.

[A]

Not at all.

[B]

Ever. No, just.

[A]

I like her so much. She's such a great character. And she. They. They have that. That thing where he's like, well, let's just. She's like, you want me to. Just to be some. Taught him mistress. And he says, I think this is a conversation in another chapter, but. And he says, well, let's go somewhere where these words don't. Don't make sense, where we don't have to use that kind of language. We know basically where we don't have to be tawdry lovers. And she says, where is this place? Where does it exist? Have you been there? Like, you know, like you' living in a. In a cloud. But I think one of the things we see with Newland Archer is for all that he feels imprisoned. And boy, there's so much language of imprisonment in this. In the last third of this book. Imprisoned by the society, by the family connections. By his marriage, by his sense of duty. And as much as he chafes under the fact that everybody else wants to live in illusion, there's a very real sense in which he too wants to live in a real. An illusion. The illusion that Ellen and I can be together.

[B]

Yeah. Sort of like Faust pursuing Helen, you know.

[A]

And of course, Faust comes back in the story. We had the bookended opera scenes, so we'll get to that.

[B]

Yeah, sorry. I was thinking more of the Christopher Marlowe, Helen, make me immortal with a kiss. The desire to possess beauty, glamour, and have it all be sort of frozen in time in some sort of weird escapist way.

[A]

And he says many times to himself, the world is an illusion. The only thing that's real is Ellen. But then there's also, like, you can't act on that. There is no reality between. There can't be a reality between Ellen and Newlyn. And she keeps pointing out this is just another illusion that you're grasping onto. So in chapter 25, the mysterious French secretary shows up again. And immediately Newland gets jealous, thinking this is the guy she ran off with. And this is the guy because in.

[B]

Spite of being my social inferior, he's in some ways closer to her and has played a more significant role in her life than I ever can.

[A]

Right. And jumps to some weird conclusions about his role here with the husband and trying to get her back. Her husband has basically made her an offer. All you have to do is keep up the pretense of being my wife a couple times a year by showing up socially and I'll let you have all your money. And Ellen simply cannot live with any kind of pretense, not with her husband, not in New York society, not with Newland. She's got to be a real life and Edith Wharton. Again, there's so much ambiguity in this book. She makes it very ambiguous whether or not those rumors about Ellen and the secretary she ran off with are true. Obviously, the husband has the rumors there. The lawyer believes the rumors, even though he says, well, there's no real evidence, but, you know, even to suggest it is probably something. But Newland keeps having these moments where he flares up and things. Thinks the worst of her. And then Ellen is just so matter of fact, like, well, no. And then that's when he says, you must be the most honest woman to ever live. So one of the things that's super interesting to me, this last third, is that the. It's almost like the roles of May and Ellen switch. So Ellen comes in and she's this experienced, kind of scandalous woman and May's the innocent little ingenue. But as the book goes on, there's so much indication that May is not as innocent. You see?

[B]

You see, there's a.

[A]

Not a manipulative side to her.

[B]

Yeah, I was gonna say not manipulative. That's not the right word. But there's a. She's more assertive than we would have given her credit for.

[A]

That's right. So the innocence is a facade, more possessive, perhaps. And Ellen is much more direct and open and does the right thing. Like when she goes to Regina Beaufort and doesn't necessarily think of all the implications of that. And is. It. Is all she's. There's almost like a. Tell me if this makes sense. There's almost like an innocence with her in the way that she. She acts with Newlin.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

An innocence and a purity.

[B]

A kind of. Yes, yes, that. That she's not. She's not acting out of a. Primarily not acting out of a desire to advance her own interests in any way.

[A]

Yes, exactly. There's something pure about her in that way. And she's not a cockette or anything like that. She's just. You know, she's just drawn to him. And then when he tries to push it, she's like, hey, that can never happen. And then the twist is May, for all of her innocence and ignorant. Turns out Newland's the one who's been kept in the ignorance. Newlin is the one who's been made innocent of all their plans of getting rid of the Countess. And. And May's been in the thick of it. So there was that just wonderful reversal at the end there. There. So, yeah, the secretary begs Newland don't let her go back. And then it's from him that Newland finds out the family has. Has kept him out of the inner loop. And of course, by the time we get to the end, we realize they have had suspicions for a while. I think initially we are to understand that the family keeps him out because they don't want to deal with somebody who's opposing them. And then over time, they start to suspect he's got ulterior motives for wanting to keep her here. But that brings up an interesting thing again in these last third of the chapters, and we talked about this in the first episode, the idea that the main character is the family. Capital F. And the. I mean, there are so many appeals to. Well, the family is meeting and the family decided. And the family wants me to go back to My husband. And there are Granny Mingood saying, the family opposes me. And I kept thinking, but aren't you with the family? You're the matriarch.

[B]

And so it's interesting that some of the families here amongst themselves negotiate as much or more like, you know, big law firms than the actual law firm does.

[A]

That's well said. And again, they bring up the tribal references like they're voting, they're exiling somebody out of the tribe and the tribe has met. So the family becomes this character that's greater than the individual members of the family. And you see that when they're like. So they excise. Or Cousin Regina. Oh, she's not cousin Regina anymore. They're very quick to say, you are a Beaufort. You are not a Dallas. You are. You know, you go be with your family. That. That husband. And of course. Well, we'll get to that. The. What happens with the Beauforts. But. And then they. They push out Granny and then they push out Ellen and they push out Newland. So, yeah, the family is. It's almost a force. And the family has to be sort of protected at all costs, even if that means expelling members of the family, which is. Is so radically different than the way we would think of that. We would think. Well, to. To love the family means to be protecting. Taking care of our own and protecting each member, not sacrificing certain members for the sake of the whole protective.

[B]

Up to a point.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Right. In chapter 26, there's a reference to May's blushes. I really was paying attention to that. Like, Newland doesn't realize that there's suspicions about him and Ellen. And so he doesn't pick up on all the subtle cues because, again, May's not going to be direct, but there's lot of subtle cues. When Ellen's name is mentioned and May blushes and there's all these little things.

[B]

And yeah, whenever she mentions. Whenever May mentions Ellen from maybe the halfway mark in the book onwards, there is sort of a note of, can we say, passive aggressiveness.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

As much as. Maybe even that's not right. The right term. But yeah. There seems to be more of an emotional distance between her and her cousin than there was when first we met either character. That's something that I thought I picked up on. Anyway.

[A]

I'm trying to find a passage here at the end of chapter 26. Oh, well, trying to. Chapter 26. Well, they start to fear about the panic, but we don't really get into until chapter 27. Yes. Okay. It Is this. So there's also a ton. I know a lot of our listeners are tracking the old versus new, but man, just all the subtle things, the changes in fashion, the slight changes in technology, just. It's an elegy. Like, you know, anybody reading this when it came out knows that the world being described here doesn't last. And so there's all these signs of it. Right. And they're just ignoring it because it's the age of innocence, which is the age of ignorance. So let's see. Okay. There's this interesting coded language at the end, and it becomes more and more explicit as we go.

[B]

Would you like me to.

[A]

Sure. So let me get the frame. And then you can start with that paragraph there and go to the end. The frame is. And he is saying, I'm going to go to Washington. He wants to go to Washington to see. See May. I mean, to see Ellen. And May just says, oh, well, when you go. When you go to Washington, say hello to Ellen. And so that was her way of codedly letting him know, if you're gonna go run off with another woman, you're gonna do it with my full knowledge and permission.

[B]

Yeah. You won't make a fool of me.

[A]

Right? Right. But the fact that she doesn't say it like, he doesn't say, I'm going to see Ellen. And she. She doesn't say, I know you're going to see Ellen. The whole thing is code.

[B]

It was the only word that passed between them on the subject. But in the code in which they had both been trained, it meant, of course, you understand that I know all that people have been saying about Ellen and heartily sympathize with my family in their effort to get her to return to her husband. I also know that for some reason you have not chosen to tell me you have advised her against this course, which all the older men of the family, as well as our grandmother, agree in approving.

[A]

Yes. And wait, there was something a little bit more. This last part. By letting you understand that I know you mean to see Ellen when you are in Washington and are perhaps going there expressly for that purpose, and that since you are sure to see her, I wish you to do so with my full and explicit approval and to take the opportunity of letting her know what the course of conduct you have encouraged her in is likely to lead to. But she doesn't say that. She just turns off the lamp and says they smell less if one blows them out. So all this stuff under the surface, and then when you get to that just masterpiece of the last chapter. And the son says, well, didn't. Didn't your mother. Didn't mother ever tell you. And he says, no. And he laughs and says, of course. Because you two never told each other anything. Y' all don't talk.

[B]

Yeah, that was your generation. Just in code.

[A]

Just in code.

[B]

Right. I know it's probably for the best that I don't actually live in this world. I'm far too dense to pick up on little cues like that.

[A]

Same. I'm so direct. It's gotten to me into so much trouble in my life. Okay, so chapter seven. Then we get to the Beaufort bust. And so this is a. She's vague about exactly what the years are that this is happening. It's just 1870 something.

[B]

But she doesn't need to say because people would have.

[A]

People would have known. So this. This is the panic of 1873. And this is a. This is a time when there's a great deal of financial speculation going on that could end up with runs on the banks and, you know, people becoming bankrupt overnight. So the. So the issue here is that he has been invol in some speculation, financial speculation that has caused people to lose their fortunes and people who have their money in the bank and all of that.

[B]

And there were several reasons for this. It was railroad speculation, investment in the. I mean, because it was around this time that the transcontinental railroad was completed. I mean, this is President Grant and. Yeah, I mean, it was. It created bubbles. And eventually the bubble burst. And it was a bad enough bust and recession that followed that for a while it was actually popularly referred to as the Great Depression. Until the Great Depression that we are familiar with. 1929 stock market crash replaced it in the popular memory. It wasn't as severe as that one.

[A]

Runs on the bank all the time. And this is unthinkable to us now.

[B]

Prior to FDIC insurance.

[A]

Exactly. But even in a movie like. Like It's a Wonderful Life, you still see that sometimes it's a run. And the fact that it could ruin somebody and ruin a whole town. But what Wharton does something interestingly here, though, and that. That fits thematically with her whole purpose in this book. She makes Beaufort a foreigner. And there's conversation in the chapters about he was speculating with foreigners and foreign money. So this is. This is. Is. This is significant because it's the idea that foreign influence. So again, we've had this whole old world, new world thing. Right. From the perspective of New York, foreign influence is dangerous. Right. And so that is an echo of what's going on with Countess Alinska. What she represents is foreignness. And this foreignness has come in. It stirred up Newland. It's causing trouble for people. She doesn't understand our social code. And so Beaufort has essentially done the same thing financially. And they respond very interestingly. They respond as if there's no question. We can have nothing to do with him. And we have to just pretend like, no, he's disgraced.

[B]

He is blackballed.

[A]

And his wife, who's completely innocent and who goes to ask for mercy and just gets, you know what, Cousin, I've never even heard of you. Granny says, you know, just gets rid of her. But it also highlights. And we don't want to miss this. It also highlights the hypocrisy of the New York society because. Because they all knew Beaufort was doing this but they were more than happy to go to his balls and to be ignorant of it. And it was only when it was a public scandal. And so now they cannot pretend to be.

[B]

When it was advantageous to them his particular business ethics, it was fine. But when he. You know, when he tripped up then. Then he had to be made an example of.

[A]

That's right. But also because it's not just that. It's that they have to avoid scandal at all costs. So if there was no just like. Just like. Like Lefferts having all these women on this side it's not a scandal. Everybody knows it's happening. And we're all going to pretend like we don't know it's happening.

[B]

And Beaufort too, for that matter.

[A]

That's right. But if it's a scandal, then we have to separate ourselves from the scandal.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And so, yeah, again, more language about pushing people out of the tribe. And you really feel bad for Regina Beaufort?

[B]

Oh, certainly. Yeah.

[A]

But it's interesting in that scene, honestly.

[B]

It was the first time I really took note of her as a character.

[A]

Well, no, but she had been described early on as just a woman who just overlooks everything he does.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

But it's interesting that she wears those jewels to the opera on the night before the scandal becomes public. So we have Countess Olinska with the jewels. We have Regina Beaufort with the jewels. We had the lady in F with the jewels. So, you know, that's all kind of associated with that foreign temptation there. I thought that was very interesting. Another thing that was so subtly done and well done was Newland is so convinced that May, in her just complete, you know, innocent domestic role doesn't know anything about his job. And so he can use any excuse about his job as. As a subterfuge to go and see Ellen. But then he's so shocked because May asks follow up questions like, oh, is this the patent case? And I saw a telegram from mom about this. And oh, so and so is going. And she knows way more than he thinks she does. But again, this is, this is the pretense that she's the innocent, ignorant wife. Okay, let's look at a few more significant scenes. So we've talked about all of that, talked about form, and I think, I.

[B]

Think it should be said that up to a certain point, she does allow that most of the people in society live up to the somewhat arbitrary code that has been established by them and by others like them. The code whose golden rule is don't make a scene. No one really makes a scene in this.

[A]

No one.

[B]

It has to be said that, that.

[A]

A number of times I remember when he gets. He runs into Lefferts at the telegram office. Oh yes, Leverett is making some conversation and he.

[B]

Some obviously loaded comments about.

[A]

And he's very. Archer is very tempted to lose his temper, but remembers the number one rule.

[B]

But there's a scene, but people was witnesses.

[A]

Yeah. You know, okay, so obviously you guys hear us talk about it. This podcast that, you know, you, you look at the work of art as a work of art and not necessarily the things that are associated with that. And of course that's true, but that doesn't mean it's wrong to ever think about the things that are associated with. You just have to always keep it in its place and realize it's not the primary thing. But because she's being so ambivalent. Again with the end when Newland says, well, there were, there were good things about the old and there are good things about the new and there are bad things about the old and there are bad things about the new. Like this real kind of, you could say ambivalence. I think it's sophisticated complexity to realize that there is no golden age, nor is there a time in the past that was all evil. Right? Like everything's, everything's a mixed bag. But. But I guess I found myself thinking about in 2025, right? So 100 years after she's writing in this, in the 1920s and 150 years after it's set. And I thought if I had read this In 1985, young Angelina would have just thought this was a no brainer. This is black and white, a hypocritical society that pretends you're like, I want nothing to do with this. I can't stand pretense. I need everything to be real. And you know, why pretend you're not mad? If you're mad, make the scene, right? And now I guess I'm a middle aged woman in 2025 thinking, oh, our society is a train wreck. Maybe we should go back to not making a scene.

[B]

Maybe some more hypocrisy.

[A]

We can maybe have some pretense of self control. And I, but I also think, and this has been a hard thing for me to learn, silence isn't necessarily fake. Right. Like, just because I don't say everything in my heart doesn't mean I'm being fake. It means I'm realizing there's a time and a place for everything and publicly expressing things is. That doesn't mean you're real.

[B]

And a certain, I think every, every comfortable society, which is not the same as every just society, but every, every, yeah. Human society that you and I can imagine being at ease in will always be shot through with a certain measure of polite falsity, I suppose.

[A]

Yeah, I guess the pendulum has swung so far over here in 2025 that I don't find everything about that world as repulsive as I would have found it. And I can, I can be much more comfortable at the end of the book when Newland says, yeah, there were some bad things about the old ways, but there were also, also some good things. And I think I'm mature enough to say, yeah, there were some good things too. And even if I personally would have felt very stifled in that society, maybe society as a whole is, is better that it had those kinds of things. I'm not suggesting we go back to being a bunch of hypocrites. Okay? No, I'm just saying that if the choices are, and I don't think these are the choices, but this seem to be the choices we have experienced as a culture that the choice is everyone's a, everyone's a bastard, but they pretend to be nice. Or in our culture, everyone's a bastard and acts like a bastard. Like, I guess, I guess I'd rather live where people pretend to be nice. Not that I think those are the only two choices, but, you know, I think, I think you get my point there.

[B]

I think I do.

[A]

All right, so his plan to go see her in Washington doesn't go off because of Granny Minga stroke. And it's very interesting that May says, well, you send the telegram to Ellen and It's a shame you won't see her because you're gonna miss her in passing. Like, that was so good.

[B]

Oh, yes, it was.

[A]

He's like, wait, what? No, I'm. It's been postponed. And she catches him in a lie. But then she sends him to pick her up in her wedding carriage. I mean, this girl is coding all over the place. Like, don't forget you're married. You're gonna go pick up this woman in the carriage where we were married, married. And Ellen knows it, too. She sits in there and says, is this Maze carriage? And Newland gets mad.

[B]

She's going to ride down to see your intended mistress. And 2,000 pounds of symbolism.

[A]

Exactly so. Exactly so. But this is part. See again, Ellen won't live in any pretense at all. And she's not going to live in the pretense that he's not married even for a few minutes. And he does want to live in that pretense. He does want the illusion that we are free and we can speak as free people to each other and express our love. And she never for a second can't lets him forget you're married and we're in your wife's carriage. And, you know, I'm. I have a duty to my grandmother. And that's where. That's where I'm going. There's. Here was a great line in chapter 29 at the beginning about all the changing technology in the future. It was a snowy. It was a somber, snowy afternoon, and the gas lamps were lit in the big reverberating station. As he paced the platform waiting for the Washington Express, he remembered that there were people who thought there would one day be a tunnel under the Hudson through which the trains of the Pennsylvania Railroad would run straight into New York. They were of the brotherhood of visionaries who likewise predicted the building of ships that could cross the Atlantic in five days, the invention of a flying machine, lighting by electricity, telephonic communication without wires, and other Arabian night marvels.

[B]

I knew you were going to love that line. I knew you were going to quote that line.

[A]

You did. It's so good. Of course, at the end of the book. Book, Newland Archer points out that all these things that happen, not the plane, not the airplanes, because it's still like 1895, but pretty much everything, basically. Yeah, Basically everything. And of course, by the time Edith Wharton's writing this, it's all happened.

[B]

You know, it's interesting to think of telegraphic communications between ourselves and, you know, other continents. Did you Know that they linked telegraph wires together across the Atlantic Ocean. There was actually a telegraph wire.

[A]

Transatlantic telegram.

[B]

The transatlantic telegram, yeah. Yeah. It's fascinating to think of.

[A]

It is crazy. And it was.

[B]

It also reminds you that like we talk about, I mean, the theme of globalism is omnipresent in our journalism today, but it's really not a new one.

[A]

It's not.

[B]

Globalism is, I mean, in some ways kind of a Victorian invention.

[A]

So Jonathan Swift, just to show you how back to this far back this goes. Jonathan Swift writing in the 1700s. Yeah. Writing in the 1700s. And Gulliver's Travels has that line about a ship has to travel around the entire world to make an English woman's breakfast. Because it, it's about how, you know, the spices, coffee and the tea and all, all the things came from all over the world. It's really startling to realize that we've been global for a lot longer than we think we think we have. Yeah. And of course, as he's. All the little comments about how the telephone was going to change things. I think it's impossible not to look at our own situation with the smartphone and what it has done to us and how much it has changed things. And the same sort of radical shift I think we're going through as well. Even in terms of feeling like you have a tremendous generation gap. Like what he feels with his own kids at the end and they look at him as kind of stuffy and old fashioned. And I think the same thing happens for people who were born and lived and basically grew up before the cell phone age versus people who always have grown up in that. Okay, so they have this conversation. It's really interesting because she says, I looked at the gorgon, but the gorgon didn't blind me. So Medusa didn't blind me. Medusa gave me eyes to see. And I, and I think that that keeps on going through the whole book. Ellen does, does see. And Archer wants them to be blind. Let's pretend I'm not mad.

[B]

Did she say it didn't blind me?

[A]

Yes. She opened my eyes. It's a delusion to say that she blinds people. What she does is just the contrary. She fastens their eyelids open so they're never again in the blessed darkness.

[B]

Right. I, I wondered, is that a deliberately mixed metaphor? Because Gorgons don't blind you. They petrify you. They turn you to stone.

[A]

I, Yeah, I wasn't sure what that was about either. I thought you as the.

[B]

No, it was one of those Things I put a question mark by.

[A]

Well, in the book they keep talking about anyway finding you, so I'm not exactly sure what that's about either. Yeah. And then he says, what is, what exactly is your plan for us? And she says, for us, there is no us. We're near each other. Only if we stay far away from each other, then we can be ourselves. Oh, that's so good.

[B]

Again, one of the few lines in the book. There is no us, which you could imagine in a modern romantic drama, you.

[A]

Know, but not with the follow up.

[B]

Not with the follow up though.

[A]

Other. Only if we stay far away from each other, then we can be ourselves. In other words, we can still be the good people we are as long as we don't act on this. Otherwise this is such a great. Oh, this is a great line. Otherwise we're only. Newland Archer, the husband of Ellen Olenska's cousin and Ellen Olenska, the cousin of Newland Archer's wife, trying to be happy behind the backs of the people who trust them.

[B]

I know it's like you said, I mean between the two of them, she's really the more high minded character in most measurable ways. And I that line behind the backs of the people who trust them. Which is, it's kind of poignant because a lot of people don't really trust her that much.

[A]

No. She is so much kinder and nobler to them than they are to her.

[B]

She's more generous than I. Again, I didn't remember her being an outstandingly generous character, but that's kind of her. She really defining trait in a lot of ways.

[A]

Once she becomes an annoyance to them, they want to pack her off and send her back to her husband, even if that means a life of misery. And she's like, I'm not going to be happy at the expense of other people. And they are more than happy to be happy at her expense. Oh sure. So. Yeah, exactly. But again, I think we need to see that in the larger context of America's relationship with foreign influence. They, they keep saying it's because she's foreign. That's why they're rejecting her, because I guess she's a. She's a threat to this.

[B]

Evan knows we have no native manufactured scandals at home, of course.

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

Something that foreigners do.

[A]

Exactly. Yep. So Archer's with his wife in the next chapter. I loved the. The stuff about her large hands, can't do needlework. So again. And I did see some comments of people being a little bit confused about how can May be old New York and have the new female form. Okay. So I realize that there is a lot of intentional mix about what's old and what's new. But you have to remember this is an elegy. So everything's passing away. So what that means is May, by virtue, she likes athletics and archery and hiking. And she's got these big modern girl hands, which ultimately becomes her daughter, who has. Has a very athletic bill.

[B]

It says the daughter is kind of the reproduction of May herself.

[A]

The athletic build that even as this world that May is committed to fighting for and clinging to it is literally passing away as she's holding on to it. She's as much as she is forcing herself into that role. She's not a very good needle woman because her hands are too big. Like, just little details like that are so good and so well done. It's. It's passing away day. She's fighting for something that is not going to exist very long. And it doesn't. All right, so we got two more really important scenes to look at. One is when they go to the opera. The museum. First they go to the museum. Let's look at the museum scene before that, because you can see I'm really on top of my game here. I turned the page and I was like, oh, yeah. When he's talking to her, he opens the window and she says, do shut the window. You'll catch your death. He pulled the sash down and turned back. Catch my death? He echoed. And he felt like adding, but I've caught it already. I'm dead. I've been dead for months and months. So again, there's so much language of him being dead and imprisoned and trapped and captured. And then he has this thought. Suddenly the play of the word flashed up like a wild suggestion. What if it were she who was dead? If she were going to die and to die soon and leave him free. Of course, the irony is that's exactly what happens in the book. And he doesn't go with Madame Olenska at the end, even though he's free and she's free because both of their spouses are dead. And again, you keep saying if this was a different book. Yes. If this was an Agatha Christie book. The second he says he gets the idea right, I know. That did it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, then he started to.

[B]

Small traces of poison into her tea every morning.

[A]

Exactly. We also see Granny Mingott rebelling against the family and holding out and saying, I'm not going to send Ellen back. I can't. She's too good of a girl. I'm gonna let her stay and live with me.

[B]

Now, remind me. I. I don't think anyone actually makes Ellen leave. She's not forced to leave, is she?

[A]

No, she.

[B]

Ultimately she does so of her own accord.

[A]

But she sacrifices herself to play again in that scene.

[B]

All right.

[A]

But the family is trying to force it. But no, Granny stands her ground and says she can stay with me and I'm going to do her allowance and she's going to live with me. And Ellen is so compassionate. She takes Granny Minga's carriage to go to Regina Buford's house to make a statement that her family has not rejected her. But of course they have, and they're going to be very upset when they find out that she does that. All right. 31. So there's this line here where he says he likes to follow the path of least resistance. That is Newland Archer through this whole book. Right. So for all that he's angry at May that she just won't spit it out, neither will he.

[B]

No, he doesn't have a whole lot of. He's not a strong willed character.

[A]

He's not. And so he has all these moments where he's like, I'm gonna make a decisive step, I'm gonna tell me. And every single time he doesn't do it. Now, often it's because very close comes very close. And often it's because she can guess what he's going to say and she cuts him off at the pass. But. But he's not as open and free as he would like us to believe. You said earlier you didn't think that he was very self aware. I think he's also deceived about who he is. Yeah. Like he plays around with this idea of running off for her, but would he actually have done it?

[B]

He actually had the will to seize all of this liberty and, you know, throw convention to the wind. Yeah, Again, I just don't think he would be happy even if he did that. I don't think he would know what to do. It's like that line from Andre Gide, the French existentialist writer, that emancipating oneself is comparatively easy in the modern world, but knowing what to do with one's freedom, one's emancipation, is something that not many people possess. And I think he's one of those.

[A]

So he's having this moment in this chapter where he says, I'm going to leave a note for May and that's going to cut off any other alternative. Alternative he had fancied himself not only nerved for this plunge, but eager to take it. Yet his first feeling on hearing that the course of events was changed had been one of relief. Right. Like, I think he's just playing around with the idea that he's a man who could abandon his.

[B]

A sort of dilettante of the emotions.

[A]

Right. Not that I'm saying the right thing for him to do is leave his.

[B]

No, certainly not. It'll be disastrous.

[A]

But. But he's not the man he thinks he is. Maybe he's a better man than he thinks thinks he is.

[B]

Maybe that. Maybe this is a mean thought. Do you think he. One of the reasons he's uncomfortable and resents the society around him is because it forces him to be a better man than he would be if he didn't live in it.

[A]

That's very interesting. He does have that comment later on about the duty of marriage. And as long as he felt like it was a duty, it was something meaningful. But that if. If he didn't. If he didn't have the. Forget the word he uses, not label, but. But basically, if it didn't have the label of duty, it would just seem like drudgery to him. But he could be noble about it, that he was doing the right thing.

[B]

Yeah. And again, his sacrifice, or whatever we choose to call it, it's not something that Mae is not cognizant of. Oh, no, we'll see that she remembers as long as she lives.

[A]

That's right. That's right. And she knows a lot more than she's willing to say. It's also in this scene that he starts to compare his current situation with his previous dalliance with a married woman and realizes that it looks very different now from this perspective, that that woman lying to her husband looks and feels very differently than him lying to me. And you also see some of his own contradictoriness. So you remember earlier, he was all a woman should be able to free to do whatever. Whatever a man wants to do. And, and. And now he's saying, well, and wives cheat on the husbands. I mean, it's kind of what everybody expects. But when a man cheats on a woman, now that's. That's unpardonable. There's that great line. Oh, this is such a great line. Yeah, read that. Read that. Read that line. That is so good.

[B]

But in Archer's little world, no one laughed at a wife deceived. And a certain measure of contempt was attached to men who continued their philandering at after marriage, in the rotation of crops, there was a recognized season for wild oats. But they were not to be sown more than once.

[A]

Right. So somebody like Lefferts and Beaufort. That's scandalous. So a man can sew his wild oats, but he's got to settle down.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

He doesn't continue to do it. Archer had always shared this view. In his heart, he thought Lefferts despicable. But to love Ellen Olenska was not to become a man. Like leopard efforts. For the first time, Archer found himself face to face with a dread of the individual case. But Ellen is not like other women. And I am not like other men. Okay, that's actually a legal reference. I mean, haven't been raised by a daughter, by a law. I'm raised by a daughter. I've been raised by a lawyer. I heard my dad talk about this all the time when we. We would talk about law and cases at home. And I would bring up things like these individual cases and. And he would say, here's the thing, Angelina. Individual hard cases make bad law.

[B]

Oh, yes.

[A]

And immediately I saw that's what he's doing. Like, he's a lawyer and he knows you decide what is the right thing to do based on principles, not on individual cases. Like, but Ellen's a lovely woman, and so clearly we should be able to violate my marriage vows for her. Like, no. Either. Either the marriage vows are sacred and they're always sacred, or they're not. H. So, yeah, that's very good. He's. He's his. His lawyer mind gets caught up in that. Yeah. See? So in 10 minutes more, he'd be mounting his own doorstep. And there were may and habit and honor and all the old decencies that he and his people had always believed in. That's not a bad thing.

[B]

No, no, not really. No. This isn't like. Like we've said. I mean, it's an. It's an elegy. But that doesn't mean it's a tragedy. I mean, if there is a case, you definitely think that Madame Olenska, you could make a case that she is a tragic character who has to sacrifice more than, you know, reasonably, she ought to be required to. But I don't think you can say Newland Archer is a tragic hero at all.

[A]

Not a tragedy.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

She doesn't come to a bad end. She. She does succeed. No one shut up.

[B]

Wrecks and, like, gets set up as.

[A]

A house on her own. She's not forced to go back to her husband. I think if she had been forced to go back to her husband, then we could have seen her as having a.

[B]

No, that's true. I. That's a good distinction.

[A]

But she, she does, she does get her own. Her own independence in a fashion. In a fashion, yeah. Now, when he goes home, look at this line. The house was as dark as the grave. I mean, hello. Right. He's dead. His house is a tomb. All right. So he quickly meets with Ellen and they decide to meet at the museum. Oh, this was so great. And the contrast of the two scenes of the museum at the end and right here were so fantastic because he sits there and he says, one day this will be a great museum.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

So again, still in this the world is changing kind of thing. And what they are looking at is the relics of past societies. Man, this is so on the nose. Right. Because New York itself is.

[B]

Because we're doing. It's like.

[A]

Yes, we're doing the same.

[B]

We're looking at the relics while the. The relics are looking at other relics and.

[A]

Yeah, Meta. Right. Edith Thornton was. Meta.

[B]

Cool.

[A]

Yeah. Right. So she's looking at these things. Right. Presently he arose and approached the case before which she stood. Its glass shelves were crowded with small broken objects, hardly recognizable domestic utensils, ornaments and personal trifles made of glass, of clay, of discolored bronze and other time blurred substances. It seems cruel. She said that after a while nothing matters anymore. That these little things that used to be necessary and important to forgotten people and now have to be guessed at under a magnifying glass and labeled use unknown. Oh, that is so good. So good.

[B]

Sort of makes you feel hollowed out inside at the same time.

[A]

Yeah. And to realize these things that seem so important to you right now will one day in your own life, life not feel important. Of course that happens to him at the end of the book. I thought the little fast forward 30 years, epilogue, 26 years was. That was so good. But we'll get to that. And he looks at her and I think this is also important for understanding the end. He looks at her and thinks, I don't want you to ever change. So while he's thinking, yes, everything passes away. I don't want you to pass away.

[B]

And I also A fian moment in Goethe's Faust. The most famous line, stay, thou art fair there that. Oh, it's like the most famous line of German poetry. I think I've probably quoted it on this podcast before.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

I think that's what it is.

[A]

Yeah. Quite, quite exciting.

[B]

I probably just messed it Up. I apologize to our German listeners.

[A]

Yeah, I think the fact that he doesn't want her to change. And so at the end of the book, he's keeping her as she was in his mind. He's choosing this illusion. I think that's. That's significant as well. Well, okay, so he tries to up the ante again. Let's run away with each other. And she says, nope, nope, not going to happen. And in fact, she's so direct, she says, shall I come to you once and then leave? And he's like, what? She's like, go back to my husband. Because this is she. She plants the fork right in the road. He wants to live in no man's land. And. And, you know, no, it'll be fine. And she's like, no, you choose right now. No, if you. If you have me for even one night, I will leave you and go back to my husband. Like, that's it. Those are the choices. I. We. We cannot stay in here. And I think she expects him to say, well, I don't want you to go back to your husband. So. No. Instead, at the end of that conversation, he says, fine, come to me once then.

[B]

Ah.

[A]

And let's see. Wait, where's that. Where's that great line? Okay, so they're fighting. She turned away, and he followed and caught her by the wrist. Well, then, come to me once, he said, his head turning suddenly at the thought of losing her. And for a second or two, they looked at each other almost like enemies. That is so good. Yeah, that's so good. Because honestly, this is straight up, Dante. This is. This is Paolo and Franchesca, right? If you grasp that adulterous love and it. You're no longer loving each other, you're now enemies in the act of destroying one another.

[B]

Yeah, it's. It reveals a different side of him. I mean, she's always seen that this attraction is here, but there's an ugly side to it that is revealing itself.

[A]

And she keeps trying to tell him that we're going to hurt people. We're going to hurt people. And he gets mad at her right here. He says, why are you afraid to face our case and see it as it really is? Is he thinks she's not looking at reality, but it's really him that is not looking at reality. She sees it. She sees what this means, that if we take this decisive step, this is a death. This is the end. I must leave forever, because we can't stay in this kind of pretense. So then he goes back Home. And he says he looked about at the familiar objects in the hall as if he viewed them from the other side of the grave. I mean, this is just like the relics in the museum. His own house. House looks like that to him.

[B]

He realized that someday he will be merely a. Some. A prop and an exhibition.

[A]

And then, weirdly, his wife walks in, extremely chipper. And we don't find out why until later, but she's super chipper. And he's like, oh, oh. She says, I'm sorry I'm so late. He says, oh, are you late? She says, oh, you must have fallen asleep. I've been gone for ages. Oh, where have you been? I've been with Ellen. We had a lovely long talk.

[B]

Oh, yes.

[A]

Been ages since we talked. So, of course, we find out later that Ellen that May. Okay, so this is where I think, yeah, she is way more calculating. Again, not trying to portray as a.

[B]

Bad guy, feminine strategies at her disposal. Yeah.

[A]

A wife to fight for her husband. That, as my husband is well aware, that would not be my strategy. I would not fight for a man who wanted to.

[B]

You wouldn't subtly say, oh, and make sure you see Ellen when you go.

[A]

No, you. You're well aware of the directness of that you have married. No, no, no, no. I. I would not be calculating behind your back and maneuver. I would simply murder you in your bed. So there. Everyone knows.

[B]

Now, I'll sleep well tonight.

[A]

Or you could just have a clean conscience. But what she does here is lie to Ellen and tell her she's pregnant. And that forces Ellen's hand.

[B]

Well, she's not sure she's pregnant. Isn't that right?

[A]

Not until three weeks later.

[B]

Not until later. Yeah. So, okay, maybe she's lying.

[A]

Yeah, maybe she doesn't know for sure. So she's potentially lying. She's playing the trump card. In fact, at one point, Newland Archer says to himself, thinking about his plan with Ellen, that he's got the trump card. And I wrote in the margin, oh, no, my dear. May has the trump card. Right. So she.

[B]

I was gonna say when she finally tells Newland that she's expecting to have a child. It's interesting. Wharton's writing this in 1920, roughly, that she still can't use the word pregnant. That's still not quite.

[A]

No, I don't think. You mean the narrator doesn't. Yeah, but I think the scene. So I read an article that suggested that part of what she's doing with keeping so much of the narrative vague is that she's helping A modern reader to understand that everything's underneath the surface.

[B]

No, that's right. It does. It does help us just enter the world. Imagine.

[A]

Yeah. And the point is, May, a woman in 1870 wouldn't have said that to her husband.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

Just blushes and says, I don't know if the doctor will let me. You know, if you're in a Victorian novel, you say, well, my confinement might be upon me, but. But May, I mean, honestly, who saw this coming? May goes and confronts Ellen and says, I'm gonna have a baby. And Ellen immediately goes into self sacrifice mode. It's not like they had any kind of like confrontation or, you know, amazing. I know you, my husband. Nothing, nothing like that. She just dropped.

[B]

Not going to be that woman. Yeah.

[A]

She drops the bombshell and then that's it. Ellen. There's no way Ellen is going to threaten this family. No way. And so she packs up and leaves. And May knows before Newland does. And so. But she comes in all happy because she won. She says, oh, it was a really, really good talk. Talk. And then in that scene, they become a Newlin and May come. Come so close to being real with each other. It's so close. Like he realizes there's something going on. There's more than what you're saying. And. And he wants her. I think he wants her to just blurt out, look, I know there's something going on. Let's have a real marriage. Let's have a talk. He became aware of the same obscure effort in her. Her. The same reaching out towards something beyond the usual range of her vision. She hates Ellen, he thought, and she's trying to overcome the feeling and to get me to help her to overcome it. The thought moved him, and for a moment he was on the point of breaking the silence between them and throwing himself on her mercy. You understand, don't you? She went on, why the family have sometimes been annoyed. And you go down a few lines. Ah, said Archer with an impatient laugh. The open door had closed between them again. Because she just falls back on the convention. All right, 32, they're back at the opera. And it's Faust again.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Oh, that was so good. F again. And it's very different from him now because he's the one who's fallen into the trap. He's the torn person. He is the one who was potentially willing to sell his soul to get this woman. And he makes an excuse to leave. Did you catch what May is wearing?

[B]

I'm. I must have overlooked it.

[A]

Her Wedding dress.

[B]

Oh, yes. Oh, no, I did notice that. Yes. Which gets mud on it.

[A]

So she's wearing her wedding dress, which is not as weird as it might sound to us. And their narrator actually does point out that at the time, that was.

[B]

That was still done. That's so interesting.

[A]

People didn't wear. People back then didn't wear, like, the big, fancy white dresses. You just wore a really nice dress. And so you would wear it again, but she hadn't been wearing it. But that night at her victory, she. Right. This is the moment of her victory. She has. She has vanquished her foe and she's wearing the wedding dress. And then when he leaves early and she goes after him, she tears it and muddies it. I mean, boom, with the symbolism. Right? Just like what he is threatening to do is to tear this marriage bond and to muddy this marriage, this, with what he's thinking of doing. It's so good. And it's so funny, too, because he looks over before this happens when it's just in the opera. And he looks over at her, he thinks to himself, oh, she looks exactly like that same innocent girl. But she's not, right. It's just a pretense. And he can't really see it. So he goes back home and he thinks, okay, I'm going to do it. I'm going to tell her about May. And so he. He says. He starts the conversation. She holds up her hands and. And she says the very cryptic, what use does it do to talk about it now? It's all over now. And he's like, what? And she said, well, Ellen's leaving. Granny gave her an allowance and she's going to live in France. And he's shocked because he didn't know. And then he ends up having a maniacal laugh again, exactly like he did when he had gotten the telegraph. So how do you interpret the laughter?

[B]

I thought it was sardonic, I guess.

[A]

Is it almost like he feels like he's trapped by fate?

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

That's how I'm taking it.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

No, I don't mean, like, I guess I. I don't mean, like, literally. Do you think he's happy laughing? No, it's. It's a bitter laugh.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I just meant how do you interpret these scenes?

[B]

Yeah, I think. As you did.

[A]

Yeah. That he feels trapped by fate.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

Every. Every. But honestly, what it is, is. Is that May has outmaneuvered him in every move.

[B]

She kind of has, hasn't she?

[A]

Okay, 33. This is the big farewell dinner. For Ellen. Oh, man, what a scene. What a scene. And here we see that May is the Archer and she has caught. She has caught her prey. It's during that dinner and he's thinking to himself, I'm gonna leave. She's gonna leave and I'm gonna go follow her. And he's foolishly saying things like, I think I might want to have a world around the world trip. And then it suddenly dawns on him. The entire family thinks he is in an adulterous relationship with Ellen Alinska. That is the irony. He's being accused of something he actually hasn't done. And so the whole family has instantly bonded together on the side of May, the wife, the injured wife. And they have ousted Ellen and they are letting Newland Archer know that they know, know. And as one commentary I read said, and I thought this was very well stated, New York is the kind of society, again, to avoid the scandal that the family being there is let. Is signaling a lot of things to him. They're signaling, we know this is going on. We have put an end to it. And of course, we don't actually know that this is going on. We would never know this. This is. This. The suggestion wouldn't even pass our head. Right. It's. It's basically them saying, we're all complicit here. We know what's going on, but we're going to act like we don't know what's going on. And that's one of those things where, again, it rubs us. I'm not saying I want to live in a society with these kinds of pretenses. That would be hard on me personally. But can I see the value of creating a situation in which this marriage can be repaired? Because there hasn't been a scene and there hasn't been a scandal and we're all going to act like we didn't know. And so they can just carry on like there, there, there's an advantage to that. I mean, honestly, in my own life, I have. What was that? A church I was in? I'll just say that. Sure. That where there was a scandal over a relationship and when the wife and husband reconciled, they left the church because they couldn't. They couldn't cope with everybody knowing. Oh, yeah, right. And so I was very, very young when that happened. But it made a big impression on me that even to this day, 40 something years later, if I see them, that's the first thing that comes to my mind.

[B]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

So I can definitely see that there's a value of keeping things between parties who need to know. Perhaps.

[B]

Yeah. Discretion is one of the minor virtues which we have absolutely lost.

[A]

Right. Oh, that's a good way to put it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Bit as fake and pretense, but really it's discretion. All right, so the family maneuvers there. And they talk about May. No, no. He's reminded of little Ellen Mingot as a little girl. And I thought that that was really interesting because it fits what I said earlier. It's Ellen who's really the innocent child here, and May is much more the calculating. Yeah.

[B]

It's strange that the longer we spend with Countess Olenska, the more we realize that she does have a kind of naivety about her.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Which you don't, because when we first meet her, we think that, okay, May's the ingenue and Countess Olenska is going to be the femme fatale. But that's not really.

[A]

Right, Right. Not at all. All. Not at all. It's much more sophisticated than that. Okay. Lots of stuff in this chapter about them rejecting the foreign influence, the tribal relationship. The whole tribe rallied around his wife. Again, all that primitive language. And. Okay, so. Never had leopard so abounded in the sentiments that adorn Christian manhood and exalt the sanctity of the home.

[B]

So I love that line, right?

[A]

So this terrible hypocrite. I found myself. Yeah, he's a hypocrite. Because at the end of the scene, he's like, you know, we stand for the solidity of the home. And then it's like, if anybody asks, I've been with.

[B]

I'm at my club right now.

[A]

But again, I think it comes down to scandal. Not saying that Lefferts is right, but what Newland Archer wants to do is to leave his wife. And. And. And that's a line that. That they can't cross there. But I found myself thinking, okay, yes, I hate this man's hypocrisy, right? That he's cheating on his wife and talking about this sanctity of the home. Then I thought, well, I guess that's better than if he wasn't talking about the sanctity of the home, which is where we are now. But I digress. Okay? There's talking about some guy who is having a. An affair with his typist. They call it the typewriter, but they mean the female typist. And again, that's. That's a signaling the. The changing world. Okay, more language here. That he feels like he's in prison. Through it all, he was this is Archer. Through it all, he was dimly aware of a general attitude of friendliness toward himself, as if the guard of the prisoner he fel himself to be were trying to soften his captivity. And the perception increased his passionate determination to be free. And then he met May's triumphant eyes. That's when he puts it together. Because she knows that she is the victor. She got it. He caught the glitter of victory in his wife's eyes and for the first time understood that she shared the belief. All right, and so at the end, when he's finally at the end of this chapter, he's like, okay, I'm going to tell her I'm going to leave. And he's like, I'm going to Europe. She's like, oh, you can't, can't, dear, because blink, blink. The doctor won't let me. And that's when it. It hits him. That's it. He's trapped. He's not going anywhere. And. And Ellen has again sacrificed herself without even a second thought. Doesn't hesitate, doesn't have a conversation with him. She just flees. Basically. She flees temptation.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. It's interesting that so many, really almost everything, all the character defining choices that are made in this book are really only known to the person who makes them into a very, in some cases, a select set of others. Yeah, but yeah, I mean, it's. There's no action is trumpeted either for good or evil in this last line.

[A]

In this chapter when he catches her out and says, wait a minute, you talked to her three weeks ago, but you just said you didn't know for sure until this morning. And she laughs and says, no, I wasn't sure then, but I told her that I was. And you see, I was right. So it ends with him knowing. Wow. She. She maneuvered to get rid of Ellen. She played the card, the only card she had, really. All right, chapter 34. We fast forward 26 years. What a fantastic chapter.

[B]

Yeah, this is the. Honestly, this is the crown of the book for me. I think this was better than any other part.

[A]

All right, well, tell us what you were thinking.

[B]

Well, it's. You see, first of all that even though the children. And we only really know the one of them.

[A]

Dallas.

[B]

Dallas Archer. Which sounds like a name of a country musician rather than a New York aristocrat.

[A]

But the last name was Dallas.

[B]

Yeah, I know, I know, but still as a first name. Yeah. Yes, he's his parents son, but he's more independent and he's. You also get the impression less concerned with appearances and proprieties than certainly than his father was and his. And his mother. And even though Newland Archer is. He's not even really an old man. I mean he's in his 50s now.

[A]

57.

[B]

57.

[A]

So yeah. Young strapping lad.

[B]

Well, I mean, you know the.

[A]

No, in 1895, a 57 year old man is.

[B]

It was older than it is now. But I mean he's not. He's not an antique yet. Nonetheless, though, he's become really just kind of a spectator and a survival of a world which. Of whose passing he is increasingly aware.

[A]

Yes. Lots of comments in here about the new world and the things that are lost. As we said before though, I love her soft touch here and how he says. But there were some good things about the old and there were some good things about the new.

[B]

Yeah. He doesn't. No one seems to have grown embittered because of some. Something that didn't go their way or some sacrifice that they felt compelled to make. And the fact that he didn't go down a road which would have been disastrous for him has kind of paid off in a way.

[A]

It has. And in fact he says that his devotion to the memory of Ellen is what kept him faithful to his wife. Why he never went after any other men. So he was a faithful husband.

[B]

Any other women? I mean, other men also, I guess.

[A]

Other women. Sorry. Other women. Women.

[B]

I gotcha.

[A]

Yeah. And. Oh, I. I lost my train of thought. But he's reflecting on his life and he basically concludes, while I didn't make much of a splash, feel like I've had a decent life.

[B]

No, no. That much more to be grateful for than. Than not.

[A]

And. And so tell us about. You said you were reading an article that was making the claim that they thought Wharton is being like bitter. Yeah.

[B]

It's said that Wharton weaponized her knowledge of New York upper crust society against that world. That this book is really kind of an edged weapon.

[A]

Yeah. And I don't see that at all.

[B]

I don't see that at all. She's not taking a scalpel to the world around her or if she does, it's very. Yeah, a very gentle act of surgery. I don't know.

[A]

Made the point earlier today to me that this is more like. She's more like a documentarian than a commenter.

[B]

Oh yeah.

[A]

Like just here's this world and it doesn't exist anymore. Almost like what they do at the museum, looking under glass at the relics. This is what she. She's showing us the relics of this Society.

[B]

But no, I, I, I didn't think that she had any kind of. It's not a juvenile scorched earth satire with you know, everything being sort of bitterly dragged out and every ugly.

[A]

If it was, we'd see Newland Archer being bitter at the, the end of this book and it's not.

[B]

Yeah. You know, overwhelmed with a sense of failure and I mean, and you could say that yeah, in a sense. I mean he's, there's some practical failures in his life. He, he never really amounted to much as a politician. It said he served one term in the New York State assembly and then wasn't reelected. So yeah, I mean he's not the sort of person who's ever going to have a statue of himself in Washington Square. But yeah, it's still a life much favored by circumstance.

[A]

And so he thinks of Ellen and, and he thinks basically you can't go back again. And then he thinks of his wife and we find out she's dead. And then there's this line their long years together had showed him that did not so much matter if marriage was a dull duty as long as it kept the dignity of a duty lapsing from that it became a mere battle of ugly appetites. That's a great line. It's also a very good line looking about him. He honored his own path past and mourned for it. After all there was good in the old ways. And it said that when May died he honestly mourned her. So we don't have a picture of a man who's embittered against his wife or angry about the road he, he traveled. It is what it is and, and you can't go back. But he still holds on to some of the antiques like his East Lake table. But his children are very much of the new way and kind of tease him and there's all this new technology. So he has long distance phone calls calls and is kind of blown away by that.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

When it described his daughter as large waisted and flat chested I thought I might need to explain what that is. It means she doesn't have a corset on.

[B]

Ah, okay.

[A]

Okay. Because it's the corset that made may have a 20 a 20 inch waist and the corset would have drawn more attention to the chest of the lady. So the 19 the fashions now it's.

[B]

More Gibson girl stuff I believe is the first.

[A]

There you go. You can always count on the French for having a great term for, for yeah things like for that an emphasized bosom but anyway, she's, she's not wearing a corset or at least not wearing the same type of corset because this would have been if this is like 1900, this is Gibson girl time. This would have been the age of the, the committee for Sensible dress of women. And Oscar Wilde was part of that, remember?

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Okay. So. So it's that kind of stuff. So the world has changed. It's now we have five day Atlantic voyages. We have electric lighting. You know, the future is now. What had once seemed the, the purview of Jules Verne is now the reality. And then his son surprises him and says dad, let's go to France. And they go and we.

[B]

And he hasn't traveled much at all.

[A]

Yeah, he didn't travel much. And the one time May, sort of May didn't want to go anywhere other than Newport, like she's a, she's a girl.

[B]

But they did the traditional kind of old fashioned.

[A]

Yeah, they did go to France. And it's almost like she tested him with that saying, you can go to France for two weeks. And he says no, we'll stick it out together. And she beams at him. Yeah, so it this, I don't think we are to see Newland Archer as a man who is pining for Ellen Olenska. Oh no, he's, he's moved on with his life.

[B]

He doesn't even the prospect of seeing her again doesn't seem really to excite.

[A]

Him because I think part of the it as he realized he went on with her life and she likely went on with hers too. So unbeknownst to him, his son says his son arranges with Matt that they meet animalistic.

[B]

Hey, Mom's old cousin, you know.

[A]

Oh come on, dad, isn't she the girl you were madly in love with? And he's like, wait. I say, he's like, come on, everybody knew. Mom knew. Mom told me. And he's shocked. So we find out that the J before May die when she's on her deathbed of pneumonia. She tells him, Dallas, you, we, you we can trust your father because he.

[B]

Once gave up the thing he wanted.

[A]

Most because I asked. And then all Newing can do is whisper. She never asked. And he said of course not because you guys never talked about anything.

[B]

Right? That's a great scene. That's a great scene.

[A]

It's a fantastic scene.

[B]

I love how quietly this book ends.

[A]

It's just. Oh, it's so fantastic. And so they go to France and Dallas says, come on dad, you know, here we are, let's go up. And he says, I'm just going to sit here for a minute. And he's like, but you're going to come up, right, dad? And he said, I don't know that I will. And what should I tell her? Oh, you'll think of something. Just tell her I'm old fashioned. And he sits there and he starts thinking and he starts thinking about her and the life. They moved on. More than half a lifetime divided them. And she had spent the long interval among people that he did not know in a society he but faintly guessed at in conditions he would never wholly understand. During that time he had been living with his youthful memory of her. And so he sits there and he thinks, and just like he said earlier in the book, right, he sits outside and he imagines her life inside side. It's more real to me here than if I went up, he suddenly heard himself say. And the fear lest that the last shadow of reality should lose its edge kept him rooted to his seat as the minutes succeeded each other. And then the servant comes out and turns down, pulls up the, the awnings and closes the shutters. At that, as if it had been the signal he waited for, Newland Archer got up slowly and walked back alone to his hotel. That is so good. That is so good.

[B]

That's really good.

[A]

The closed shutters, the closed door. So again, here's the thing. If you are reading this as some kind of love triangle, you're going to find that very unsatisfying as an ending.

[B]

Yeah, but seriously.

[A]

But if you read it as a parable of America, then you can't go back again. That, you know, the, the world has changed, that world doesn't exist anymore and you can't go, you can't go back to, to it. One critic I read and I thought this was, was nicely put.

[B]

One is you can't go home again by Thomas. That must be within 10 years of this. Maybe 10 years after, maybe 15 years.

[A]

Yeah, but I love that it said that Wharton leaves their relationship unconsummated even at the ending. Like, you know.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And, and I, I, I think we are, I think she does again.

[B]

Like you could imagine, you could imagine like some bad modern writer, you know, having him go up and saying, I just know, needed to get closure here. Some corny thing like, God, I hate.

[A]

You had me at hello.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Because it's not about that. I mean, I think if you, if you're obsessed about the, the love triangle thing and you're reading it that way, then it will be very, like I said, very unsatisfying because there. There's nothing to stop them. There is no moral issue. There's no reason they couldn't be together now except that the world has changed, they're changed, and you can't go back again. And I. I guess I sort of feel his attempting to go back and rekindle something with her is. Is symbolically the same thing as trying to go back to 1870s New York. Like it doesn't exist any.

[B]

Trying to reheat a souffle.

[A]

There you go. There you go. And I think you're completely right. I think she's like a documentarian. I think she has given us a picture of a society. It's good things, it's bad things. Things kind of without judgment, just laying it all out there and then showing us that it's over and that loss. Some good things have. Have been lost. Like, like. Like in every time that's passed and there. But also, she doesn't show Newland Archer, like, being bitter that the future has come and kids today, because he could say, no, there's. There's. There's good things today. I'm very different than Dallas. Dallas can't imagine the world I live in. I can't imagine the world. World he lives in. Leffert's prediction that, you know, if society doesn't hold on to its mores, one day we'll be watching our children marry the illegitimate children of Beaufort is exactly what happens.

[B]

Exactly what happens. Yes.

[A]

Happens. And no one bats an eye out. It's not even an issue anymore. The things that were issues to destroy people in the 1870s are not even a blip anymore.

[B]

There's definitely been a change in a liberalization of certain standards.

[A]

And he says that his son announced the engagement fully expecting that everyone was going to accept it. Like, it didn't even. He didn't even think that there could be an issue. And. But, But Newland doesn't just throw caution to the wind at the end and say, I'm a modern man and I'm liberated. Like it. He. It is what it is. The time I live in is the time I live in. And I have made the best of it that I could in this time that had both good things and bad things in it. I think considering, you know, what I know about her life story, there's a remarkable amount of graciousness in Edith Wharton, as she.

[B]

Oh, I should say so, yeah. I think there's a kind of serenity in the narration that is really remarkable for someone who actually was a citizen of this world and not the happiest one also in some of her experiences.

[A]

So I'd said in the first episode that this book has been called the Parable of America. And I still see that at the end here. And it's a parable without a ton of comment. Just, you know, here it is, here's the society, and here's. Here's what it did. And another. And I mean, another symbolic level, of course, is that Ellen Olinska, with all her foreignness at the end of the book, Nulin, is. He's not looking for that foreign influence either anymore. He has accepted the life that he had.

[B]

No. He knows of what world he is a member and of what world he is not.

[A]

Right. And he's not bitter about it. And it's. He's not angry, presumably, she's happy and he would rather just hold on to the. To the youthful. The youthful memory. And I think it also echoes back a little bit to the love they have for each other. If it had been consummated, would have not been the thing anyway.

[B]

No, it would have soured. Yeah, would have soured them, probably.

[A]

Right. Right. So he's accepted her for the role she played in his life, but isn't. Isn't trying to. To rekindle that. I thought it was a wonderful book and a wonderful ending. No, you.

[B]

You redeemed this one for me.

[A]

I had forgotten so much about it. Makes me want to reread all her books. I. I have a lot of respect for her. What a great command of the pen she has.

[B]

Oh, yeah, just.

[A]

I have a lot of respect for lighters, writers who have a light touch. I feel like I'm the opposite of a light touch. So I think I. I think I respect writers that have a light touch, have that kind of. Of restraint in their. In their writing.

[B]

Your narration would be more antique, I think.

[A]

Yes, more antique is. Well said. Well, I hope you guys have enjoyed this. Your series on Edith Wharton's the Age of Innocence. Next week, Atlee will be on and we will talk about the film versions of this. And I'm actually really looking forward to rewatching the film. I hope we can watch it a couple times so I can get some thoughts in order about the choices that Morton Scorsese was. Was making. I mean, just off the top of my head, they reverse the hair colors in the movie because May is blonde and Madame Olinska has brown hair, and they reverse it, and we'll talk about why I think they did that. I noticed that at the time when it came out and I thought, oh, I know what you're doing there. But yeah, come back for that. So again, head over to our Patreon if you'd like to support this podcast and you can register for Dr. Drought's webinar as well as Heather Goodman's webinar on Coleridge and Ella Hornstrass class on the Grammar of the Natural world over@huhulic houseofhumaneletters.com Check out our whole back catalog while you're there. I've really enjoyed this series. Thanks for listening with us. Stick around to the end. Mr. Banks has a special poem for you and look forward to your comments on our Patreon Forum and in our Facebook group about what you thought of Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence. Until next time, keep crafting your literary life because stories will save the world. Thank you for listening to the Literary Life Podcast brought to you by our loyal patreon sponsors. Visit HouseOfHumaneLetters.com to find Angelina and Thomas and to sign up for our newsletter with podcast schedules and more. And keep up with Cindy at morning time for me. Join the conversation at our member Only Patreon Forum or our Facebook discussion group. Visit patreon.com theliterarylife to find out how you can sponsor this podcast and get great bonus content. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review and check out our sister podcasts, the New Mason Jar and the well Read Poem. And now for a poem read by poet Thomas Banks.

[B]

Ask Me no More by Alfred Lord Tennyson Ask me no more. The moon may draw the sea, the cloud may stoop from heaven, and take the shape with fold to fold of mountain or of cape, but oh, too fond, when have I answered thee. Ask me no more. Ask me no more. What answer should I give? I love not hollow cheek or faded eye. Yet, O my friend, I will not have thee die. Ask me no more, Lest I should bid thee live. Ask me no more, ask me no more. Thy fate and mine are sealed. I strove against the stream, and all in vain Let the great river take me to the main no more, dear love, for at a touch I yield. Ask me no more.