Study Guide for Important Book Quotes from The Age of Innocence

These important quotes from Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence can help your understanding in the themes based in the novel.
Quote: '. . . in metropolises it absolutely was 'not the thing' to come early on the opera; and the fact that was or wasn't 'the thing' played a component as important in Newland Archer's New York because inscrutable totem terrors that had ruled the destinies of his forefathers millenia ago." (Book One, Chapter 1)
Analysis: This quote explains very early in the text quite role that society and its particular rules may play in the novel. The lives of those that are a part with the upper crust of New York society are governed by a set of conventions, which dictate everything from what one wears to where one would go to how early one arrives at the opera. Everyone knows the guidelines, and everyone is watching to ensure that they are honored. This is a system that has been around for generations, as there are much because system that Newland find comforting. Eventually Newland arrive to question these rules, but he's never capable of walk away from them entirely. He and his awesome generation will continue to be caught up in these arbitrary restrictions. However, the next generation will ultimately toss them aside to be unimportant.




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Quote: "The persons of their world lived in the atmosphere of faint implications and pale delicacies, cheap he and she understood each other without a word did actually the son to bring them nearer than any explanation would've done." (Book 1, Chapter 2)
Analysis: One in the things that attracts Newland to May Welland is the fact they originated the same background. They were raised in the same social circle and understand its mores. He feels that common background draws them together. It is also part of what makes Newland think May is the ideal woman to become his wife. While this common bond is surely an attraction to Newland, during the course in the book, he starts to feel he needs more. His infatuation with Ellen brings him into exposure to a woman not the same as May, one who was raised outside of the social circle. This causes her to get more independent than May, both emotionally and intellectually. In the end, however, May is capable to use the common bond of society and its particular expectations to keep Newland within the marriage.




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Quote: "In reality each will lived in the kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was not ever said or done or perhaps thought, but only represented by the set of arbitrary signs . . . . " (Book One, Chapter 6)
Analysis: This is one in the more often cited lines from the book. The line explains how it's like to live inside New York culture ones May and Newland were members. It was like a secret society where merely the members knew the policies, that had been unwritten and unspoken. That is what caused it to be so difficult for somebody like Ellen to get accepted these days. She was an outsider who would never know or understand the guidelines and so was constantly breaking them. Also, this made it easy for her to be pushed out of the society when she was regarded as a threat.
Quote: "He shivered a little, remembering some with the new ideas as part of his scientific books, and also the much-cited instance in the Kentucky cave-fish, that have ceased to formulate eyes simply because they had no use for them. What if, when he had bidden May Welland to open hers, they can only look out blankly at blankness?" (Book One, Chapter 10)
Analysis: Newland has always wanted being capable of open May's eyes around the world. He had wanted a wife he could mold, intellectually and emotionally. He had wished to introduce her to things that were imperative that you him, for example art, travel, and literature. However, it really is occurring to him that May most likely are not as pliable because he thinks in addition to being open to being a different type of woman. Newland is suddenly confronted with the idea that May just isn't as capable of change because he has imagined her to be, and he starts to believe that she may turn in to a carbon copy of her mother, who plays beautifully the role from the perfect society wife. Of course, he has been foolish to adore a girl within the hopes of changing her, but he's got held onto a type of male arrogance which includes led him to believe it really is his duty to 'form" his wife into his preferred image.
Quote: "There were certain things which in fact had to be done, and if done in any way, done handsomely and thoroughly; the other of these in the old New York code, was the tribal rally around a kinswoman about to become eliminated from your tribe." (Book 2, Chapter 33)
Analysis: Here the ability and unity from the New York society is illustrated as the people come together to say goodbye to Ellen as she returns to Europe. May provides the societal rules that she has been raised so that you can protect her marriage and Newland. She knows he'll not leave her once he realizes jane is pregnant, which Ellen wouldn't normally let him even consider doing such a thing. She is able to rally the other members with their society around her and push out Ellen, as Newland sees throughout the farewell social gathering that May insists on hosting on her behalf cousin. At this same time, Newland realizes that everyone believes she has been disloyal with Ellen, and they're WhatsApp Girls eager to eliminate her to be able to restore social normalcy. Ironically, it really is not the fact that he was unfaithful to May that would've been a difficulty. It is always that he was considering leaving her for another woman.