Age of Innocence Fem. Quotes Flashcards
1
Q
Quotes on marriage
A
- Archer will be May’s ‘soul custodian’ (soul=sole)
- ‘foolish of the man, but somehow always criminal of the woman’
- ‘Madame Olenska would be better off an unhappy wife than as a separated one’
- ‘reverts to all his old inherited ideas about marriage’
2
Q
Quotes on New and Old Women
A
- ‘Contrary Depictions of the New Woman – Sevinc Elaman-Garner Ellen=new, May=old
- May: ‘abysmal purity’, ‘whiteness, radiance [and] goodness’ ‘shy interest for books … under [Archers] guidance’
- Ellen: ‘stirred up old settled convictions and set them drifting dangerously through his mind’ ‘Women should be free’ (however he later goes against this), she calls the Van der Lydens house ‘gloomy’ and asks ‘disconcerting questions’
- Hermione Lee- ‘it is the women in Wharton who have to suffer betrayal and social punishment’
3
Q
Quotes on Archer
A
- ‘she doesn’t even guess what it’s all about’
- ‘with a thrill of possessorship’
- ‘women ought to be free, free as we are’
- ‘masculine New York’
- ‘Archer had reverted to all his old inherited ideas about marriage… There was no use in trying to emancipate a wife who had not the dimmest notion that she was not free’
