quotes on contrasting regions

Question 1

quote on contesting regions (Ellens education)

Answer 1

‘the girl received an expensive but incoherent education, which included “drawing from the model,” a thing never dreamed of before, and playing the piano in quintets with professional musicians’. (chapter 8)

Question 2

quote on contarsting regions
(complete American again)

Answer 2

‘That’s why I came home. I want to forget everything else, to become a complete American again, like the […] all the other good people here tonight” (chapter 8)

Ellen associates being American with goodness and simplicity. Little does she know how spiteful and manipulative some of her family members are… dun dun dun.

Question 3

quote on contrasring regions (telescope)

Answer 3

‘Viewed thus, as through the wrong end of a telescope, it looked disconcertingly small and distant; but then from Samarkand it would.’ (9.53)

This quote could also be read alongside the theme of “Dreams, Hopes, and Plans.” Ellen’s comments make Archer look at American society through the lens of a European.

Question 4

quote on contrasting regions (republican distinctions)

Answer 4

‘but it’s hopeless to expect people who are accustomed to the European courts to trouble themselves about our little republican distinctions. The Duke goes where he’s amused.” (10.85)

Mr. van der Luyden seems oblivious to the fact that “our little republican distinctions” goes against the whole America-is-equality thing. Ironically, it is the Americans who criticize an English nobleman about his inability to respect class differences.

Question 5

quote on contrasting regions (the Italian lakes)

Answer 5

‘They had not gone to the Italian Lakes; on reflection, Archer had not been able to picture his wife in that particular setting. Her own inclination (after a month with the Paris dressmakers) was for mountaineering in July and swimming in August. (chapter 20)

May tries to stay as American as she can on her honeymoon in Europe. She focuses on engaging in sports she could easily enjoy in America, rather than socializing with Europeans or experiencing new cultures.

Question 6

quote on contrasting regions (his wifes way)

Answer 6

‘his wife’s way of showing herself at her ease with foreigners was to become more uncompromisingly local in her references’ CHAPTER 20

Question 7

quote on contrasting regions (unthinkable, your kind)

Answer 7

”“[Countess Olenska’s] an American. And that if you’re an American of her kind— of your kind —things that are accepted in certain other societies, or at least put up with as part of a general, convenient give-and-take —become unthinkable, simply unthinkable […]” (Chapter 25)

Rivière, the French secretary to Count Olenska, recognizes how American Ellen Olenska has become. Like other Americans in her social circle, she has also become morally uncompromising, and won’t put up with the Count’s behavior.

Question 8

quote on contrasting reigons(gallery to gallery)

Answer 8

‘For an hour or more he wandered from gallery to gallery through the dazzle of afternoon light, and one by one the pictures burst on him in their half-forgotten splendor, filling his soul with the long echoes of beauty.’ (Chapter 34)

Twenty-six years later, Archer finds himself in the Louvre. Interestingly, the last time he saw Ellen was in another museum, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, where they talked in a room filled with Roman antiquities.