WACE Exam Flashcards
AOI Fem - phallogocentric views of his wife (oxymoron)
“And he contemplated her absorbed young face with a thrill of possersorship in which pride in his own masculine initiation was mingled with tender reverence for her abysmal purity.”
AOI Fem - Double standard (irony in society) after looking back on his affairs
“all shared Mrs Archer’s belief that when “such things happened” it was undoubtedly foolish of the man, but somehow always criminal of the woman.”
AOI Fem - Newland’s view (simile) of May (May knows about Ellen, not as naive as he thinks)
“Her [May’s] voice was as clear as a bell, and full of wifely solitude
AOI Anthro - Contrast - referred to connotatively as ‘tribes’
“New York, as far back as the mind of man could travel, had been divided into two great fundamental groups of the Mingotts and Mansons and all their clan who cared about eating, clothes and money and the Archer - Newland - Van-der-Luyden tribe, who were devoted to travel and looked down on the grosser forms of pleasure.”
AOI Anthro - Evolution theory (metaphor of women)
“Kentucky cave fish, which had ceased to develop eyes because they had no use for them”
AOI Dom - Imagery of society evolving - retains primitive elements if useful (survival)
“The New York of Newland Archer’s day was a small and slippery pyramid, in which, as yet, hardly a fissure had been made or a foothold gained.”
AOI Anthro - allusion to tribal ways
“What was or was not “the thing” played a part as important in Newland Archer’s New York as the inscrutable totem terrors that had ruled the destinies of his forefathers thousands of years ago. “
AOI Dom - the worst thing to Newland
“Few things seemed to Newland Archer more awful than an offense against “Taste,” that far-off divinity of whom “Form” was the mere visible representative and viceregent.”
AOI Dom - Juxtaposition/contradictory - with people to be lonely
“Does no one want to know the truth here, Mr Archer? The real loneliness is living among all these people who ask one to pretend”
AIH Societal shift - Sir Robert Chiltern’s modernist views
“No one should be entirely judged by their past”
AIH Societal shift - Lady Chiltern’s absolute Victorian morality
“ones past is the what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged.”
AIH Societal shift - Alliteration of Robert’s small cheating
“The philosophy of power, preached to us the most marvellous of all gospels, the gospel of gold.”
AIH Critique of upperclass - Lady Chiltern is the embodiment of her society - views of husband
“Robert is as incapable of doing a foolish thing as he is of doing a wrong thing.”
AIH Different forms of marriage - Fashionable
“[Genially.] Ah, nowadays people marry as often as they can, don’t they? It is most fashionable.”
AOI Christospiritual - allusion to bible - Ellen thinks heaven
"”I’m sure I’m dead and buried, and this dear place is heaven” which for reasons he could not define, struck Newland Archer as an even more disrespectful way of describing New York society.”
