Rereading Wharton's "Poor Archer": A Mr.

"Might-have-been" in "The Age of Innocence"

Author(s): Emily J. Orlando
Source: American Literary Realism, 1870-1910, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Winter, 1998), pp. 56-76
Published by: University of Illinois Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27746727 .
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"Poor Archer":

Rereading Wharton's

A Mr.

"Might-have-been"

in The Age ofInnocence

Emily J.Orlando
.. .he had built
up within himself a kind of sanctuary inwhich
she throned among his secret thoughts and longings. Little by
little it became the scene of his real life, of his only rational
activities; thither he brought the books he read, the ideas and
feelings which nourished him, his judgments and his visions.
?Edith Wharton, The Age ofInnocence1
Under the arch of Life, where love and death,
Terror and mystery, guard her shrine, I saw
Beauty enthroned; and though her gaze struck awe,
I drew it in as simply as my breath.
?Dante
Gabriel Rossetti, The House

ofLife2

Reading The Age ofInnocence,most critics forgiveNewland Archer his

predilection for abstract, "enthroned" beauty and ignoreWharton's critique
of him as a voracious but inept reader.3 R. W. B. Lewis, lamenting New
land's inability to realize his grande passion for theCountess Olenska, refers
to him as "poor Archer."4 Cynthia GriffinWolff, reading the book as a
Bildungsroman,

claims

that Archer

learns

the

same

lessons

as Goethe's

Meister: "acceptance of 'reality' and dedication to generativity";

according toWolff's encomium, Archer has been a "victim of [Society's]

Wilhelm

well-mannered

brutalities"

and

is

by the close

of the novel

"a man

with himself."5 Jeanne Boydston sees Archer emerging as a model

who

after his wife's

death

"becomes

an emblem

56

of motherhood,...

at

peace

citizen
a

clearly

57

Essays (Orlando)
and

sympathetic

victorious

character."61

wish

on

to argue

the contrary

that

Wharton's Archer has been misread. Rather than a victor, a kind of hero,
Newland Archer is a failed man. Wharton's
"Archer" is much like the
"wooden Cupid" atop theNewport summer-house "who had lost his bow
and arrow but continued to take ineffectual aim" (225). An inept Sagittar
ian, he is indeed a "poor archer" in a sense not consciously implied by Lewis'
remark.

That Wharton wants us to view Archer in this particular way

gested by the "study guides" with which she equips her reader.We
lot about a person from the books he keeps, and especially thosewith
he ismost smitten. "Unshelving" Archer's library helps us arrive at
accurate

than

reading

the aforementioned

critics

offer. Several

is sug
learn a
which
a more

readers

have

paid heed toArcher's passion for anthropological books and scientific stud
ies;7 the novel itselfhas been likened to an "autopsy"8 of an age past.What
we have not seen is an
in-depth focus on theworks of "high literature" that
Newland

consumes.

Archer

While

many

authors

cameo

make

appearances

in his library,
Wharton's protagonist is especially takenwith Dante Gabriel
Rossetti. Rossetti's sonnet sequence, The House ofLife (1870), in the tra
dition of so many of the books Archer reads, offershim a fantasyworld?
a glimpse at "the beautiful things that could not
possibly happen in real
life"; such texts in turn informArcher's reading of theworld around him

(146).

is a

But Archer

him as such; Ellen

and, what

reader

lousy

and May

is more,

they

read

and Wharton's

women

expose

continually

succeed in collapsing his readings of them

him more

than

accurately

he

reads

himself.

Archer reads Ellen Olenska at times as a "Madame X" figure, ultimately

as "some imaginary beloved in a book or a
picture" (347). He interprets
as the "artless" virgin, a "blameless" wife
sur
May Weiland
incapable of
In all cases,

him.

prising

he

reads

these women

as

types;

further,

the atten

tion he pays to their "paleness" underscores the lifelessness he attributes to

them. By contrast, the books Ellen Olenska reads help her to analyze New
landArcher; her acquaintance with works of French naturalism?novels
of
disenchantment which offer a "slice of life"?helps her to detect the signs
ofArcher's "reading disability." She recognizes his status as a failed vision
ary,

very

Having
is
Archer

unwise

consistently
consequently

(227). Having
his

private,

romantic.

misread
the

"man

these women
to whom

read Ellen as a vision?an

carefully-constructed

and misconstrued
nothing

was

ever

himself,
to

happen"

ideal beloved who reigns high in

"sanctuary"?it

follows

that he

never

can

be united with her, for such an object is necessarily inaccessible. Had he

not deluded himself intomisreading both Ellen andMay?had
he looked,
as Olenska asks, "not at visions, but at realities" (289)?he would perhaps
not know the "vain regret"9 to which Rossetti gives voice in his sonnet
sequence.

58

American

Literary

Realism

30,2

.. .he had come up to his

library and shut himself in.10
Newland Archer, self-professed 1870s dilettante, prides himself on
being more well-versed in the literary arts than the other members of his
set: "In matters intellectual and artistic Newland Archer felt himself dis
tinctly the superior of these chosen specimens of old New York gentility"
(8). As a newly-married man, Archer observes the ritual of "arranging his
... had been carried out as he had dreamed" (206). It is
new
library,which
the one room that he has decorated himself and he can often be found there
with his head "buried ... in his book" (296). In a telling exchange with her
mother, May explains Archer's habits by remarking that "when there's noth
ing particular to do he reads a book" (222). For Archer, his library has
always been his refuge.
And what kinds of reading does he do there?Archer, like Ellen Olen
ska, reads the work of French authors?even writers who are linked with
the

school.

naturalist

works,

opting

But

he

not

does

for their more

instead

read

romantic

their

so-called

stories.

For

"naturalistic"

instance,

he

stocks

his librarywith Alphonse Daudet, who was for a time a leading natural
ist; but Archer reads "Daudet's brilliant tales" starringTartarin, a quixotic
character known fordeluding himselfwith his own fictions (138). The simi
lar vein of self-deception running throughArcher's character explains his
attraction

sometimes

to

the

book.

classed

Archer

as a naturalist;

also

reads

Balzac

but Archer

like Daudet,

who,

the author's

chooses

was

fanciful

tales ("a volume of the 'Contes Drolatiques'")

crafted in the tradition of
is
with
the works of French
Rabelais
Archer
taken
(84). Additionally,
is toArcher "one
Romantic writer M?rim?e: a particular text ofM?rim?e's
of his inseparables" (102). In a similar fashion, Archer cannot "separate"
himself from his romantic inclinations, his pursuit of the ideal.
Archer's fascination with the ideal explains his attachment to the art
of Renaissance Italy. Itmakes sense that he is drawn to the glorification of

man

that was

basic

to the Renaissance?not

the

imperfect,

but

instead

struggle for perfection. Archer reads all thewriters of his day who treat the
Renaissance;

he was,

for

instance,

on Ruskin,

raised

who

writes

in Stones

are themost useless:

ofVenice that "the most beautiful things in theworld
with Archer's
coincides
and
for
instance."11
This
lilies,
peacocks
principle
line of thinking, for he is enamored with beauty for its own sake.12Archer
likewise enjoys Vernon Lee ("Euphorion")13 and JohnAddington Symonds,
whose main work isRenaissance inItaly.A considerable fan ofWalter Pater,
Archer reads his "wonderful new volume called 'The Renaissance'"
(69)
which voices the idea that life ismodeled on the experience of art, "each
mind keeping as a solitary prisoner its own dream of a world."14 So much
like Archer,

Pater

and

the members

of

the

aesthetic

movement

were

obsessed with the idealized, the not-real.

Wharton's Archer has a fondness for poetry that reaches for the ideal

59

Essays (Orlando)

and conceptualizes thewoman as a poem. For both Dante and Petrarch?

whose work Archer knows well15?the woman's role is quite fixedwhen it
comes to poetry: she is either the
or the poem itself; she is
guiding muse
never

the

artist.

Dante's

is the muse

Beatrice

while

Petrarch's

genre.

He

owns

copy,

for instance,

of "Swinburne's

is

Laura

poetry. Archer keeps himself abreast of the latest developments

'Chastelard'?

in this
just

out"

(84).16 Archer's reading of Browning and Tennyson is appropriate, given

Browning's fascination with Renaissance Italy and Tennyson's penchant for
myth and medievalism: both poets through their art escape the present day,
retreating to an age that lent to their poetry an ideal subject matter.
But no poetry book mesmerizes Archer quite like Rossetti's The House
ofLife. In a scene that grants us entrance into the chambers of his mind,
Archer, alone in his dimly-lit library,unpacks an order of books fromLon
don: awork byHerbert Spencer, the collection ofDaudet 's tales, and a copy
of Eliot's Middlemarch.17 Ever the bibliophile, Archer looks forward to "this
feast"; curiously, though, none of these books is able to hold his attention
(138). He reaches for "a small volume of verse which he had ordered because
the name had attracted him: 'The House of Life'" (138). Of the textswe
find him reading, it is the one he most enjoys, as it provides him with "an
atmosphere unlike any he had ever breathed in books" (138).Wharton's
"breathe"?in
"an
phrasing is telling: Archer wants to dwell?literally
atmosphere" that he finds in his books.
In Rossetti's sonnet sequence, the speaker mythologizes his beloved:
she is throned high, worshipped as an idol.18 Pre-Raphaelite
poet and
as
his
beloved
He
Rossetti
ethereal, dreamy-eyed.
repro
painter,
pictures
duces this type in his Pre-Raphaelite painting; studying Rossetti's render
ing of his "Blessed Damozel," we might substituteArcher for the swain on
the lower panel who gazes up at his image of the otherworldly beloved (see
plate 1). Rossetti described The House ofLife as "life representative" con
cerned with "ideal art and beauty." Archer finds the book "sowarm, so rich,
and yet so ineffably tender, that itgave a new and haunting beauty to the
most elementary of human passions. All through the night he pursued
a woman who had the
through those enchantedpages thevision of
face ofEllen
Olenska" (138, my emphasis).19 Even if
Wharton had not so clearly enun
ciated the correlation between Archer's Olenska and Rossetti's beloved, we
would detect from her description thatArcher immediately makes the link.
The

adjective

"so

rich"

recalls

anonymously sent to Ellen

setti's

verse

emits

speaks

the

yellow

(79, 117). The

to

the

roses

he

has,

more

than

once,

"haunting beauty" which Ros

phantom-like

role

to which

he

assigns

Ellen Olenska. Further, it is a "vision of a woman" that Archer chases;

because he reads Ellen as this "vision," she therefore can never be for him
a

reality.

60

American Literary Realism 30,2

Plate 1: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Blessed DamozeL (Courtesy of the Fogg Art
Museum, Harvard UniversityArt Museums, bequest ofGrenville L.Winthrop)

61

Essays (Orlando)
"Ah, I don't understand you!" (Newland

to Ellen).20

lets us watch Archer imaging Olenska as a spectacle that tit

Wharton
illates and shocks.When we first see Ellen, our image?as ever?is filtered
throughArcher's eyes;we seewhat "Newland Archer, following [Lawrence]
Lefferts's glance, sawwith surprise" (9). By recording this chain of glances,
Wharton makes apparent how great is the gap between Olenska aswoman
and Olenska as imagedwoman. Here, Ellen is rendered a work of artwith
high shock appeal: she wears "a narrow band of diamonds [in her hair].
The suggestion of this headdress, which gave her what was then called a
'Josephine look,' was carried out in the cut of the dark blue velvet gown
rather theatrically caught up under her bosom by a girdle with a large old
fashioned clasp"21 (9, my emphasis). Olenska
is simply a "wearer of this
unusual

dress,

seemed

who

unconscious

quite

itwas

of the attention

attract

ing," exposing "a littlemore shoulder and bosom thanNew York was accus
tomed to seeing" (9,14, my emphasis). Her dress is a means of expressing
herself, but her artistic sensibilities are here undermined as she herself is
as "theatrical,"

translated

and

"unusual,"

"unconscious."

By making Archer contradict this earlier reading of Ellen, Wharton

calls attention to the unreliability of his gaze; his glance is not one that
penetrates

the surface. Archer

about

the

at a van

notices,

der

Luyden

dinner,

a sureness

in the

is little that is "theatrical" or "unconscious" about Ellens

her

mysterious

of

authority

beauty,

that there

eyes: "therewas
of

carriage

the head, the movement of the eyes,which, without being in the least the
atrical, struck his as highly trained and full of a conscious power" (60-61,
my

Wharton

emphasis).

here

uses

the

same

terms

(once

"theatrical,"

now

"[not] in the least theatrical"; first "quite unconscious," finally "fullof a con
scious power") to bring to lightArcher's inability to pin down a single, valid
reading of Olenska.
Wharton
constantly directs our gaze toArcher's propensity for objec
was once so attractive that "peo
tifyingEllen. Having heard thatOlenska

ple

said

...

she

ought

to be

painted,'"

Archer

seems

to have

this

answered

call; he is happy to offerhis renderings of Ellen (58). In a scene set inOlen

ska's drawing-room, Archer absorbs the sight ofMadame Olenska decked
out in "a long robe of red velvet bordered about the chin and down the front
with glossy black fur" (104). Archer's fancy immediately carries him back
to his most recent visit to Paris; he recalls
a

portrait

new
by the

painter,

Carolus

Duran,

whose

pictures

were

the sensation of the Salon, inwhich the ladywore one of these

bold sheath-like robes with her chin nestling in fur.There was
worn in
something perverse and provocative in the notion of fur
the

evening

in a heated

drawing-room,

and

in the

combination

of a muffled throat and bare arms; but the effectwas undeniably

pleasing. (104-05)

62

Plate

American

2:

Resource,

Emile-Auguste
NY)

Carolus-Duran,

La

Dame

Literary

au Gant.

Realism

30,2

(Giraudon/Art

refers to "La Dame au Gant (Lady with the Glove),"22 by nine

Carolus-Duran
(see
teenth-century French portraitist Emile-Auguste
woman looks at the spectator; as itwas not
plate 2). In this painting, the
proper for a lady to look at the viewer from inside her frame, it is fitting
thatArcher links this image with Olenska, given the attention he pays to

Archer

63

Essays (Orlando)

Ellen's "conspicuous eyes" and her penchant forviolating codes of etiquette

(59, 62, 63). We note, however, that the gaze of Carolus-Duran's
lady is
somewhat diverted; her eyes have about them a dreamy look. Further, we
get a rather blurred image of the woman, for the picture is not sharply
the painting might be classed as more "realist" than, say,
focussed.While
Rossetti's

work,

Carolus-Duran

resisted

in favor

realism

of a more

flatter

ing style of portraiture.23Here we find a subtle alliance between Carolus

Duran the portraitist and Newland Archer the portraitist: each avoids the
world of "realism," preferring to observe life through a more romantic lens.
By introducing this painting to her own canvas,Wharton plays with
the iconic significance of hands; she makes it clear thatArcher wants to
suppress

any

in a woman's

invested

agency

hands.

Carolus-Duran's

lady

tugs at her gloved hand, playing with her fingers as if they are not pur
poseful. Archer's constant fetishizing of Ellen's hands further accounts for
his coupling herwith "Lady with theGlove": Ellen's hand is to him "a relic"
(285). In a subsequent episode inOlenska's drawing-room, Archer's "eyes
fixed on the hand inwhich she held her gloves and fan, as ifwatching to
see ifhe had the power to make her
drop them" (168).When we spy the
the
foot
of
Carolus-Duran's
glove lying by
lady,we recognize Archer's
attempt to model life on the experience of art?as if to put Pater's theory
into practice: he takes Ellen's hand, "softly unclasp[s] it, so that the gloves
and fan fell on the sofa between them" (168). There is forArcher some
thing empowering in denying her hand any usefulness. For Archer, all of
Ellen's beauty is concentrated in this hand; as he reflectson her "long pale
fingers and faintly dimpled knuckles" he muses to himself: "If itwere only
to see her hand again I should have to follow her" (334).
Worshipping her
hand in such away?and
associating Olenska with a painting thatwas "the
sensation

of the Salon"?undermines

her

spectator.24

A look at the Carolus-Duran

own

than Archer's
"Lady,"
woman

which

"doctored"

represents
is "bold,"

who

"lady" at all. Olenska,

"Madame

Sargent's

as an

position

she

agent;

is rele

office is to "please," even startle, the

gated to the role of objet d'art whose

painting shows that it is less scandalous

of Olenska.

image

and

"perverse,"

Unlike

Archer's

woman,25

matronly

Carolus-Duran's
a

captures
portrait
indeed
she is not

"provocative";

toArcher, is afemme fatale, more like John Singer

Pierre

{Mme.

Gautreau)1'?a

of

painting

a woman

who, likeArchers Olenska, is starkly pale, dark-haired, striking, and rather

worldly (see plate 3).26As "Madame X" is for Sargent, Ellen is toNewland
the

prototypical

woman

of experience.

Further,

Sargent's

"bare arms" that Archer finds so "pleasing" in Olenska;

Duran

portrait,

a more

modest

Archer's

of Olenska,
portrait
woman
who
American-born
comparison,

Wharton

may

rendering,
Sargent's
married
be

making

the arms

is an American

subject

the

sports

in the Carolus

are not
male's

exposed.
vision

Like
of an

such
By encouraging
European.
a statement
the American
about

American Literary Realism 30,2

64

UtigBfA
mm
.

' '
-, .'- - '?i'-:-.--.\tt\rfs\\* ?

llriiyiBliifisfi

'-.^:.x^:::,.,;?;!:./

Plate 3: John Singer Sargent,Madame X (Mme. Pierre Gautreau). (All rights

reserved,

The

Metropolitan

Museum

of Art)

65

Essays (Orlando)

another
fetishizing of the Europeanized American woman?yet
male
the
of
of
female
In
any case, Archer
example
objectification
subject.
thinks he has here pegged Olenska in the r?le of vixen, afemme dangereuse.
Wharton's Archer perpetuates thismyth of Olenska as a type of the
"dark lady."At first it seems as though one ofArcher's aims is to disprove
the Count's charges of Ellen's infidelities; thiswould eliminate Ellen from
the ranks of the adulterous woman, allowing him to keep his untarnished,
"enthroned" image of her intact.Archer keeps waiting forOlenska to pro
duce evidence that she is innocent of these accusations, "intensely hoping
for a flash of indignation, or at least a brief cry of denial" (110). But no such
luck: Ellen neither denies the allegations nor owns up to them. Archer

male's

reads

her

as a confession

silence

that

she

slept

with

the Count's

secretary.

ButWharton offers no evidence to support his reading and Archer never

considers that Olenska deems the charges unworthy of her rebuttal.His
assumption of her infidelities does, however, fit nicely with Archer's read
ing of Olenska as aMadame X figure.When Archer discusses with jour
nalist Ned Winsett the "dark lady" Ellen Olenska, Wharton's narrator in
a telling aside remarks thatArcher fosters "a secret
own
pic
pride in his
ture of her" (122).
Wharton
shows that, in spite of the portraits Archer serves up, Ellen
is in fact the artist. Early on we learn of Ellen's artistic bent as a child; it
is suggested that she is a pianist (59, 78). Several people pick up on Olen
ska's inherent artistic sensibilities;Mr. Henry van der Luyden, for instance,
applauds her "gift" for arranging her "cleverly" adorned apartment (88). A
true artist,Olenska does not concern herselfwith what is "fashionable"; she
a follower,
more
as she does
living

is less

an

that

in des

initiator.

for

When,

quartiers

example,

remarks

Archer

dis

"Bohemian"

excentriques?the

trict ofNew York?is "not fashionable," she replies: "Fashionable! Do you

all think so much ofthat? Why not make one's own fashions?" (103, 73).
as
in her treatment of the novel, reads Olenska
Elizabeth Ammons,
emblematic of the female artist: "As an artist,Ellen's medium is life itself....
she

creates

beauty

around

herself,

She

automatically.

has

the visual

artist's

instinct for interesting statement."27 Even Archer is impressed with the

way Ellen transforms"Medora Manson's shabby hired house" into an exotic,
intriguing setting (70). But alas he seems more interested in figuring her
as another "delicate littleGreek bronze" in her drawing-room, rather than
a creator in her own right (69).
Wharton makes it clear thatArcher ismore comfortable with his "pic
tures" than the reality of Ellen Olenska. From Archer's perspective, we get
several vintage Pre-Raphaelite renderings of Olenska; as Ellen enters the
room, Wharton's

narrator

recounts

Archer's

vision:

"Everything

about

her

shimmered and glimmered softly, as ifher dress had been woven out of

candle-beams"

Ellen

(162). Were

we

had floated in. Archer

to trust Archer's

seems to want

reading,

we

would

to situate Ellen

be

sure

in a Pre

66

American

Literary

Realism

30,2

an
an
Raphaelite myth in which the woman, like
apparition, radiates
"So
beams
/
When
the
lambent, lady,
thy sovereign grace
unearthly light:
drear soul desires thee."28This fantasy is not only pleasurable but in fact
a
preferable.When Archer does, by stealth, secure moment with the object
of his desire,Wharton makes it clear that the dream is more safe: "the
thought of her had run through him like fire; but now that shewas beside
him, and theywere drifting forth into this unknown world, they seemed
to have reached the kind of deeper nearness that a touch may sunder" (238).
Ellen Olenska in the flesh problematizes Archer's fantastic image of her;
to touch her would be to disrupt his fantasyworld.
An important part of this fantasyworld is the conviction thatOlen
ska is necessarily a helpless "damsel in distress"; Archer reads her as such,
despite her inherent independence and her resistance to the code that asks
awoman to remain "immovable as an idol" (63).
Having accepted the fam
ily's charge to step in and discourage Ellen from seeking divorce, Archer
imagines her "as an exposed and pitiful figure to be saved at all costs from
fartherwounding herself in her mad plunges against fate" (95). Archer's
depiction of Ellen as weak and frail is further enhanced by the attention
he pays to her supposed paleness; he makes much of her "excessively pale"
countenance (333). Archer, as is typical ofWharton's male leads (Lawrence
Seiden,29 Ralph Marvell), wants to play Perseus to his "lovely, rock-bound
Wharton

Andromeda."30

a host

makes

of

to Archer's

references

urge

to

"rescue" firstMay, then Ellen (15, 40, 42,11,138,

227). A telling passage
makes this apparent: "A longing to enlighten [Ellen] was strong in him;
and therewere moments when he imagined that all she asked was to be
enlightened" (138, my emphasis). But these women are not interested in
the

that Archer

script

volunteers;

is, of

"imagined"

course,

the

operative

term.

"...we'll

not

look,

Wharton

at visions,
us Ellen's

shows

but

at realities"
as

bookshelves

(Ellen

to Newland).31

of

way

counter-reading toArcher's "fictions."Though Wharton

heroine

iswell-read,

we

see Olenska

never

she does read fiction,Madame

rewrites

the

script

that

has

Olenska

the female

"buried

in books."

is no Madame
lead

immersed

constructing

implies that her

Further,

while

Bovary: Wharton

in romance

novels.

On Ellen's coffee table,we find not the brothers Grimm but "theGoncourt
brothers" (103). Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, often grouped with Zola,
are considered the "founding fathers" of French naturalism; theGoncourts
are known for a refusal to idealize experience and an aim to paint life as it
and follower of the
also reads J. K. Huysmans?novelist
is.32Olenska
and
Flaubert?who
Goncourts, Zola,
similarly aligned himself with the
school of naturalisme (103). Huysmans' A Rebours17*is considered a hand
book tomodern times?a picture of disillusionment with the natural world;

67

Essays (Orlando)

thiswork, according to a recent critical study, "fetishizes the female body

with ... violence."34 By showing thatEllen has read her Huysmans, Whar
ton suggests Olenska's awareness of the objectifying, fetishizing male gaze.
Ellen's understanding of the human psyche is further implied by her read
ing of Paul Bourget, a writer known for his psychological novels (103). A
common thread running through these authors is a knowledge of life?
interior and exterior?and a refusal to live in fantasy.Naturalism, unlike
the escape we find in romanticism, provides a harsh depiction of reality,
capturing the bleakness of the human experience. These books endow Olen
ska with a more realistic, more accurate lens, for viewing herself and the
world around her.
Another important feature of Olenska's books is that they are all
seems to be
authored by men. Wharton
saying thatOlenska understands
the "male" perspective fromwhich these books arewritten. Olenska's nov
els are "scattered about her drawing-room (a part of the house inwhich
books were usually supposed to be 'out of place')" (103). Wharton here
in "shelving" his
makes an important distinction: unlike Archer?who,
books in the private sphere of his library, shows that the knowledge he
draws from them is not compatible with the outside world?Olenska
fuses
her intellectual world with thematerial world by keeping her books in the
room where

the public.
Wharton

she accepts

visitors

and

engages

in discourse

with

members

of

gives Ellen ample chance to apply her literary studies to her

everyday life; often,Archer thinks he has secured the controlling gaze on
Ellen, but she overrules itby having found him out. Take, for instance, the
scene at
to fetch Ellen from the
Newport where Archer?summoned
shore?finds her with her back to him, facing the water: Archer watches
Ellen and, in a typically romantic vein, links themoment with his favorite
episode from Boucicault's The Shaughraun.35 He fancies himself the hero
stealing a last look at his beloved "without her knowing" he is in her pres
ence (217). Following Boucicault's script,Archer resists calling out to her
and retreats to the house.We later learn that not only has he misread Ellen,
but she has?without his knowing?read him; she makes it clear that she
had all thewhile detected his presence: she "didn't look round on purpose,"
she says, explaining, "I knew you were there" (234).
Ellen proves herself a much more deft reader than Archer and she
brings this skill to their every exchange. In an important episode inMay's
brougham, Archer tellsOlenska he's been desperately clinging to the dream
of their one day being together, "just quietly trusting it to come true" (289).
Ellen quickly detects a delusion here: "Your vision of you and me together?";
at this she laughs. Then, in one of her most poignant lines, she tries to cor
rect his "nearsightedness": "we'll look, not at visions, but at realities" (289).
She

recognizes

the emptiness

in Archer's

assumption

that

they

can

run off

somewhere, forgetting all responsibilities. She confrontshim with the naked

68

American LiteraryRealism 30,2

question ofwhether he implies that she should be his "mistress"; recoiling

from the ugliness of that term, he replies: "I want somehow to get away
with you into a world where words like that?categories like that?won't
exist.Where we shall be simply two human beings who love each other,
... and
nothing else on earth will matter" (290). Archer, then,would like
to find the "new land" implied by his firstname?an
ideal, a promised land;
Olenska's rejoinder proves that she knows such a prospect only exists in
story-books:

"Oh,

my

dear?where

is that

Have

country?

you

ever

been

there?" (290). Ellen Olenska knows that the "words" and "categories"?
fromwhich Archer claims to want to escape?are written indelibly on
society's consciousness; she knows the folly of trying to live "in the blessed
darkness" (290). Ellen has "had to look at the Gorgon," has had her eyes
forced open (288). So Olenska has read Archer?read
him like a book.
in
And what isArcher's response? As if
rehearsal for his final act in the
novel (i.e., his resolution not to act), he abruptly stops the carriage and gets
out. He cannot bear Ellen Olenska's voice of reality: it complicates his
fictions.

"But I really dont see?"

(Newland

toMay).36

Ellen Olenska also complicates Archer's original translation ofMay

as his "enthroned" beauty. Archer had assigned May to this role
Weiland
before Ellen's appearance forced him to rethinkhis cast of characters.When
we first seeArcher, May is the object of his gaze; and his misconstruction
of her is anticipated by the novel's opening scene:Wharton begins by giv
ing stage to Christine Nilsson playingMarguerite inGounod's Faust. The
connection between Nilsson and May Weiland
is apparent when we con
braids"
while
sider that the prima donna has "yellow
May wears "fairbraids"
as
is
victim" ofMonsieur
The
described
the
"artless
(6, 5).
opera singer
this
is
how
her
Faustian
readsMay (5).
Archer
co-star;
precisely
Capoul,
To Archer, she is "the ingenuous May," a genuine na?f (120). The soprano
in this opening scene "listened with downcast eyes toM. Capoul's impas
sioned wooing, and affected a guileless incomprehension of his designs"
(6). This charade of "guileless incomprehension" underscores an alliance
at this point is identified as "a young girl inwhite with
between May?who
on the stagelovers"?and
the singer (5). The scene
fixed
eyes ecstatically
sets
effectively
invest confidence

for Archer's
stage
in the assertion
he's

the

misguidedness,
to make:
about

us
warning
"The
darling!...

not

to

She

doesn't even guess what it's all about" (6). That the prima donna here sings
"the Daisy Song" further suggests the association with Archers innocent
May; Wharton here suggests a comparison toHenry James' "Daisy Miller"
(1879), one of the most popular renderings of the "American Girl"?the
archetypal pretty, charming, innocent sweetheart ofAmerica (5).37Whar
tonwants to present Archer as equating May Weiland with this fixed type.

69

Essays (Orlando)

demonstrates, in direct opposition toArcher's rendering,May

As Wharton
is more

ingenious

than

"ingenuous."

shows Archer constantly "photographing" May as this vir

an
emblem of innocence. While
critics make much of the
ginal figure,
Wharton

novel's

Diana-May

comparisons,

we

are wise

to discern

that

it is

always

Archer who makes this association. Wharton's phrasing elucidates this dis
tinction: "Archer sawMay Weiland
enteringwith her mother. In her dress
ofwhite and silver,with awreath of silver blossoms in her hair, the tall girl
looked like a Diana just alight from the chase" (65). She looks, toArcher,
like a Diana.38 Archer's imaging ofMay as an icon ismore strikingwhen
we learn that, to him,May's face has "the look of
a
representing type rather
than a person; as if she might have been chosen to pose for a Civic Virtue
or a Greek goddess" (189). Howard Chandler Christy's early twentieth
century renderings of "The American Girl" give us a good sense of how
Archer pictures May.39 Christy typically captures the upper-class lady's
demurely downcast eyes, her regality of posture, her unrealistically slim
waistline; further, the throne-like seat on which Christy positions the
woman recalls the
pedestal fromwhich Archer eventually demotes May.
Archer's
By documenting
imaging ofMay, Wharton voices a critique of
the types

that were

assigned

to, and

in effect

contained,

women.

American

she is a child within mine arms.40

Sometimes

An important and especially damaging part of themyth of theAmeri

can Girl is that she is,of course, a perpetual child.Wharton's Archer makes
no effort to disguise his promotion of the imaging of woman-as-child.
for instance, Archer appeals toMay to hasten their engagement,
When,
ridding her of the suspicion that his urgency is triggered by uncertainty,
"she seemed to have descended from her womanly eminence to helpless and
timorous girlhood; and he understood that her courage and initiative were
all for others, and that she had none for herself.... she had dropped back
into

the usual,

as a too-adventurous

(150, my emphasis). We

what

May

"seemed"

to him?what

ofMay Weiland; Wharton

attention
to do,

that

Even

child

takes

refuge

in its mother's

arms"

need to account for the capital difference between

Archer

"understood"?and

the

reality

repeatedly makes use of such qualifiers to draw

as not
to this gap.
to remember,
It is crucial
every critic
we
see
it is
that
Archer's
eyes
always
through
May.41
are wed,
to Archer,
after
remains
"the
they
May,
simple

is wont

girl

of

yesterday" (188). Archer's reading ofMay as the infantalized woman is

underscored by the Reynolds painting fromwhich Wharton
takes the title
of her novel.42 Sir Joshua Reynolds' "The Age of Innocence" is the profile
of a small girl seated barefoot in a pastoral settingwith bow in hair, eyes
open and unquestioning, and hands demurely crossed over her breast (see
a
plate 4). So the lesson here is twofold: thewoman, toArcher, is like child

70

American LiteraryRealism 30,2

Plate 4: Sir Joshua Reynolds, The Age ofInnocence. (Alinari/ArtResource, NY)

and her hands are not to be applied to active endeavors; she is to be manipu
lated, not manipulate.
Wharton's May, in the final chapters of the novel, explodes this read
an unanticipated move that defines her as
with
ing
quite manipulative. We
recall thatArcher has been confident thatMay would foreverbe predictable,
that "he would always know the thoughts behind [her clear brow], that
never, in all the years to come, would she surprise him by an unexpected
mood, by a new idea, a weakness, a cruelty or an emotion* (295). Further,

71

Essays (Orlando)

he has convinced himself that his wife "would always be loyal, gallant and
unresentful" (196). As if
Wharton wants to deconstruct Archer's fixed read
woman
as
of
this
"artless"
and "guileless,"May shows that she is in fact
ing
news that she told Ellen she was pregnant
stuns
with
the
she
him
artful,
"a fortnight" before she was certain (150, 343). May knows thatword of
her pregnancy would force Ellen out of the picture?she has kept hidden
from Archer the details of her "really good talk" with Ellen?but May
in a remark

reports,

that means

more

can

than Archer

"I

read:

think

she

understands everything' (315, 326, my emphasis).

To be a sweetness more desired than Spring;
A bodily beauty more acceptable
Than thewild rose-tree's arch that crowns the fell;
To be all this 'neath one soft bosom's swell
a
That is the
flower of life-.?how strange thingl43

ton

Situating Archer in his library at the start of the final chapter,Whar

encourages

our

him

reading

as a man

eternally

in his fictions.

engrossed

Twenty-six years have passed; after bearing him three children,May has
died. Archer has just attended a reception in the very room at theMetro
politan

Museum

where,

a lifetime

almost

ago,

he

a secret

shared

meeting

with Olenska. Archer's fancy leads him back to that moment: "instantly
everything about him vanished, and he was sitting alone on a hard leather
divan against a radiator,while a slight figure in a long sealskin cloak moved
away down themeagrely-fitted vista of the oldMuseum" (344). For Archer,
Ellen Olenska is still a "vision" that represents the quintessential missed
opportunity:
Something
thought

of

he knew he had missed:

it now

as

thing

theflower

so unattainable

and

of life. But he
improbable....

When he thought of Ellen Olenska itwas abstractly, serenely, as

one
a
or a
some
might think of
picture'.
imaginary beloved in book
she had become the composite vision of all that he had missed.
(344, 347, my emphasis)

Wharton's

Archer

has

assumed

the persona

of Rossetti's

sonnet

sequence?

the book throughwhose pages he had chased visions of theCountess Olen

ska. Ellen Olenska has become forArcher?who
speaks inRossetti's terms
forwhich he had
"flower
of
that
beloved"
life,"44
"imaginary
precisely?this
"aim"
with
the
of
the
bowman
strived,
ill-equipped to claim his
misguided
to
is
his old tricks: he is still
In
this
final
Archer
scene,
up
target.
library
and
has
both
Ellen
collapsed his reading for
May. Though May
"picturing"
us?proving

her

artfulness,

her

intuition?he

continues

to misread

her.

72

American

Literary

Realism

30,2

as he had remembered
Studying a photograph ofMay, he remarks that,
...
so
had
in
"so
she
remained
her,
lacking
imagination" and characterized
it's
all
about
But
Archers blindness: he is visu
"blindness"
(348).
by
really
he
has
(332).
ally impaired;
"unseeing eyes"
May's vision has remained intact, and she has the lastword here.May
as "blind" and "lacking in imagination."
collapses his construction of her
In the final pages of the novel, Archer's son Dallas
reveals that, on her
was
aware
had
told
him
she
his
of
father's
deathbed, May
passion forOlen
ska:

"she

knew

we

were

safe with

you,

and

would

always

be, because

once,

when she asked you to, you'd given up the thing you most wanted" (356).
And now that his wife?whom
he had never taken the time to know?is
dead, we may recall a pact Archer once made with himself: he fancied that

May's death would "set him suddenly free" (296). At novel's end, he isgiven
that hoped-for chance; Ellen Olenska is an available woman: "There was
nothing now to keep her and Archer apart" (357).
I have loitered in the vale too long
And gaze now a belated worshipper.45

In the lastmoments of her epilogue,Wharton takes us to the Parisian

quarter where Ellen Olenska now resides. Invited to ascend the stairs to
Olenska's

resists.

Archer

apartment,

He

scene

the

"pictures"

of his

son

advancing into Ellen's drawing-room finding "a dark lady, pale and dark,
who would look up quickly, half rise, and hold out a long thin hand with
three rings on it" (361).We witness his final resolution, as he sits on the
more real
park bench opting instead to "gaze at the awninged balcony": "'It's
... and the fear lest that last shadow
to me here than ifI went
of reality
up'
should lose its edge kept him rooted to his seat" (361-62, my emphasis).
Newland Archer relinquishes his last chance to see Ellen Olenska, nearly
thirtyyears later, preferring instead to protect his mythologized portrait.
An "acceptance of'reality,'" as Cynthia GriffinWolff would have it?
as a failed visionary, a termi
Perhaps, in thatArcher understands himself
nal romantic. The only "reality" that Newland Archer "accepts" is his
"vision"

of Ellen

one

Olenska?the

he wants

desperately

to

preserve.

More

over, the reason he ultimately does not climb up to her level is that he
refuses to adulterate the vision he reads as reality. IfNewland Archer is a
"victim"

at all?as

has

been

suggested

by

so

many

other

readers?he

is a

victim of his own illusions, his misperceptions. In the final analysis, he is

the "Archer"with "ineffectual aim." So very much like Rossetti's speaker
in the sonnets with which he most identifies, Archer knows "Life
thwarted.

../ Love

shackled

with

Vain-longing."46

Because

he has

cast Ellen

in the role of the untouchable beloved who only endures "in a

Olenska
book or a picture," it follows that he must play out the part of Rossetti's
"belated worshipper":

73

Essays (Orlando)
inmy face; my name isMight-have-been;

Look
I am

also

called

Farewell.,47

Too-late,

No-more,

He had to deal all at once with the packed regrets

and stifledmemories of an inarticulate lifetime.48
own

Wharton's

was

"lifetime"

course

of

Her

articulate.

very

novel

closes at the beginning of this century, and, as we approach the start of the
next,

our

own

concerns

theoretical

reflect

the

relevance

of her

issues.

Con

temporary theory continues to address the imaging ofwomen inWestern

culture; we are ever reminded of the fixed types that are still imposed on
women?modified
though theymay be. Important new studies in gender
and the visual arts appear constantly, adding to the contributions already
made by such scholars as Banta, Baym, and Suleiman.
Wharton's novel raises important questions. What, finally,doesWhar
ton gain by exposing her Archer as a poor reader? By depicting Archer as
an untrustworthy reader with poor analytical skills,49 as blind, "inarticu
late,"

and

tive,"

"fasten[ed]

a Mr.

"ineffectual,"

in the Rossettian

"Might-have-been"

sense,

a
implies that good, close reader (one with eyes that are "medita

Wharton

...

and

open,"

like Ellen

"conspicuous"

or

Olenska's,

eyes

not eyes "unseeing," "hid

marked by "clearness" likeMay Welland's?and
utter
into
and
darkness"
like
Newland
Archer's) would rec
den,"
"staring
ognize

these

types

as

the

myths

are, would

they

collapse

construc

these

tions of femininity.
Ellen and May, in fact,work together to deconstruct Archer's world
inways similar toWharton, who deflates themyth of theAmerican woman

and

the

challenges

tradition

that

her

assigns

to

either

types:

woman-as

artless (ing?nue, angel, Diana, American Girl) or woman-as-art

(femme
fatale/Madame X/dark lady, imaginary beloved). As Elizabeth Ammons
there was,
argues,
persuasively
woman
as artist. The
American

inWharton's

women

no

America,

artists

embraced

by

room

for

the

the world

of

Wharton's novel are notAmerican (Christine Nilsson, Ada Dyas, Adelaide

Neilson, Mrs. Scott-Siddons50). Wharton
suggests that, in the same way
is
thatAmerica
"distrustful and afraid" of Ellen Olenska, it is similarly
averse to theAmerican woman artist (352).
We are also left to ask whether Wharton, by relating Archer's fre
quent

mockery

ofMay's

ridicules

penmanship?he

"May's

rambling

script,"

to recall Hawthorne's
her "large, immature hand" (275, 276)?means
famous dismissal of the "damned mob of scribbling women." Further, by
describing a scene on the Boston Common where Archer preps his pen for
Ellen towrite a note ("I'll get the pen going in a second. They have to be
humoured.... just a trick.Now try?" [235]), does Wharton
suggest that
the woman

writer

is not

autonomous

on male sponsorship?While

and,

at best, must

rely?in

America?

there are indeed American women on Newland

74

American

Archer's "reading list" (MayWeiland,

ican women

writers.

The

occasional

Literary

Ellen Olenska),
female

author

who

Realism

30,2

there are no Amer

makes

her way

to

his library is not American, nor does she have a woman's name; the iden
tities of thewomen whose books he reads are veiled by male pseudonyms
(e.g., George Eliot, Vernon Lee).
Wharton's Archer, a man whose conception of life is fundamentally
literary,habitually brings his books to his daily experiences. As is his cus
tom,we find him, in a scene at Newport, with Olenska on his mind: antic
ipating seeing her afterwhat has been over a year's time, he finds himself
remembering her "fire-litdrawing-room"; his memory then leaps to "a story
he had read, of some peasant children inTuscany lighting a bunch of straw
in a wayside cavern, and revealing old silent images in their painted tomb"
Wharton herself is "lighting" a simi
(215,my emphasis). Through her art,
larmatch and bringing to our consciousness these "old silent images." She
has exposed these myths and their damning consequences; and, what is
more, she rewrites these distorted "images" with her own pen. Edith Whar
ton has spoken into this "silence." And her voice, like the timeless nature
of her

issues,

continues

to resonate.

?University

ofMaryland

at College

Park

Notes
1. The novel was first published in 1920 (rpt. New York: Collier Books, 1992). Subse
quent references to this work will appear in the text.
and Their Circle, ed. Cecil Y. Lang (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago
2. The Pre-Raphaelites
Press, 1975), p. 117.
3. I would like to thank Professor Marilee
Lindemann, Tara Hart, Shara McCallum,
of English
and theUniversity ofMaryland Department
Lisa Orlando, Catherine Romagnolo,
for the invaluable insight and support that helped bring this essay to light.
4. R. W. B. Lewis, Introduction to The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
(New York:

Charles Scribner's Sons, 1968).

u
'Portrait of a Gentleman,'"
5. Cynthia Griffin Wolff,
The Age of Innocence: Wharton's
Southern Review 12 (1976), 644, 651, 655.
6. Jeanne Boydston, "'Grave Endearing Tradition': Edith Wharton
and the Domestic
andWilliam McBrien
(New
Novel," in Faith of a (Woman) Writer, ed. Alice Kessler-Harris
York: Greenwood
Press, 1988), p. 35.
7. Edwin M. Moseley writes that Archer "has a Faustian thirst for knowledge; he reads
all the new books on anthropology which enable him to see his own society in its proper per
no faculty for
translating his relativistic attitudes into action"
spective of time, but there is
Faust," College English 21 [December
1959],
{uThe Age of Innocence: Edith Wharton's Weak
157).
on Inno
8. Elizabeth Ammons, "Cool Diana and the Blood-Red Muse: Edith Wharton
cence and Art," inAmerican Novelists Revisited: Essays inFeminist Criticism, ed. Fritz Fleis
chman (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1982), p. 211.
9. Rossetti, The House ofLife, in Lang, p. 129.

Essays (Orlando)75
10. Wharton,
The Age of Innocence, p. 341.
E. Buck
11. John Ruskin, Stones of Venice, in Prose of the Victorian Period, ed.William
ler (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958), p. 69.
12. Ruskin influenced the Pre-Raphaelite movement that Rossetti, in 1848, helped found.
13. The extended title is "Euphorion: Being Studies of the Antique
and theMedieval
"Vernon Lee" is the pseudonym of Violet Paget, essayist and novelist.
in the Renaissance";
close friend and colleague, evidently did not respect thiswriters work;
Henry James,Wharton's
was a friend of Paul
reads. Although Wharton
Bourget, whom Olenska
interestingly, James
his
of course held opinions independent of James, the latter's disdain for Lee's work?and
useful to our understanding ofWharton's
intertextual project.
connection with Bourget's?is
14. Walter Pater, The Renaissance, in Buckler, p. 551.
15. Wharton,
The Age of Innocence, p. 69.
16. Swinburne's verse was considered quite scandalous, often treating the idea of the
femme fatale. Some contemporary critics labeled him "Sin-burn" in light of the licentious
nature of his poetry. He was associated with Rossetti and the
circle atOxford.
Pre-Raphaelite
17. Wharton
very much admired George Eliot's Middlemarch, but Archer doesn't seem

terribly impressed by it. Perhaps he didn't likewhat he found in its pages. In chapter twenty
two, for instance, Eliot's knowing narrator remarks: "The remote worship of awoman throned
out of their reach plays a great part inmen's lives, but inmost cases the
worshipper longs for
some
some
queenly recognition,
approving sign by which his soul's sovereign may cheer him
without descending from her high place" (New York: Bantam, 1992, p. 199). Archer/"the wor
as we shall see, does not get the
seems to seek from "the
shipper,"
"approving sign" that he
woman throned out of [his] reachVEllen Olenska. Later in the same
chapter of Eliot's book,
"You are a poem";
the passionate, visionary-lover Will Ladislaw
says to his beloved Dorothea
we can muse that Archer
character (p. 205).
might find something of himself inWill's
18. Many
readers identify the beloved as Rossetti's so-called "stunner" JaneMorris, an
unattainable beauty married to friend and Pre-Raphaelite-brother
William Morris. Rossetti,
like Archer, was bound by marriage to a woman forwhom he felt considerably less passion,
Elizabeth
Siddal. As one scholar puts it,Rossetti "married a woman he did not love [and]
loved a woman he could not marry" (Lang, p. xvi). The semblance to Archer's situation is
noteworthy.
in Scorsese's 1993 film adaptation, demonstrates Archer's relation
19. Daniel Day-Lewis,
as he sits in his
a
library in trance-like
ship to books by stroking, indeed fondling, these texts
state, while visions of Olenska dance in his head.
20. Wharton,
The Age of Innocence, p. 171.
21. The association between Ellen Olenska and Napoleon's
"Josephine" anticipates Ellen's
assignment to the role of the beloved.
22. A recent viewing of Scorsese's film confirmed my suspicion that this is the portrait
Archer has inmind. Scorsese hangs this painting on the wall as a backdrop to the farewell
dinner for Ellen Olenska
(chapter XXXIII).
International Publi
23. H. Barbara Weinberg, John Singer Sargent (New York: Rizzoli
cations, 1994), p. 2.
as a woman frozen into art. For Newland, women are
24. Archer, then, reads Olenska
defined in terms of a work of art: Mrs. van der Luyden, for instance, calls to his mind "a
own mother is to him "an Isabey miniature"
Cabanel"
(p. 62).
(p. 61) while his
25. The portrait depicts the artist's wife.
in Paris (Weinberg, p. 2).
26. Sargent, in fact, studied under Carolus-Duran
27. Ammons, p. 218.
28. Rossetti, The House ofLife, in Lang, p. 89.
names forNewland was "Lawrence" further demon
29. That one ofWharton's
original
strates the connection between these male protagonists who come up short.
30. Edith Wharton,
The Custom of theCountry (New York: Scribner's, 1913), chapter VI.
31. Wharton,
The Age of Innocence, p. 289.
32. Edmond
de Goncourt, The Goncourt Journals, 1851-1870
(New York: Greenwood
Press, 1968), p. 189.
33. Published
1884; this would

be an anachronism.

76
American LiteraryRealism 30,2
34. Charles Bernheimer, "Huysmans: Writing Against (Female) Nature," in The Female
in Western Culture: Contemporary Perspectives, ed. Susan Rubin Suleiman (Cambridge,
Harvard Univ. Press, 1985), p. 373.
35. The Oxford English Dictionary defines "shaughraun" as "a wandering, a straying, an
error"; the phrase "to go a shaughraun" means "to go wrong" (OED xv, p. 192). The linkArcher
makes between Boucicault's play (translation: "a straying") and his connection with Olenska
a romance with Ellen is too deviant, can never be realized.
anticipates his resolution that

Body
Mass.:

36. Wharton,
The Age of Innocence, p. 332.
37. For a rich, insightful discussion of the type of theAmerican Girl, seeMartha Banta's
Imaging American Women: Idea and Ideals in Cultural History (New York: Columbia Univ.
Press, 1987).
38. Diana, of course, is goddess of the hunt, the "archer" with "effectual aim."
in
39. See, for instance, Christy's "The American Girl" in Liberty Belles: Eight
Epochs
theMaking
of theAmerican Girl (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill
Company, 1912) and "A Veri
in The American Girl As Seen and Portrayed byHoward Chandler Christy (New
table Queen"
York: Moffat, Yard &c Company, 1906).
40. Rossetti, The House ofLife, in Lang, p. 90.
41. That May
is not real to Archer ismade ever more apparent by his obsession with
her alleged paleness; we are so often told thatMay "struck him as pale and languid" (p. 318).
Such imaging serves to underscore the lifelessness with which Archer creditsMay.
title
42. Cynthia Griffin Woolf
identifies this painting as the source forWharton's
(p. 642).
43. Rossetti, The House
44. Rossetti, The House
45. Rossetti, The House
46. Rossetti, The House
47. Rossetti, The House
this sonnet.

ofLife,
ofLife,
ofLife,
ofLife,
ofLife,

in Lang, p. 107 (my emphasis).

quoted above.
in Lang, p. 114.
in Lang, p. 106.
in Lang, p. 127 (my emphasis). My

title is inspired by

48. Wharton,
The Age of Innocence, p. 357.
49. He is rarely "in an analytic mood" (p. 229).
50. In an amusing scene, the "blowsy" Blenker girl tells Archer thatMadame
Olenska
the ref
reminds her of "Mrs. Scott-Siddons when she reads 'Lady Geraldine's Courtship'";
erence is dismissed by Archer
not yield an actual "Mrs.
(p. 227). Although my research did
&ro//-Siddons," Wharton may refer to the celebrated British tragedienne Sarah Siddons. This
on stage and
"Mrs. Siddons" redefined the role of Lady Macbeth
posed for Sir Joshua Reynolds'
She did give readings at the end of her career, though I found
portrait "The Tragic Muse."
no record of the work of which Miss Blenker
speaks.