Wharton, Edith — The Age of Innocence [48]

In the final chapter, an epilogue that moves us a quarter of a century on, we learn that Archer, now a widower, has had a moderately happy marriage, two fine bright sons, and a daughter as dull as her mother. Under the influence of his friend Theodore Roosevelt, he has run for the State Assembly and been elected but not reelected. After that he has confined himself to “obscure if useful municipal work” and writing articles for reforming weeklies. — Wharton, Edith, The Age of Innocence, 48

Note

The withering compression ‘a daughter as dull as her mother’ does in five words what pages of description could not—it damns the marriage that renunciation bought. The bathos of running for Assembly and being ‘elected but not reelected’ undercuts heroism.