Wharton, Edith — The Age of Innocence [52]

But, in the first place, New York was a metropolis, and he was perfectly aware that in metropolises it was “not the thing” to arrive early at the opera; and 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. — Wharton, Edith, The Age of Innocence, 52

Note

Wharton collapses the distance between tribal taboo and metropolitan fashion-code in a single simile, making ‘the thing’ legible as a survival of totem terror. This is the novel’s governing thesis in miniature.