Wharton, Edith — The Age of Innocence [212]

And he felt himself oppressed by this creation of factitious purity, so cunningly manufactured by a conspiracy of mothers and aunts and grandmothers and long-dead ancestresses, because it was supposed to be what he wanted, what he had a right to, in order that he might exercise his lordly pleasure in smashing it like an image made of snow. — Wharton, Edith, The Age of Innocence, 212

Note

The ‘conspiracy’ chain of kin and the snow-image make girlhood a product built to be destroyed. Wharton’s indictment is aimed at the male consumer as much as the female manufacturer.