Wharton, Edith — The Age of Innocence [260]

“As long as a member of a well-known family is backed up by that family it should be considered—final.” … It seems so to me,” said his wife, as if she were producing a new thought. — Wharton, Edith, The Age of Innocence, 260

Note

The van der Luyden doctrine — family backing makes a person’s status ‘final’ — is the legal charter of the whole system, and the wife’s echo ‘as if she were producing a new thought’ is Wharton’s dry cipher of their merged identity.