Wharton, Edith — The Age of Innocence [44]

Had Archer left his wife and followed Ellen to Europe The Age of Innocence would have become Anna Karenina. Ellen has foreseen that. When Archer pleads that they go away together to a world “where we shall be simply two human beings who love each other, who are the whole of life to each other; and nothing else on earth will matter,” she simply replies: “Oh, my dear—where is that country? Have you ever been there? I know so many who’ve tried to find it; and, believe me, they all got out by mistake at wayside stations: at places like Boulogne, or Pisa, or Monte Carlo—and it wasn’t at all different from the old world they’d left, but only rather smaller and dingier and more promiscuous.” — Wharton, Edith, The Age of Innocence, 44

Note

Ellen’s reply is the book’s clearest statement that escape is an illusion—the promised country is only a smaller, dingier version of what was left. The descent from ‘wayside stations’ to ‘smaller and dingier and more promiscuous’ lands with a cumulative letdown rhythm.