Wharton, Edith — The Age of Innocence [45]

The only way that Ellen and Archer can convert their love into a thing of beauty is by renunciation. And the twist of the plot is that the value of renunciation has been taught them, not, after all, by Europe with all its art and history, but by the very society of brownstone New York that the young Ellen and the mature Archer found so stuffy and limited. Ellen tells Archer: “It was you who made me understand that under the dullness there are things so fine and sensitive and delicate that even those I most cared for in my other life look cheap in comparison.” — Wharton, Edith, The Age of Innocence, 45

Note

Ellen’s own sentence—‘under the dullness there are things so fine and sensitive and delicate’—reverses the reader’s assumed polarity between Europe as enlightened and New York as dull. The revelation that the oppressive society taught the value of renunciation is the novel’s moral hinge.