Wharton, Edith — The Age of Innocence [47]

The silent organization which held his little world together was determined to put itself on record as never for a moment having questioned the propriety of Madame Olenska’s conduct, or the completeness of Archer’s domestic felicity. All these amiable and inexorable persons were resolutely engaged in pretending to each other that they had never heard of, suspected, or even conceived possible, the least hint to the contrary; and from this tissue of elaborate mutual dissimulation Archer once more disengaged the fact that New York believed him to be Madame Olenska’s lover [which he had never been]. He caught the glitter of victory in his wife’s eyes, and for the first time understood that she shared this belief. — Wharton, Edith, The Age of Innocence, 47

Note

The key passage for the reader’s stated purpose: social control executed not by accusation but by a collective performance of never-having-suspected. ‘Amiable and inexorable’ compresses the whole mechanism into two adjectives; ‘tissue of elaborate mutual dissimulation’ names the shared fiction. The clause ‘which he had never been’ is the narrator’s dry bracket, and May’s ‘glitter of victory’ reveals that the wife is co-author of the sanction.