The Age of Innocence Contrasting Regions: United States and Europe Quotes
How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
[…] the girl received an expensive but incoherent education, which included "drawing from the model," a thing never dreamed of before, and playing the piano in quintets with professional musicians. (8.5)
For some characters, Ellen's unconventional education abroad (so artsy, so risqué) explains her behavior.
Quote #2
"[…] That's why I came home. I want to forget everything else, to become a complete American again, like the Mingotts and Wellands, and you and your delightful mother, and all the other good people here tonight […] " (8.30)
Ellen associates being American with goodness and simplicity. Little does she know how spiteful and manipulative some of her family members are… dun dun dun.
Quote #3
[…] what struck him was the way in which Medora Manson's shabby hired house, with its blighted background of pampas grass and Rogers statuettes, had, by a turn of the hand, and the skilful use of a few properties, been transformed into something intimate, "foreign," subtly suggestive of old romantic scenes and sentiments.
Ellen's attraction for Archer is her "foreign"-ness. She represents to him the world beyond New York society and its rigid rules.
Quote #4
Viewed thus, as through the wrong end of a telescope, it looked disconcertingly small and distant; but then from Samarkand it would. (9.53)
This quote could also be read alongside the theme of "Dreams, Hopes, and Plans." Ellen's comments make Archer look at American society through the lens of a European.
Quote #5
"Is New York such a labyrinth? I thought it so straight up and down— like Fifth Avenue. And with all the cross streets numbered! […] If you know how I like it for just that— the straight-up-and-downness, and the big honest labels on everything!" (9.57)
Ellen is confused by the catty, class-conscious New York Archer reveals to her, since she associates Americans with goodness and honesty.
Quote #6
"You know what these English grandees are. They're all alike. Louisa and I are very fond of our cousin— but it's hopeless to expect people who are accustomed to the European courts to trouble themselves about our little republican distinctions. The Duke goes where he's amused." (10.85)
Mr. van der Luyden seems oblivious to the fact that "our little republican distinctions" goes against the whole America-is-equality thing. Ironically, it is the Americans who criticize an English nobleman about his inability to respect class differences. Aren't all English noblemen supposed to wear cravats and complain about how Jeeves messed up his silver-polishing duties once again?
Quote #7
"[...] those roses there on the sofa— acres like them, under glass and in the open, in his matchless terraced gardens at Nice! Jewels— historic pearls; the Sobieski emeralds— sables— but she cares nothing for all these! Art and beauty, those she does care for, she lives for, as I always have; and those also surrounded her. Pictures, priceless furniture, music, brilliant conversation—ah, that, my dear young man, if you'll excuse me, is what you've no conception of here […]" (17.76)
Okay, so life with the Count doesn't sound so bad… The Count sounds like an okay guy… No! Stop! Turn away from the dark side, folks. Don't be seduced by all those jewels and terraced gardens. Oooh, pretty terraced gardens.
Quote #8
They had not gone to the Italian Lakes; on reflection, Archer had not been able to picture his wife in that particular setting. Her own inclination (after a month with the Paris dressmakers) was for mountaineering in July and swimming in August. (20.21)
May tries to stay as American as she can on her honeymoon in Europe. She focuses on engaging in sports she could easily enjoy in America, rather than socializing with Europeans or experiencing new cultures.
Quote #9
Archer noticed that his wife's way of showing herself at her ease with foreigners was to become more uncompromisingly local in her references, so that, though her loveliness was an encouragement to admiration, her conversation was a chill to repartee. (20.35)
May's insistence on her Americanness doesn't exactly make her a lot of friends in Europe.
Quote #10
"[Countess Olenska's] an American. And that if you're an American of her kind— of your kind —things that are accepted in certain other societies, or at least put up with as part of a general, convenient give-and-take —become unthinkable, simply unthinkable […]" (25.68)
Rivière, the French secretary to Count Olenska, recognizes how American Ellen Olenska has become. Like other Americans in her social circle, she has also become morally uncompromising, and won't put up with the Count's behavior.
Quote #11
[…] he had a fancy to spend the intervening time in a place where he could think of her as perhaps having lately been. For an hour or more he wandered from gallery to gallery through the dazzle of afternoon light, and one by one the pictures burst on him in their half-forgotten splendor, filling his soul with the long echoes of beauty. (34.60)
Twenty-six years later, Archer finds himself in the Louvre. Interestingly, the last time he saw Ellen was in another museum, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, where they talked in a room filled with Roman antiquities.