The Age of Innocence: Chapter 13 Summary & Analysis

It’s a crowded night at the theater. The play is The Shaughraun, and everyone enjoys the melodrama. In particular, the audience is enthralled by the scene in which the male lead departs from his lover, who leans against the mantelpiece with her head in her hands. At the door he creeps back to kiss a ribbon falling down her back, and she never realizes what he’s done. Archer comes to see the play just for this scene, thinking it as good as anything in Paris or London.

On this night, the scene reminds Archer of him leaving Ellen Olenska after their discussion about her divorce. There’s no real resemblance between the two situations; the people don’t look similar and Archer and Ellen aren’t lovers. But Ellen somehow makes everything tragic and moving; she seems like someone to whom things will always happen no matter how much she tries to avoid them. Her lack of surprise at anything makes it seem like the general pitch of her life is particularly high.

Archer left Ellen believing that she probably did become lovers with the secretary who helped her escape from her husband. Archer can understand how this happened, but in the eyes of the law and society, it makes her no better than her husband. He made her see this despite the pain it caused him. He’s glad that he learned her secret rather than someone less sympathetic, and he assured Mr. Letterblair and the Mingotts that Ellen decided against a divorce. Mrs. Welland and Mrs. Mingott were very grateful to him.

As the curtain falls on the scene, Archer’s eyes fill with tears and he rises to leave. Just then, he sees Ellen sitting in a box with the Beauforts. Mrs. Beaufort gestures to him, and he goes to the box and sits down behind Ellen. Sillerton Jackson is telling Mrs. Beaufort about Mrs. Struthers’s last party. Ellen quietly asks whether Archer thinks that the play character will send his lover yellow roses. Archer blushes. He has anonymously sent Ellen roses each time he has visited her, but he didn’t realize she knew he had done so. He says he was going to leave to preserve the scene in his mind.

Ellen asks what Archer does while May is gone, and he says he works. As they always do at this time of year, the Wellands have left for St. Augustine for Mr. Welland’s health. No one can interfere with Mr. Welland’s habits, and he must have his wife and daughter with him for peace of mind. The Wellands all idolize him. They trust the family physician because Mr. Welland has never caught pneumonia, and since the doctor insists they go to St. Augustine, the hastened announcement of May’s engagement wasn’t about to change their plans. Though Archer would have liked to join them there, they would have thought him frivolous for abandoning his work.

Ellen says that she has done as Archer advised. She knows that he was right. As Beaufort begins to speak, Archer leaves the theater. The day before, he got a letter from May asking him to be good to Ellen, who is lonely. May can tell that New York seems dull to her after everything she had in her old life, and Archer is one of the only people who can amuse her. He loves May for this letter, but he doesn’t plan to act on it. There are plenty of men waiting to help Ellen. Even so, he thinks May is right in believing her to be lonely and unhappy.