The Age of Innocence

by

Edith Wharton

May is Archer’s fiancée and then his wife. She is a kind, simple, and beautiful girl known for her athleticism. May is the embodiment of the female ideal in New York high society; she is pure, innocent, and unfailingly polite. However, instead of these qualities making May more attractive to Archer, Archer worries that May’s innocence makes it difficult for them to relate to one another and he fears that her perfect exterior masks an emptiness inside. On several occasions, May is shown to be more complex than the innocence she performs for society: she is occasionally frank with Archer about her perception that he is not as loyal to her as he could be, and she manipulatively tells Ellen that she’s pregnant before she’s sure this is true. Despite these glimpses of complexity and deception, May lives her life as she is expected to, following all the conventions that Archer has come to distrust. May is often likened to the goddess Diana, who is known for her virginity and her skill with a bow and arrow. Besides the superficial similarities between May and Diana (May wins an archery contest at the Beauforts’ house), comparing May to a goddess emphasizes her role as a type—an embodiment of certain virtues—rather than as a genuine and complicated woman. She is also associated with lilies-of-the-valley, a white flower that represents her innocence.

May Welland Quotes in The Age of Innocence

The The Age of Innocence quotes below are all either spoken by May Welland or refer to May Welland. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Innocence vs. Experience Theme Icon
).
Chapter 6 Quotes

What could he and she really know of each other, since it was his duty, as a “decent” fellow, to conceal his past from her, and hers, as a marriageable girl, to have no past to conceal?... He reviewed his friends’ marriages... and saw none that answered, even remotely, to the passionate and tender comradeship which he pictured as his permanent relation with May Welland. He perceived that such a picture presupposed, on her part, the experience, the versatility, the freedom of judgment, which she had been carefully trained not to possess; and with a shiver of foreboding he saw his marriage becoming what most of the other marriages about him were: a dull association of material and social interests held together by ignorance on the one side and hypocrisy on the other.

Related Characters: Newland Archer, May Welland
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 27-28
Explanation and Analysis:

But when he had gone the brief round of her he returned discouraged by the thought that all this frankness and innocence were only an artificial product. Untrained human nature was not frank and innocent, it was full of the twists and turns and defenses of an instinctive guile. And he felt himself oppressed by this creation of a factitious purity, so cunningly manufactured by a conspiracy of mothers and aunts and grandmothers and long-dead ancestresses, because it was supposed to be what he wanted, what he had a right to, in order that he might exercise his lordly pleasure in smashing it like an image made of snow.

Related Characters: Newland Archer, May Welland
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 29
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16 Quotes

Traces still lingered on [her features] of fresh beauty like her daughter’s; and he asked himself if May’s face was doomed to thicken into the same middle-aged image of invincible innocence.

Ah, no, he did not want May to have that kind of innocence, the innocence that seals the mind against imagination and the heart against experience!

Related Characters: Newland Archer, May Welland, Mrs. Welland
Page Number: 94
Explanation and Analysis:

I couldn’t have my happiness made out of a wrong—an unfairness—to somebody else.... What sort of life could we build on such foundations?... I’ve wanted to tell you that, when two people really love each other, I understand that there may be situations which might make it right that they should—should go against public opinion. And if you feel yourself in any way pledged... pledged to the person we’ve spoken of... and if there is any way... any way in which you can fulfill your pledge... even by her getting a divorce... Newland, don’t give her up because of me!

Related Characters: May Welland (speaker), Newland Archer, Ellen Olenska
Page Number: 97
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 18 Quotes

She tore it open and carried it to the lamp; then, when the door had closed again, she handed the telegram to Archer.

It was dated from St. Augustine, and addressed to the Countess Olenska. In it he read: “Granny’s telegram successful. Papa and Mamma agree marriage after Easter. Am telegraphing Newland. Am too happy for words and love you dearly. Your grateful May.”

Related Characters: May Welland (speaker), Newland Archer, Ellen Olenska, Mrs. Catherine Mingott, Mrs. Welland, Mr. Welland
Page Number: 113-14
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 20 Quotes

In all the rainy desert of autumnal London there were only two people whom the Newland Archers knew; and these two they had sedulously avoided, in conformity with the old New York tradition that it was not “dignified” to force oneself on the notice of one’s acquaintances in foreign countries.

Mrs. Archer and Janey... had so unflinchingly lived up to this principle... that they had almost achieved the record of never having exchanged a word with a “foreigner” other than those employed in hotels and railway-stations.

Related Characters: Newland Archer, May Welland, Mrs. Adeline Archer, Janey Archer
Page Number: 123
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 24 Quotes

Is it a bad business—for May?”

He stood in the window... feeling in every fiber the wistful tenderness with which she had spoken her cousin’s name.

“For that’s the thing we’ve always got to think of—haven’t we—by your own showing?” she insisted.... “[I]f it’s not worth while to have given up, to have missed things, so that others may be saved from disillusionment and misery—then everything I came home for, everything that made my other life seem by contrast so bare and so poor because no one there took account of them—all these things are a sham or a dream—”

Related Characters: Ellen Olenska (speaker), Newland Archer, May Welland
Page Number: 156
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 30 Quotes

As she sat thus, the lamplight full on her clear brow, he said to himself with a secret dismay that he would always know the thoughts behind it, that never, in all the years to come, would she surprise him by an unexpected mood, by a new idea, a weakness, a cruelty or an emotion.... Now she was simply ripening into a copy of her mother, and mysteriously, by the very process, trying to turn him into a Mr. Welland.

Related Characters: Newland Archer, May Welland
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 190-91
Explanation and Analysis:

“Catch my death!” he echoed; and he felt like adding: “But I’ve caught it already. I am dead—I’ve been dead for months and months.”

And suddenly the play of the word flashed up a wild suggestion. What if it were she who was dead! If she were going to die—to die soon—and leave him free! ...He simply felt that chance had given him a new possibility to which his sick soul might cling. Yes, May might die—people did: young people, healthy people like herself: she might die, and set him suddenly free.

Related Characters: Newland Archer (speaker), May Welland
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 191
Explanation and Analysis:

“Poor May!” he said.

“Poor? Why poor?” she echoed with a strained laugh.

“Because I shall never be able to open a window without worrying you,” he rejoined, laughing also.

For a moment she was silent; then she said very low, her head bowed over her work: “I shall never worry if you’re happy.”


“Ah, my dear; and I shall never be happy unless I can open the windows!”

Related Characters: Newland Archer (speaker), May Welland
Page Number: 191-92
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 33 Quotes

And then it came over him, in a vast flash made up of many broken gleams, that to all of them he and Madame Olenska were lovers.... He guessed himself to have been, for months, the center of countless silently observing eyes and patiently listening ears, he understood that, by means as yet unknown to him, the separation between himself and the partner of his guilt had been achieved, and that now the whole tribe had rallied about his wife on the tacit assumption that nobody knew anything, or had ever imagined anything....

It was the old New York way, of taking life “without effusion of blood”; the way of people who dreaded scandal more than disease, who placed decency above courage, and who considered that nothing was more ill-bred than “scenes,” except the behavior of those who gave rise to them.

Related Characters: Newland Archer, Ellen Olenska, May Welland
Page Number: 217
Explanation and Analysis:

“Have you told anyone else?”

“Only Mamma and your mother.” She paused, and then added hurriedly, the blood flushing up to her forehead: “That is—and Ellen. You know I told you we’d had a long talk one afternoon—and how dear she was to me.”

“Ah—” said Archer, his heart stopping.... “But that was a fortnight ago, wasn’t it? I thought you said you weren’t sure till today.”

Her color burned deeper, but she held his gaze. “No; I wasn’t sure then—but I told her I was. And you see I was right!” she exclaimed, her blue eyes wet with victory.

Related Characters: Newland Archer (speaker), May Welland (speaker), Ellen Olenska, Mrs. Adeline Archer, Mrs. Welland
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 222
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 34 Quotes

And as he had seen her that day, so she had remained;... generous, faithful, unwearied; but so lacking in imagination, so incapable of growth, that the world of her youth had fallen into pieces and rebuilt itself without her ever being conscious of the change.... And she had died thinking the world a good place, full of loving and harmonious households like her own, and resigned to leave it because she was convinced that, whatever happened, Newland would continue to inculcate in Dallas the same principles and prejudices which had shaped his parents’ lives, and that Dallas in turn (when Newland followed her) would transmit the sacred trust to little Bill.

Related Characters: Newland Archer, May Welland, Dallas Archer
Page Number: 225
Explanation and Analysis:

“She said she knew we were safe with you, and always would be, because once, when she asked you to, you’d given up the thing you most wanted.”

Archer received this strange communication in silence.... At length he said in a low voice: “She never asked me.”

Related Characters: Newland Archer (speaker), Dallas Archer (speaker), May Welland
Page Number: 231
Explanation and Analysis:
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May Welland Quotes in The Age of Innocence

The The Age of Innocence quotes below are all either spoken by May Welland or refer to May Welland. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Innocence vs. Experience Theme Icon
).
Chapter 6 Quotes

What could he and she really know of each other, since it was his duty, as a “decent” fellow, to conceal his past from her, and hers, as a marriageable girl, to have no past to conceal?... He reviewed his friends’ marriages... and saw none that answered, even remotely, to the passionate and tender comradeship which he pictured as his permanent relation with May Welland. He perceived that such a picture presupposed, on her part, the experience, the versatility, the freedom of judgment, which she had been carefully trained not to possess; and with a shiver of foreboding he saw his marriage becoming what most of the other marriages about him were: a dull association of material and social interests held together by ignorance on the one side and hypocrisy on the other.

Related Characters: Newland Archer, May Welland
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 27-28
Explanation and Analysis:

But when he had gone the brief round of her he returned discouraged by the thought that all this frankness and innocence were only an artificial product. Untrained human nature was not frank and innocent, it was full of the twists and turns and defenses of an instinctive guile. And he felt himself oppressed by this creation of a factitious purity, so cunningly manufactured by a conspiracy of mothers and aunts and grandmothers and long-dead ancestresses, because it was supposed to be what he wanted, what he had a right to, in order that he might exercise his lordly pleasure in smashing it like an image made of snow.

Related Characters: Newland Archer, May Welland
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 29
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16 Quotes

Traces still lingered on [her features] of fresh beauty like her daughter’s; and he asked himself if May’s face was doomed to thicken into the same middle-aged image of invincible innocence.

Ah, no, he did not want May to have that kind of innocence, the innocence that seals the mind against imagination and the heart against experience!

Related Characters: Newland Archer, May Welland, Mrs. Welland
Page Number: 94
Explanation and Analysis:

I couldn’t have my happiness made out of a wrong—an unfairness—to somebody else.... What sort of life could we build on such foundations?... I’ve wanted to tell you that, when two people really love each other, I understand that there may be situations which might make it right that they should—should go against public opinion. And if you feel yourself in any way pledged... pledged to the person we’ve spoken of... and if there is any way... any way in which you can fulfill your pledge... even by her getting a divorce... Newland, don’t give her up because of me!

Related Characters: May Welland (speaker), Newland Archer, Ellen Olenska
Page Number: 97
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 18 Quotes

She tore it open and carried it to the lamp; then, when the door had closed again, she handed the telegram to Archer.

It was dated from St. Augustine, and addressed to the Countess Olenska. In it he read: “Granny’s telegram successful. Papa and Mamma agree marriage after Easter. Am telegraphing Newland. Am too happy for words and love you dearly. Your grateful May.”

Related Characters: May Welland (speaker), Newland Archer, Ellen Olenska, Mrs. Catherine Mingott, Mrs. Welland, Mr. Welland
Page Number: 113-14
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 20 Quotes

In all the rainy desert of autumnal London there were only two people whom the Newland Archers knew; and these two they had sedulously avoided, in conformity with the old New York tradition that it was not “dignified” to force oneself on the notice of one’s acquaintances in foreign countries.

Mrs. Archer and Janey... had so unflinchingly lived up to this principle... that they had almost achieved the record of never having exchanged a word with a “foreigner” other than those employed in hotels and railway-stations.

Related Characters: Newland Archer, May Welland, Mrs. Adeline Archer, Janey Archer
Page Number: 123
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 24 Quotes

Is it a bad business—for May?”

He stood in the window... feeling in every fiber the wistful tenderness with which she had spoken her cousin’s name.

“For that’s the thing we’ve always got to think of—haven’t we—by your own showing?” she insisted.... “[I]f it’s not worth while to have given up, to have missed things, so that others may be saved from disillusionment and misery—then everything I came home for, everything that made my other life seem by contrast so bare and so poor because no one there took account of them—all these things are a sham or a dream—”

Related Characters: Ellen Olenska (speaker), Newland Archer, May Welland
Page Number: 156
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 30 Quotes

As she sat thus, the lamplight full on her clear brow, he said to himself with a secret dismay that he would always know the thoughts behind it, that never, in all the years to come, would she surprise him by an unexpected mood, by a new idea, a weakness, a cruelty or an emotion.... Now she was simply ripening into a copy of her mother, and mysteriously, by the very process, trying to turn him into a Mr. Welland.

Related Characters: Newland Archer, May Welland
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 190-91
Explanation and Analysis:

“Catch my death!” he echoed; and he felt like adding: “But I’ve caught it already. I am dead—I’ve been dead for months and months.”

And suddenly the play of the word flashed up a wild suggestion. What if it were she who was dead! If she were going to die—to die soon—and leave him free! ...He simply felt that chance had given him a new possibility to which his sick soul might cling. Yes, May might die—people did: young people, healthy people like herself: she might die, and set him suddenly free.

Related Characters: Newland Archer (speaker), May Welland
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 191
Explanation and Analysis:

“Poor May!” he said.

“Poor? Why poor?” she echoed with a strained laugh.

“Because I shall never be able to open a window without worrying you,” he rejoined, laughing also.

For a moment she was silent; then she said very low, her head bowed over her work: “I shall never worry if you’re happy.”


“Ah, my dear; and I shall never be happy unless I can open the windows!”

Related Characters: Newland Archer (speaker), May Welland
Page Number: 191-92
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 33 Quotes

And then it came over him, in a vast flash made up of many broken gleams, that to all of them he and Madame Olenska were lovers.... He guessed himself to have been, for months, the center of countless silently observing eyes and patiently listening ears, he understood that, by means as yet unknown to him, the separation between himself and the partner of his guilt had been achieved, and that now the whole tribe had rallied about his wife on the tacit assumption that nobody knew anything, or had ever imagined anything....

It was the old New York way, of taking life “without effusion of blood”; the way of people who dreaded scandal more than disease, who placed decency above courage, and who considered that nothing was more ill-bred than “scenes,” except the behavior of those who gave rise to them.

Related Characters: Newland Archer, Ellen Olenska, May Welland
Page Number: 217
Explanation and Analysis:

“Have you told anyone else?”

“Only Mamma and your mother.” She paused, and then added hurriedly, the blood flushing up to her forehead: “That is—and Ellen. You know I told you we’d had a long talk one afternoon—and how dear she was to me.”

“Ah—” said Archer, his heart stopping.... “But that was a fortnight ago, wasn’t it? I thought you said you weren’t sure till today.”

Her color burned deeper, but she held his gaze. “No; I wasn’t sure then—but I told her I was. And you see I was right!” she exclaimed, her blue eyes wet with victory.

Related Characters: Newland Archer (speaker), May Welland (speaker), Ellen Olenska, Mrs. Adeline Archer, Mrs. Welland
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 222
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 34 Quotes

And as he had seen her that day, so she had remained;... generous, faithful, unwearied; but so lacking in imagination, so incapable of growth, that the world of her youth had fallen into pieces and rebuilt itself without her ever being conscious of the change.... And she had died thinking the world a good place, full of loving and harmonious households like her own, and resigned to leave it because she was convinced that, whatever happened, Newland would continue to inculcate in Dallas the same principles and prejudices which had shaped his parents’ lives, and that Dallas in turn (when Newland followed her) would transmit the sacred trust to little Bill.

Related Characters: Newland Archer, May Welland, Dallas Archer
Page Number: 225
Explanation and Analysis:

“She said she knew we were safe with you, and always would be, because once, when she asked you to, you’d given up the thing you most wanted.”

Archer received this strange communication in silence.... At length he said in a low voice: “She never asked me.”

Related Characters: Newland Archer (speaker), Dallas Archer (speaker), May Welland
Page Number: 231
Explanation and Analysis: