.. into something as vast and august as a natural phenomenon.
She had accepted this submergence as philosophically as all her
other trials, and now, in extreme old age, was rewarded by
presenting to her mirror an almost unwrinkled expanse of firm pink
and white flesh, in the center of which the traces of a small face
survived as if awaiting excavation.... Around and below, wave
after wave of black silk surged away over the edges of a capacious
armchair, with two tiny white hands poised like gulls on the
surface of the billows.
Her art is restrained, focussed upon those points where America,
in its normality and in its eccentricity, has become articulate.
Therefore it is sharp and convincing.
Who is the central figure in this story where the leaven of
intellectual and emotional unrest works in a society that has
perfected its code and intends to live by it? Is it Newland
Archer, who bears the uncomfortable ferment within him? Is it his
wife, the lovely May, whose clear blue eyes will see only
innocence? Is it the Countess Olenska, the American who has seen
reality and suffered by it, and sacrifices her love for Newland in
order to preserve his innocence? No one of these is the center of
the story, but rather the idea of "the family," this American
"family," which is moral according to its lights, provincial,
narrow--but intensely determined that its world shall appear
upright, faithful, courageous, in despite of facts, and regardless
of how poor reality must be tortured until it conforms.
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