Status Updates From The Age of Innocence

What’s important is that they divide their time between Maryland and an estate on the Hudson. They hardley ever open up their large home on Madison Avenue was seldom opened and, when in town, it’s only to see intimate acquaintances.

They come from Dutch and English merchants who came to the colonies to make a fortune. They were involved in founding the country but with neither rank nor status. They are not the privileged beings at Washington Square who came from aristocracy. Some have faded away like Mr. and Mrs. Henry van der Luyden, the last of their kind. There’s a whole lot of connections here that would be a footnote had Tolkien done it.

The social pyramid is slippery (like the presents in TCP). At the base are plain people and at the top is high society. Enough people have married into the top that eventually things will loosen up. The dynamic is not unlike Harry Potter in the situation between muggles and pure-blood wizards. His mother avows that Newlands, Archers, and Mingotts are not at the top and there is no such thing as New York aristocracy.

The society there is so insular that everyone knows everyone’s social calendar and nobody has anything to do the night of the dinner, which adds to the insult. Of course, the recipients of the invitation felt equally insulted. The Mingotts took it in stride but May’s mom talked to Newland’s mom talk to Newland and he asked her to look up some ancient relatives which meant he got dragged into it.