Status Updates From Au temps de l'innocence (Fr...

The guy who is the best in form makes an exclamation when Ellen (Helen of Troy) walks into May’s box. She wears an blue-velvet empress dress held by a brooch and a diamond band around her close-cropped curls. He lets out a loud exclamation about the cheek of the Mingott family. She seems like she has no idea anyone is watching and yet her slight smile makes one wonder. He hands the glass to the geneaologist.

Now get this. He had a fancy for a charming married lady for two years. She distracted him and it came close to marring her life and confused his plans for a whole winter. Then he wants a virgin for his wife. He has not thought deeply about how he can pull off this miracle of fire and ice, but he is the most traveled and most well-read in his set. His friends each have a singular quality but that’s about it.

The set of the opera is artificial. Is she hinting to us that Newland is setting up a false paradise? Is the daisy grafted into a rose a symbol of innocence being paired with sin (thorns)? Do the crochet hoops signify a game and people are going to be whacked and moved around like balls? The hoops are shaped like arches. This arch man sees himself as enlightening his bride with worldly wisdom.

Mind blown. So there are many examples of people looking at each other and seeing. Even the daisy is a symbol of the eye and the singer is plucking away at them. There are ginormous pansies on the stage (faces looking out at faces). However, do they see themselves as they are? Newland Archer (so many thoughts come to mind about his name) sees May as a possession to acquire before sealing the deal. Is he Faust?

Newland gives a “bless her heart” comment about May. Now wouldn’t it be funny if she is far more knowing than he is and he is the true simpleton. He has some sort of wishdream that she is a Pygmalian that he can transform into the cosmopolitan woman of his making. A blank slate. An oyster. What is intriguing is that we have no idea of what she thinks yet, except that she is enjoying the play and she said yes.

Many symbols of innocence surround May: dropped eyes, lily of the valley in her lap, white gloves, a stage that looks like the Garden of Eden. Archer is vain about her purity. She is like one of the flowers. However, the roses have thorns. Is that a caution? Is he supposed to be her prince or is he a usurper like Faust? Yup, right there, it says it’s an enchanted garden. Are we to see Gretchan as May?

I wonder if they are doubles for May and Newland. He looks from his box to Mrs. Mason Mingott who is morbidly obese and can’t get out anymore. On fashionable nights, it always has someone out of her generosity. In the box are her daughter-in-law, Lovell Mingott, her daughter, Mrs. Welland, and, behind them, May Welland. She is the picture of innocence like the daisy picker.

He understood the social forms and he could be fashionably late. It wasn’t the cigar that made him dawdled. It was thinking about his betrothed, the picture of innocence. Conventions like the German text of a French opera, translated into Italian, for English-speaking audiences dominates his life. He does not mind following them. He sees the innocent pure maiden singing about the villian who is trying to look pure.

The audience is New York’s most brilliant. They come in the most respectable carriages. The brown coupe (lower status) only was accepted for its speed. Newland Archer (what a name) arrives late, during the garden scene in which the singer pulls petals off a daisy while singing “He loves me, he loves me not!” What timing! He was late because he was enjoying a cigar. He enjoyed the little pleasures.

Ch. 1 The book opens with an opera held in an aging opera house. I wonder if this story is an opera with a love triangle. Old money treasured it in spite of some of its shabbiness because it was small enough to shut out new money, its historical and sentimental associations, and its acoustic excellence. The timing is a slushy, snowy day. It’s the singer’s debut for this opera season.

The end of the novel shows the end of their life as Newland reflects how he lived and the choices he made. Life has not killed the dreamer in him nor the memories that he treasures. It sounds a bit like Downton Abbey, describing the end of an era in New York high society. Even though it is set before the war, the issues are similar so it can stand alongside the books of her peers.

In the story is a journalist who represents the world of real work and freedom. He must work and he is less bound by the rules of society. He is not free from work because he has to earn money. As the novel starts to mirror Faust, the Archers go back to the opera and what is happening in their life is mirrored in the scene described in Faust. Does Newland run away like the father of the child or does he follow duty?

The irony is that they recognize last year’s gown and passe dinners but have amnesia about the source of their money. In the cast of characters include many questionable characters that offer an out for Newland and the countess at the cost of respectability. It turns out that Beaufort’s fortune is built on credit, highly risky in a time where there were no regulations. They ignore that he could bring them down too.

Money is the tentacle for all of them. Newland plods at his law office to appease the moneyholders in his family. Ellen depends on the Polish count. Old money was cherished and new money was despised. One of the mysteries is how Julius Beaufort got his money. Because of that, people don’t quite trust him. Old money has to invent aristocracy for themselves going back to Europe.

Newland is unable to communicate with May as well. He is trapped because he can’t get away from May because she is too clever for him and the countess looks at him as a simpleton. He feels like he is the living dead and it’s his own fault. Too stay respectable, he represses his anger and quietly seethes. Like British gentlemen of this time, he has no calling. So he has no outlet during the day.