The Age of Innocence Contrasting Regions: United States and Europe Quotes

How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)

Quote #10

"[Countess Olenska's] an American. And that if you're an American of her kind— of your kind —things that are accepted in certain other societies, or at least put up with as part of a general, convenient give-and-take —become unthinkable, simply unthinkable […]" (25.68)

Rivière, the French secretary to Count Olenska, recognizes how American Ellen Olenska has become. Like other Americans in her social circle, she has also become morally uncompromising, and won't put up with the Count's behavior.

Quote #11

[…] he had a fancy to spend the intervening time in a place where he could think of her as perhaps having lately been. For an hour or more he wandered from gallery to gallery through the dazzle of afternoon light, and one by one the pictures burst on him in their half-forgotten splendor, filling his soul with the long echoes of beauty. (34.60)

Twenty-six years later, Archer finds himself in the Louvre. Interestingly, the last time he saw Ellen was in another museum, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, where they talked in a room filled with Roman antiquities.