How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
[Mr. Sillerton Jackson] knew all the ramifications of New York's cousinships; and could not only elucidate such complicated questions as that of the connection between the Mingotts (through the Thorleys) with the Dallases of South Carolina, and that of the relationship of the elder branch of Philadelphia Thorleys to the Albany Chiverses (on no account to be confused with the Manson Chiverses of University Place), but could also enumerate the leading characteristics of each family […] (1.17)
Interestingly, Sillerton Jackson thinks of New York society as a network of "cousinships," as if everybody were in one big family. With all the intermarrying between families, they probably are.
Quote #2
"It is the principle I dislike," said Mr. van der Luyden. "As long as a member of a well-known family is backed up by that family it should be considered— final." (7.33)
The family establishes an individual's position in society. Done and done.
Quote #3
[…] Archer, when the afternoon's round was over, parted from his betrothed with the feeling that he had been shown off like a wild animal cunningly trapped. He supposed that his readings in anthropology caused him to take such a coarse view of what was after all a simple and natural demonstration of family feeling […] (9.5)
Archer's family responsibilities are beginning to chafe worse than skinny jeans after a rainstorm.
Quote #4
There was something about the luxury of the Welland house and the density of the Welland atmosphere, so charged with minute observances and exactions, that always stole into his system like a narcotic. (21.46)
Each family has its own identity, and the Wellands are no exception. To someone from outside the family like Newland, the Wellands's way of doing things can be suffocating.
Quote #5
The mere idea of a woman's appealing to her family to screen her husband's business honor was inadmissible, since it was the one thing that the Family, as an institution, could not do. (27.19)
Huh. There's an interesting contrast between Madame Olenska's situation and Regina Beaufort's. Remember when the van der Luydens came to Ellen's defense and threw her that party? Blood is thicker than water, but cash money is the thickest substance known to man.
Quote #6
There were certain things that had to be done, and if done at all, done handsomely and thoroughly; and one of these, in the old New York code, was the tribal rally around a kinswoman about to be eliminated from the tribe. (33.15)
Madame Olenska's going away party is described as a "tribal" ritual, even though the ritual described is elimination. Everything should be done in the best of taste, even the 1870s equivalent of sending someone to sleep with the fishes.
Quote #7
[…] 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 […] (33. 41)
The family—or "tribe"—acts as a unit in order to protect itself, here against the dangerous possibility of Newland's divorce from May.
Quote #8
"[…] 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. His eyes remained unseeingly fixed on the thronged sunlit square below the window. At length he said in a low voice: "She never asked me." (34.54-5)
The family's power is so dominant that Archer found himself compelled to do something he didn't want to do—staying with May in order to preserve the family.
Quote #9
He had married (as most young men did) because he had met a perfectly charming girl […] and she had represented peace, stability, comradeship, and the steadying sense of an unescapable duty. (21.10)
There's nothing romantic about Archer's feelings for May, unless a "steadying sense of an unescapable duty" is your cup of tea. May makes a good wife, not a lover.
Quote #10
But this behest of old Mrs. Mingott's roused him to a sense of what the clan thought they had the right to exact from a prospective son-in-law; and he chafed at the role. (11.13)
As a prospective son-in-law, Newland finds himself roped into the affairs of the Wellands and the Mingotts, and he's none too happy about it.