ble to publicly reveal his love for Ellen. He will not protest against the code of New York society. He chooses to remain jailed in the rules of their immortal society. And in so doing, he permits Ellen to be exiled and to live alone; we assume that Ellen’s aloneness will be lonely. He chooses to lose their freedom. It is ironic that his immortal life is paralysing yet he realizes that a mortal life would be liberating.Newland and Ellen meet for the last time at the museum. The setting highlights the figures of two mortals enveloped within the walls of immortality. They speak while viewing a relic from a past society; and realize that some day they will be as unimportant to any future society that might find a relic of their past. Their relationship was as important to them as the relic was to its own society. The museum makes them realize that their forbidden happiness might also become a relic to be exhibited in a museum. Newland lived out his paralysis with his wife and children. Despite their struggles that seemed so important to he and Ellen, the world continued. And even later in his life, when he has the opportunity to meet again with Ellen, his shame forbids him to do so. He also realizes that their situation is merely a speck in the scheme of the world; to start their relationship up again would mean nothing. He is in a jail of immortality not unlike a soul trapped in a statue of an ancient mythological character. And here is where Wharton brings myth back into the story. His reluctant attachment to May (Diana) makes him comparable to the mythical character, Actaeon. Actaeon saw a naked Diana and was forever punished when she:“made the horns of a long-lived stag rise on his head where the water had struck him; his neck grew long and his ears pointed, his hands turned to hooves, his arms to legs, and his body she clothed with a spotted deerskin. And she made him timid.” Actaeon was made unat...
