the unsaid played a crucial role in the novel were the circumstances surrounding Ellen Olenska’s final departure from New York. When Newland had tried to revel his feelings for Ellen Olenska to May in Chapter XXXII, May cut him off with her announcement that The Countess was planning on returning to Europe. Arguably, May was attempting to leave unsaid something that she already knew. For a long while she must have known of Newland’s affair with her cousin. This brings into question all of the other circumstances surrounding Ellen Olenska’s departure. Although it was never explicitly said in the novel, one could assume that upon finding out about her pregnancy, May discussed the situation with her cousin Ellen in order to make certain that her affair with Newland would not ever be announced. This must have led to The Countess’ decision to move to Europe, as it was the proper thing to do to allow her cousin May to maintain a long-standing marriage for the sake of her unborn child. All of this, at the time, was left entirely unsaid, however, the reader would have had to deduce very little in order to be certain that this was what must have happened.Not until the end of the novel are all of the suspicions of the reader realized. After May’s death, Newland reluctantly travelled to Europe with his eldest son. In what was, by far, the most emotionally charged passage of the novel; the reader is finally shown exactly what May Welland/Archer knew of her husband’s affair with Ellen Olenska. After the conversation where Dallas asked his father if Ellen Olenska was once his love, and the woman he would have “chucked everything for” only he didn’t, Dallas reveals to his father a conversation he had with his mother the day before she died. “Yes: the day before she died. It was when she sent for me alone—you remember? She said she knew we were safe with you, and always would be, because...
