once, when she asked you to, you’d given up the thing you most wanted.” (Wharton 356) To see the significance of the unsaid in The Age of Innocence, one must only see the power that things left unsaid had in holding together a society such as the one that existed in New York during the time of the novel. Things that went unspoken, but were left to be solved by duty and appropriateness had the ability to act like the glue that held the Newland/Archer family together for a lifetime of children, and a lifetime of existence within a society that would not have accepted it any other way. Until the day before she died, May Welland/Archer acted in accordance with the unspoken rules of society in order to protect herself, her family, her marriage, and even the social structure itself, the very structure which forced her into accepting what life had given her long ago, and had taught her to learn to accept it. ...
