Newland is experiencing a conflict of feeling: He is caught in a matrimonial snare, yet he has always adhered to society’s rules. With more bridal calls to make from “one tribal doorstep to another,” Newland perceives himself “shown off like a wild animal cunningly trapped.” Should he have told May that he is calling on Madame Olenska? Should he be content with his in-laws’ decision on the house he will occupy and with his wife’s conventional interior decoration? Wharton highlights this conflict by placing him in Madame Olenska’s drawing room, which is charmingly arranged with unconventional paintings. Even the smell of the artfully arranged flowers is exotic. This seems like freedom. Ellen contrasts her drawing room with the gloominess of the van der Luydens.’ Why must everyone be exactly alike? Newland has not questioned that idea before.
Madame Olenska is totally destroying the balance in Newland’s world, and, to make matters worse, she brings out his protective instincts. When she confesses to her loneliness, he suggests that New Yorkers have opened their arms to her. However, she candidly tells him something he realizes but does not want to accept: New Yorkers do not seem to want to hear “the truth” and she feels very lonely among people who request that she pretend. Her distress causes him to drop his formalities, improperly take her hand, call her by her first name (Ellen), and then guiltily remember his fiancé.
Newland is playing with fire. The vivid yellow roses are too strong for his insipid fiancé but perfect for the Countess Olenska’s free spirit. He places his card with the roses for Madame Olenska, but—conscience stricken—withdraws it. Two boxes of flowers, one white and one golden, are going to two women. With one he would live an orthodox life; with the other he would be free. One seems to lack imagination and original thoughts—a person suitably symbolized by bland, white lilies-of-the-valley—while the other represents the passion and imagination of yellow roses.
Newland’s conflict is far from over as evidenced during his conversation with May. His concern that she will stare “blankly at blankness” is certainly revealed by her inability to make any decisions herself. Even Newland’s desire to travel is followed by May’s thoughts of how she will explain this to her mother, who does not understand doing things “differently.” When Newland tries to explain his new-found ideas about being free, she counters with the belief that his thought is “like people in novels . . . vulgar. . . .” Newland would like to think he could be unconventional, but May more truthfully realizes that they would both hate resisting social pressures.
First May reminds Newland that he is at heart a conventional person, and then his dinner with Mr. Letterblair adds emphasis to that idea. Through this somber dinner, Wharton reminds the reader that Newland works in an atmosphere of old line New York legal retainers. While he enters the room desiring to rebel against convention, Mr. Letterblair convinces him that a divorce will not be wise for anyone. While Newland reconsiders his thought that Ellen should divorce, he finally agrees to represent the Countess because his concern for her protection outweighs his sense of prudence as an engaged man. He makes numerous excuses for her past, thinking that women in Europe might be drawn into affairs from sheer loneliness. What the Count’s letter to the Countess alleges is never revealed, but Newland’s reaction suggests that in it the Count hints or states that she had scandal to hide in her past. Newland never questions the Count’s statements and his decision is partly based on his desire to protect her and her “pitiful figure.”
Newland’s motive is also based on his own affair with Mrs. Thorley Rushworth. The double standard in sexual liaisons is foremost in Newland’s mind. As his mother would say of men’s affairs, “such things happened.” It was “foolish of the man” but “always criminal of the woman.” This double standard is passed down from aunts, mothers, and other female relatives. There are “women we love and respect” and so we marry them, and “women we enjoy and pity” with whom we have affairs. Newland’s continuing conflict is between considering Ellen as a person who should be respected and free, or thinking of her as the woman with whom he desires an affair. At this point he decides he will speak with her and save her from the censure of New York society that would be brought on by a divorce for any reason.
