A minor melody plays through these chapters as we see a glimpse of Julius Beaufort’s fall from favor. His mysterious past was alluded to in various conversations and now Newland notices that he has aged considerably. Rumors about speculation, risky investments, and lack of caution surface. Still, he puts on a wonderful Archery Club Tournament each year; May received an expensive diamond-tipped arrow pin and “there was no denying that Beaufort did things handsomely.” Interestingly enough, Beaufort is the only character that honestly comments on May’s vague intellectual shortcomings and perhaps gives a glimpse of how others see her.
Right on the heels of May’s snobbish comments about the French tutor in England, Wharton continues—during the Newport scenes—to show that May is firmly in charge of Newland’s life. She is her mother’s daughter. No longer the quiet mouse, she arranges every minute of Newland’s days. The Wellands have purchased the home Newland will occupy and the brougham that transports him. When he expresses reluctance to go to Newport, it is his mother-in-law who says nonsense, and May must show off her Paris gowns. May’s triumph at the picture-perfect Archery Club win and her calculated suggestion that they visit Ellen’s grandmother are both symbols of how deeply Newland is entrenched in the leisure-class New York lifestyle. He is restless and the constraints of that life weigh on him, but his reluctance to fetch Ellen at the seashore shows that his dreams of life with Ellen are only fantasies. He would never give up his position.
Wharton creates doubts about all his restlessness when Newland describes May as “peace, stability, comradeship and the steadying sense of an inescapable duty.” This is 1870s, nostalgic New York as Wharton sees it from the new century. Marriage is a steadying influence in a sea of chaos soon to be visited by World War I. The idea that Newland ever dreamed of marrying the Countess is described as a ghostly memory. Even Medora Manson reminds Newland that “marriage is one long sacrifice.”
Even married, he is haunted by Ellen. He lies to May about his true intentions in going to the Blenker’s, and then recklessly follows Ellen to Boston for a tryst aboard a tourist boat. “The longing was within him day and night, an incessant, undefinable craving, like the sudden whim of a sick man for food or drink once tested and long since forgotten.” Unlike Newland, Ellen realizes they cannot exist outside the roles they have been groomed to play by society. Their love must be pure, or innocent people will be hurt. Newland reluctantly agrees.
Newland is still a man torn. When he is with May on their honeymoon, he reverts to the old patterns of male gratification and social norms. He feels comfortable in this pattern but is strangely restless. He does not realize—as the reader does—that May’s iron will designs his monotonous days. His longing for a fantasy life is fulfilled by his thoughts of Ellen. He declares that his marriage is a sham and he agrees with Ellen that New York is “damnably dull . . . [with] no character, no color, no variety.” At the same time Ellen realizes, with far more insight than Newland, that they are prisoners of their world. “There they were, close together and safe and shut in; yet so chained to their separate destinies that they might as well have been half the world apart.”
