Wharton is sentimental towards old New York, she also shows a "delicate, but cutting irony" of society's limitations and its narrow-mindedness (Magill, Critical 8: 3537).
             There are many examples that indicate this in the novel. For one, Newland Archer is a man who is different from most people in old New York, but he is lacking the motivation and courage to separate himself physically from the security of the life he has known all his life (Magill, Masterplots 1: 85). Inste
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