How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
"The individual, in such cases, is nearly always sacrificed to what is supposed to the collective interest: people cling to any convention that keeps the family together —protects the children, if there are any […]" (12.90)
Here’s another reference to the similarity between New York society and primitive society.
Quote #8
"[…] But you're in a pitiful little minority; you've got no center, no competition, no audience. You're like the pictures on the walls of a deserted house: 'The Portrait of a Gentleman.'" (14.24)
This statement by the journalist Winsett picks up the anthropological thread from the worldly narrator. If the world is evolving, old-fashioned gentlemen like Newland Archer are rapidly becoming irrelevant.
Quote #9
[…] everybody knew the melancholy fate of the few gentlemen who had risked their clean linen in municipal or state politics in New York. The day was past when that sort of thing was possible: the country was in possession of the bosses and the emigrant, and decent people had to fall back on sport or culture. (14.23)
Archer's class is represented as being detached from American society, which is tranforming as it becomes more industrialized and as new influxes of immigrants change the demographic. The old social elite are all dinosaurs.