Age of Innocence

Summary and Analysis of Chapters 1-5 Chapter One Summary: The play opens at the opera. Newland Archer enters his opera box and looks out across the theater to see his girlfriend, May Welland, touch the lilies he had given her. While dreaming of their future together, his thoughts are interrupted by gasps from the gentlemen sitting with him. They are whispering about a fashionably dressed woman who has just sat down in the box with …

…he doesn¹t want to go up and see her. When Dallas asks him what she should say on his behalf, he says, say that I¹m "Old-fashioned." Dallas goes to see Ellen and Newland sits on the bench outside her building for a long time; when a servant comes to shut her shutters, Newland decides to leave the neighborhood. Analysis: This chapter is written to show, quite ironically, that all the prohibitions that "be