Archer's Ideas Of Nonconformity

As a young man, Archer looks down with disdain at a society rife with corruption, disingenuity, and moral depravity–and vows never to conform to its mold. In the world of New York aristocracy, people exchange polite greetings only to gossip behind each others’ backs. Others, like Lawrence Lefferts, have the audacity to point fingers at others for suspected affairs in spite of their own blatant infidelities. And as Beaufort’s evening excursions prove, all manner of shady behavior can and will be tolerated–as long as the perpetrator keeps up the public semblance of propriety. Due to society’s obsession with the shallow and superficial, Archer considers himself superior “in matters intellectual and artistic” (4) to those around him. Furthermore,
Most women, Archer realizes, are nothing but a “product of the [social] system” (4) that raises them to be “nice” girls with no mind of their own. Not only are these women not free, but most do not even realize it; fewer still would “claim the kind of freedom he meant” (27). Thus, Archer begins to question the prescribed role of women in New York society: “Women should be free–as free as we are” (27). Looking around at the marriages around him, he notes that they were invariably “a dull association of material and social interests held together by ignorance on the one side and hypocrisy on the other” (28). With a “shiver of foreboding” (28), he convinces himself that his marriage with his fiancée, May Welland, is somehow special–that they will never end up like the other tepid couples around them. However, Archer falls in love with Countess Olenska, who, in contrast to May, represents passion, individuality, and imagination–a kindred soul to Archer and a beacon of enlightenment in a dark society. In pursuing Olenska, Archer symbolically begins his quest to break free of the mediocrity, conformity, and corruption of mainstream society, to “strike out for himself” (4) as an
Gone are his nonconformist attitude, his rebellious thoughts, and his idealistic dreams of passion. Instead, he has settled down to live a tranquil, ordinary, even mediocre life. Perhaps Archer never was special to begin with? Perhaps all those so-called conformists–even the staid Mr. Welland–once harbored their own thoughts and dreams in their youth just as Archer did in his? Perhaps Archer’s tale is not a unique one and countless idealistic youths before him have had their dreams slowly crushed by the overbearing weight of society. In the face of inevitable imprisonment by societal pressures, is individualism futile? It would take a veritable superman to break free of the mediocrity, conformity, and depravity of the mortal world and live life on his own terms. Having fought against society and lost, Archer must now return to a tepid, ordinary life within the bounds of a decadent