In the novel The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton presents May Welland as a naïve and pure girl; the embodiment of everything Newland Archer perceives as immaculate. But in truth she is not as ignorant as she is described as; she knows all of the things Newland has been doing and she shows him that she is not all he expected her to be. May was previously depicted as being abysmally pure, and Archer loves this part about her; he wants to expose her to all types of literature and open her eyes to the real world. May later shatters this façade with her knowledge that one would not expect; that Archer didn’t expect. She first indicates her awareness by saying, “And if you feel yourself in any way pledged…pledged to the person we’ve spoken of…and