excerpted from, The Pygmalion Project: Volume 3, The Idealist by Dr. Stephen Montgomery
Copyright © 1993 Stephen Montgomery

Continued from:

Archer's first concern (to help May become less "dull" and more "versatile") is to see if he can lift her concrete Guardian soul to his higher Idealist world of imaginative literature. Keirsey observes that Idealists are not at all hesitant about trying to inspire their loved ones with "poetry...and quotations," and apparently Archer hopes that "thanks to his enlightening companionship" he can develop May into his literary comrade. During their courtship Archer is proud of "the shy interest in books and ideas that [May] was beginning to develop under his guidance" -- although he admits that, without his help, she struggles with poetry a good deal and could not yet "feel the beauty" of the more challenging poems of Tennyson and Browning. And he dreams of revealing the "masterpieces of literature" to May on their honeymoon: "We'll read Faust together," he promises himself, "by the Italian lakes." May tries her best to please Archer by being soulful and deep, but she cannot help approaching poetry in her simple Guardian way: she loves to hear Archer read "beautiful things" out of "his poetry books," and she is far more interested in learning poems by heart than in understanding them or discussing their ideas.

Wanting also to inspire more "freedom of judgment" in May, Archer urges her to take a drastic step with him: he pleads with her to throw off social convention (New York's obligatory "two-year engagement") and marry him right away. But here again, though she is pleasant enough about the idea, May's conservative Guardian temperament is a formidable obstacle to overcome. May's first thought is one of girlish pride in Archer's
always-surprising imaginativeness: "Newland," she sighs, "you're so original." But as the social implications of Archer's proposal slowly dawn on her, she grows distinctly uncomfortable with the prospect of "doing things so differently," and she sweetly digs in her heels:
"Mercy -- should we elope?" she laughed.
"If you would --"
"You do love me, Newland! I'm so happy."
"Then why not be happier?"
"We can't behave like people in novels, though, can we?"
"Why not -- why not -- why not?"
She looked a little bored by his insistence. She knew very well that they couldn't, but it was troublesome to have to produce a reason. "I'm not clever enough to argue with you. But that kind of thing is rather -- vulgar, isn't it?" she suggested, relieved to have hit on a word that would assuredly extinguish the whole subject. "Are you so much afraid, then, of being vulgar?" She was evidently staggered by this. "Of course I should hate it -- so would you," she rejoined, a trifle irritably.

This conversation is altogether typical of Archer and May, and it illustrates in detail the unavoidable frustration of informative role-casting. Advocates and Protectors are two of Keirsey's "role-informing" types (as opposed to the "role-directing" types), and though Archer wants very much for May to do something quite dramatic for him, he cannot bring himself to order her straightaway. Instead, he tries to direct her indirectly, by offering her courteous options ("if you would"), and by asking her rhetorical questions ("why not be happier?" and "are you so much afraid?"), hoping to open doors for her imagination and show her the way through. Similarly, May responds not with clear countermands that would dash his hopes, but with gently obstructing information about herself and their
shared values ("We can't behave," "that is -- vulgar," and "I should hate it -- so would you"); and she answers each one of Archer's leading questions with tentative, cautioning questions of her own ("should we?" "can we?" and "isn't it?").

Edith Wharton describes this couched, oblique style of communication with some personal frustration in The Age of Innocence, calling it a form of incomprehensible "hieroglyphics," a language of "faint implication and pale delicacies" in which "the real thing was never said." Role-informative types often appear indecisive in urgent situations, when they must try to come to the point and determine anothers' behavior. And here, certainly, Archer is fully aware of the exasperating separation between the bold action he wants to bring about in May, and the diplomatic words he must use to motivate her -- feeling all through their conversations that he and May were in a "deaf-and-dumb asylum," as they 'sat and watched each other, and guessed at what was going on."

In truth, May guesses more than Archer gives her credit for, and a few weeks after this interview she gathers her dignity about her and confides to Archer that she has felt a difference in him ever since the night at the opera, the night they announced their engagement. She worries if he still cares for her, and she even promises him quite
majestically that, if there is "someone else," she will give him his freedom. May's "tragic courage" touches the young Idealist to the heart, and her simple article of faith -- "I can't have my happiness made out of a wrong...to somebody else" -- makes his own moral position inescapably clear. No matter how great his desire for Ellen Olenska (and it is almost overwhelming him at this point), Archer knows he cannot break his word and forsake someone as trusting and as innocently deserving as May. And so, when she hints that her parents might consent to an early wedding, he resolves again to meet "all his obligations." Ellen, he knows deep in his soul, is "the woman I would have married if it had been possible," but he will stand by May and stay on "the path that he was committed
to tread."

Archer endures the elaborate ritual of the "nineteenth century New York wedding," with its soaring music, top hats, and banks of lilies. And he survives his wedding tour on the continent, three months of social calls and shopping, of hiking, theaters, and lawn tennis. Sincerely determined to accept his fate and love May as she is, Archer all but abandons his plans to make her more poetical and free-spirited, though it must be said that he gives up his Pygmalion project more out of disappointment than love. Taking the measure of May's "absence of imagination," he thinks better of his dream to read Goethe with her by the Italian lakes: "on reflection," Archer confesses, "he had not been able to picture his wife in that particular setting." And he quickly learns a difficult lesson for Idealists: that Guardians such as May do not think of themselves as bound by conventions, but actually prefer the security of a ritualized way of life -- "there was no use," he realizes, "in trying to emancipate a wife who had not the dimmest notion that she was not free."

Though a stray memory of Ellen Olenska troubles him on occasion, Archer does his best to keep himself focused on the finer "lines of [May's] character": her Protector's "simplicity," her "innate dignity," her "sweet-temper." And, in this way, by the time they return home to New York Archer believes himself quite secure in "all his old traditions and reverences" concerning married life, taking his pleasure in May's good looks, her "easy and pleasant" companionship, and regarding his "momentary madness" with Ellen as "the last of his discarded experiments" in romance.

However, as they settle into their new house on East Thirty-ninth Street, Archer also reveals a curious -- and ominous -- division of sympathies that can occur in even the most comfortable Idealist-Guardian marriage. On the one hand, Archer seems content to lead a traditional Guardian domestic life with May. He resumes his law practice ("the old routine of the office"), he comes home "every evening" to his charming wife, and he hopes for
children to fill "the vacant corners in both their lives." To be sure, life with May fulfills the most conservative dreams of his bachelorhood, and his marriage quickly comes to satisfy his ideal of "peace, stability, comradeship, and a steadying sense of...duty."

But what of his more ardent dreams of poetry and adventure, the longings that Ellen Olenska brought to life at such an impossible moment? Archer addresses this question with strained indifference in the novel, mentioning casually that "his artistic and intellectual life would go on, as it always had, outside the domestic circle." Archer means this innocently enough: he will simply continue to pursue his Idealist interests (what he has referred to as his "narrow margin of real life") in private, reading his books in his study and visiting galleries on his own. But his remark carries a more disturbing implication for his marriage. Indeed, when an Idealist divides his married life into a social, domestic side, which he gives over to his Guardian wife, and a personal, imaginative side, which he reserves for
himself alone, he drives a wedge deep into the heart of his marriage -- into the Idealist's vital need for "soul partnership" -- that weakens the relationship at the core and makes it vulnerable to the inevitable pressures of married life.

And so, as the months pass...