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Newland Archer (Advocate Idealist : ENFP)excerpted from, The Pygmalion Project: Volume 3, The Idealist by Dr. Stephen MontgomeryCopyright © 1993 Stephen Montgomery Continued from: On matters of the heart, however, Archer seems at first a good deal more conservative. May Welland, his fiance, is the picture of feminine innocence in the novel, "the young girl in white," as Wharton calls her. May is a pink-cheeked and white-gloved Protector Guardian ("ISFJ"), and she is also the delicate "May" flower of the New York social nursery, carefully tended "by a conspiracy of mothers and aunts and grandmothers." And without question May's blushing modesty (she is only twenty-two) has perfectly captivated Archer. As he watches her at the opera on the night of their engagement, sitting demurely in her grandmother's box and holding a bouquet of lilies-of-the-valley on her knees, Archer smiles with a "tender reverence" on her childlike purity. Later that night, at the gala ball, as he dances with May among the tree ferns and camellias, the "cup of his bliss" overflows, and he realizes that "nothing about his betrothed pleased him more" than her invincible maidenly "niceness," her blind determination to obey the New York "ritual of ignoring the 'unpleasant'" in every facet of her life. Edith Wharton offers a number of penetrating explanations for Archer's surprisingly old-fashioned infatuation. First of all (and this is an important point about all the Idealists), she shows us that beneath his intellectual non-conformity Archer has quite a traditional sense of morality, particularly when it comes to the woman he plans to marry. As an Advocate, Archer might "strike out on his own" in art and literature, in religion and politics, but concerning his fiance he feels a genuine "solidarity" with the New York standards of feminine innocence, and about women in general he has rather complacently adopted the Fifth Avenue "doctrine on all the issues called moral." Idealists, let me say, share with Guardians an innately moral nature -- both temperaments base their behavior first on considerations of right and wrong, rather than utility or efficiency, like the pragmatic Artisans and Rationals. In addition, Advocates are the most chivalrous, even quixotic, of all the Idealists in their relations with women. And thus it is understandable for a young Advocate man, raised in a traditional, moralistic Guardian social system, to set aside his broader intellectual ideals and take on a conservative, in some ways medieval, attitude toward feminine purity. Moreover, Wharton's irony makes it clear that she believes the starry-eyed Archer is idealizing May's moral delicacy into a vision of spiritual perfection, very much romanticizing her spotless propriety into purity of soul. Wharton remarks (with droll seriousness) that Archer feels "something grave and sacramental" in the first hours of his engagement, and that he imagines almost deliriously "what a new life it was going to be, with this whiteness, radiance, goodness at one's side." Archer also calls May his "dear and great angel!" and he pledges himself to keep not only the golden "essence" of their love "untouched," but "the surface pure too." Wharton understands all too well the Idealists' ability to attribute their own soulfulness to their loved ones, for she describes how Archer marvels at the "depths of [May's] innocently-gazing soul" -- and how, as she sits staring absently into space, he believes her eyes are "distant and serious," and are surely "bent on some ineffable vision." But Wharton knows as well that Archer feels a more physical attraction to May. She explains (and with some personal bitterness) that New York keeps a young girl so conspicuously virginal before marriage precisely to excite her future husband's desire for erotic conquest -- "in order that he might exercise his lordly pleasure," as Wharton puts it, "in smashing [her] like an image made of snow." And certainly Archer is not above feeling this same "thrill of possessorship" when he pictures himself initiating May into the mysteries of sexuality. As a temperament, Idealists are creatures of strong passions, but Advocates are the most adventurously amorous of the group, and Archer (with his swollen "masculine vanity") is indeed charmed by May's "radiant good looks" and enticed by the promise of her virginity. "The darling," he beams with pride at the opera, "she doesn't know what it's all about," and he fantasizes what it will be like on his honeymoon, when he plunges May "overnight into what people evasively called 'the facts of life'" -- though Wharton makes it clear that, in typical Idealist style, Archer is rather embarrassed at his own eagerness. Wharton offers yet another reason, and this a more subtle insight: she suggests that May's appeal for Archer springs from her Guardian promise of safety and stability, no less than from her tantalizing innocence. Keirsey observes in Please Understand Me that the "warmly enthusiastic" Advocates are often drawn to the sober, trustworthy Guardians, who take responsibility for "keeping the ship on a steady course," and who pride themselves on "providing anchorage and safe harbor" for their impetuous mates. And in this case Archer describes May in almost these same words, expecting their marriage to be a "safe anchorage" among the adulterous backwaters of respectable New York society, and likening May to a ship which can sail him "safe past the Siren Isle and [into] the haven of a blameless domesticity." In addition, Archer often thinks of May as a vessel holding all the virtues of home and family-life. He calls her "straightforward, loyal and brave," and then again "generous, faithful, unwearied." He trusts that, in her eyes, the world is "a good place, full of loving and harmonious households." And he feels that May is just the girl to keep a rein on his rebellious imagination, putting him more securely in touch with the familiar New York world around him: "in spite of the cosmopolitan views on which he prided himself," Wharton tells us, "he thanked heaven that he was a New Yorker, and about to ally himself with one of his own kind." Edith Wharton's understanding of Archer's feelings for May is thus extensive, but she also knows that, as an Idealist, Archer is "too imaginative" not to have disturbing doubts about what he is getting himself into -- doubts that perhaps his marriage will be no safe anchorage at all, "but a voyage on uncharted seas." May's Protector simplicity is endearing on the surface, but Archer has his Advocate's intellectual aspirations, and he insists with some dismay that he "did not in the least want the future Mrs. Newland Archer to be a simpleton." Again, May's Protector innocence is precious, but Archer has his Advocate's inquisitiveness, and he confesses that "he did not want May to have that kind of innocence, the innocence that seals the mind against imagination and the heart against experience." Most young husbands-to-be have second thoughts (as Wharton points out), but Archer's fears run deeper than most, and alone in his study a few days after the ball, he studies May's framed photograph "with a new sense of awe." May's placidly assured Guardian features (her "frank forehead, serious eyes and gay innocent mouth") make her appear to him now "like a stranger," and he wonders if "she was frank, poor darling, because she had nothing to conceal, [and] assured because she knew of nothing to be on her guard against." As his apprehension grows, Archer calls the entire New York matrimonial system into question: "What could he and [May] really know of each other?" he asks himself with a sinking heart;
Of course, in his anxiety Archer is unfairly exaggerating his misgivings about May's character, and about their chances for happiness as man and wife. Although female Protectors do concern themselves primarily with the "material and social" needs of marriage, they also make devoted, nurturing wives, and can be helped a long way toward developing the "tender comradeship" in marriage which Archer envisions. And yet, with his Idealist's intuition, Archer does anticipate an important source of conflict for Advocates and Protectors: the difference between what he calls his own "freedom of judgment" (i.e., his ardent desire to discover the world around him), and what he sees now as May's "dull association" and lack of "versatility" (i.e., her emotional cautiousness and intellectual orthodoxy). But this is only one side of the story |