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# Oh, Newland, Bless Your Heart
- URL: https://www.rebindclassics.com/oh-newland-bless-your-heart/
- Published: 2026-09-11T16:49:21.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-02T18:28:21.000Z
- Description: Newland Archer is having his feminist awakening. Like, you can tell that in real time. He's realizing, oh, wait, women are people, too.
- Author: Andrew Wessels
- Tags: Roxane Gay on Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence, #listen-in

Roxane Gay watches Newland Archer discover that women are people, and notices whose freedom he has in mind.

Oh, Newland, Bless Your Heart

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From Episode 2 of eight, Roxane Gay on *The Age of Innocence*. [**Listen to the whole episode: The Scarlet D →**](https://www.rebindclassics.com/the-scarlet-d/)

> Newland Archer is having his feminist awakening. Like, you can tell that in real time. He's realizing, oh, wait, women are people, too, and they should be free. And it's so funny that it has taken this long in his life for him to have this grand realization that, you know, women ought to be free. And, of course, there's a lot of self-interest there, because really, women ought to be free so that she can make the choice, and then I can make my choice, and we can, like, be together. And he hasn't even really had a significant encounter with her at this point. He is just really more familiar with the idea of her. And he's seen her. He likes her shy laugh, her questioning smile, yada, yada, yada. But I just think it's hilarious. And it's just, you know, Newland Archer really thinks so highly of himself in that moment. And I think I even said this during the taping. It's just like, oh, Newland, bless your heart.

Roxane Gay has read Edith Wharton's *The Age of Innocence* something like thirty times, which is how she can hear a line most readers take at face value and laugh. We're early in her eight episodes, at the Archer family dinner in chapter five. Ellen Olenska has left a terrible marriage and come home to New York, the word divorce has just landed on the table, and Newland Archer, newly engaged to somebody else, announces that women ought to be free. The "her" Gay keeps returning to is Ellen.

The clip ends on Newland. The episode is about what happens to Ellen: how old New York's immune system activates against a woman who broke the rules, what the antibodies are made of, and why gossip is the only currency this society accepts. Gay also issues a warning about May Welland, the fiancée, that the rest of the series keeps proving true.

[**Listen to the whole episode: The Scarlet D →**](https://www.rebindclassics.com/the-scarlet-d/)

Eight episodes. Roxane Gay on Edith Wharton's *The Age of Innocence*, for members.