Edith Wharton
"The soft shade of their niche, and the adjacent glitter of the air, were conducive to an easy lounging mood, and to the smoking of many cigarettes; and Selden, yielding to these influences suffered Mrs. Fisher to unfold to him the history of her recent experiences" (Wharton, 151).
Wharton's style of writing, with its calming imagery and lengthy complexity, serves to parallel Selden's attitude toward the upper class that Carrie Fisher represents and Selden's motives behind fleeing to Europe.
On one hand, Wharton's compound sentences filled to the brim with modifying phrases hints at Selden's view that the wealthy people with whom he is vacationing are beyond boring. Selden, as we learned previously, was never a fan of showy nick-knacks and pretentious; he enjoyed the essentials and getting straight to the point. In Wharton's writing, the reader gets a taste of Selden's impatience. We get it, it was a nice night, now get to the point! In addition, the reader further empathizes with Selden's apprehensions about Lily who intertwined herself with said rich folk whom Selden suffers to go on about how one restaurant serves the best peas in Europe.

Look at them! Perfection!
Furthermore, the imagery included in the "get to the point" section of the last example provides an insight into why Selden decided to vacation in the first place. The Provencal night relaxed Selden and allowed him to bear discussion about Lily from whom he was trying to wean himself (the French Riviera? Relaxing? Nonsense!). The fact that he needed to be calmed down after seeing Lily leave the Trenors' proves that Selden has invested much of himself in Lily. The mere thought that Lily might be slipping into someone he didn't know, someone who would do anything for money, forced him to flee the continent. Despite his vows to forget about Lily, once Selden calms down and puts everything into focus, he can realize the truth about Lily.
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