埃倫·奧蘭斯卡伯爵夫人是一位波蘭伯爵的妻子,曾在歐洲生活多年,現(xiàn)在孤身一人回到了她在紐約的家。她希望擺脫自己不幸婚姻帶來的痛苦,但她不了解紐約社交界的各種規(guī)矩。而紐蘭·阿徹則深諳于此;他的未婚妻——年輕的梅·韋蘭——也按照這些規(guī)矩生活著,因?yàn)樗裏o法想象還有其他的生活方式。
紐蘭、梅和埃倫陷入了一場(chǎng)愛情、名譽(yù)和責(zé)任的戰(zhàn)斗之中。在這場(chǎng)戰(zhàn)斗中,禮貌的微笑背后隱藏著強(qiáng)烈的情感,一切盡在不言中,而那穿過擁擠房間的意味深長(zhǎng)的一瞥,更是勝過千言萬語。
For the rich and the fashionable, New York society in the 1870s was a world full of rules: rules about when to wear a black tie, or the correct time to pay an afternoon visit; rules about who you could invite to your evening parties or sit next to at the opera; rules about who was an acceptable person, and who was not.
Countess Ellen Olenska, who has lived for many years in Europe as the wife of a Polish Count, returns alone to her family in New York. She hopes to leave the pain of her unhappy marriage behind her, but she does not understand the rules of New York society. Newland Archer, however, understands them only too well, and the girl he is engaged to marry, young May Welland, lives her life by the rules, because she cannot imagine any other way of living.
Newland, May, and Ellen are caught in a battle between love, honour, and duty – a battle where strong feelings hide behind polite smiles, where much is left unsaid, and where a single expressive look across a crowded room can carry more meaning than a hundred words.