You are sitting alone in the café, drinking your coffee and reading the newspaper. Out of the corner of your eye, you see a little girl sitting with her mom at the next table. You continue to look and notice the little girl looking at you. No matter what you do, it continues to monitor your every move. You wonder how long she's been sitting there and why she's looking at you. You are watched like the people described by Michel Foucault, people who are simply under constant surveillance. Foucault's work, “Panopticism,” features a central control tower from which all inhabitants are monitored in their surrounding glass-walled cells. The Panopticon creates an atmosphere in which the inhabitants never know whether they are being watched or not, forcing them to assume that they are at all times. In this logic, “the exercise of power can be supervised by society as a whole” (Foucault). In other words, people control their actions and take appropriate care of themselves simply because they think they are being watched. “Apparently, [panopticism] is only the solution of a technical problem; but, through it, a whole type of society emerges” (Foucault). Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence depicts a society that functions much like the Panopticon. Newland Archer and his fellow New Yorkers are part of a close-knit group of people. Everyone knows what other people's business is and what gossip surrounds them, which makes privacy a foreign concept. The only way to be accepted is to know the right people, have the right connections, and of course, have money. Once a member of the group, everyone must follow a set of unwritten rules. Society forces everyone to act a certain way, and every... middle of paper ... whether they realize it or not. Panopticism was created to control and dictate people, and its techniques end up making people exactly the same. Archer's New York is the perfect example of this, because everyone has to believe in the same thing, have the same opinions and ideas, look the same and have the same kinds of things. Whenever we differ from others, we never really express ourselves for fear of being an outsider. Newland Archer was greatly influenced by his society and remained there, although he had glimpses of an unexamined life outside his New York panopticon.Works CitedFoucault, Michel. “Panopticism”. From Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books, 1995. Pp. 195-228 translated from French by Alan Sheridan 1977. Wharton, Edith. The age of innocence. New York: Signet Classic, 1996. Print.