The Age of Innocence

by Edith Wharton

associate the daisy with beauty and innocence.

lilies-of-the-valley are associated with delicate simplicity, a return of happiness, or a heart that is withering in secret.

Wharton’s reference suggests that Newland fears marriage will bury him as the volcanic ash buried the inhabitants of Pompeii.

yellow roses: According to nineteenth-century books on the language of flowers, associated with infidelity.

Wharton suggests that their rigidity provides some degree of protection to the body they enclosed.

I assumed the armor was more metaphorical