This anxiety is at the heart of Lily's conflict with her society. The choice of the |Mrs. Lloyd's painting also responds to this theme. Reynolds chose to represent his subject wrapped in fabrics from Antiquity. In his day, the late 18th century, the neoclassical genre was at its peak, and just as Gilded Age New Yorkers looked to Europe for cultural esteem, the neoclassical also looked to the past, but towards ancient Rome and Greece. The anxiety of influence in the scene of the novel is thus tripled upon itself, so that the reader experiences it as the influence of Rome, upon Europe, upon New York, and finally upon Lily. As the tip of this inverted pyramid, Lily must perform a subtle balancing act and be representative of the natural beauty of classical forms, the elegance and refinement of aristocratic Europe, and the culmination of both in the great American experience. She literally represents herself in all these facets in the living paintings, and thus achieves a feeling of "eternal harmony" that Selden notes in her in this