The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend!

Wharton’s line crystallizes a recurring theme in her fiction: the isolating effects of polite society. The “kind people” are not cruel in an overt way; their kindness is conditional on conformity—on maintaining appearances, suppressing inconvenient truths, and performing the approved social self. The speaker’s loneliness comes not from physical solitude but from the absence of genuine recognition and candor. In this sense, the quote critiques a culture where civility can function as a form of coercion, and where emotional intimacy is sacrificed to etiquette. It also suggests that enforced pretense can be more alienating than open hostility, because it denies the possibility of being known as one truly is.