Which quotation from The Age of Innocence most effectively supports t… | Verbal SAT Question

First published in 1920, Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence takes place in New York in the 1870s. In one scene, Newland Archer goes to the opera. The narrator portrays Archer’s social circle as valuing the familiar more than the new:

Which quotation from The Age of Innocence most effectively supports the claim?

“It surprised [Newland] that life should be going on in the old way when his own reactions to it had so completely changed.”

“Though there was already talk...of a new Opera House which should compete in costliness and splendour with those of the great European capitals, the world of fashion was still content to reassemble every winter in the shabby red and gold boxes of the sociable old Academy [of Music in New York].”

“Newland Archer, leaning against the wall at the back of the club box [where his seat was], turned his eyes from the stage and scanned the opposite side of the house.”

“But, in the first place, New York was a metropolis, and perfectly aware that in metropolises it was ‘not the thing’ to arrive early at the opera.”