“The Other Two” is set in New York City near the end of the Gilded Age, a post-Civil War period in American history that featured rapid economic growth, industrialization, and urban development. As more people moved to cities and more people in the business world started amassing personal wealth, elite upper-class communities began to form in urban centers.
“The Other Two” explores the social dynamics within this sort of elite class in New York City. Wharton pays special attention to the ways that wealthy people in these circles, though ostensibly freed from certain constraints by having access to money, were trapped by social etiquette and expectations. For example, Waythorn is a wealthy, powerful white man in the business world in New York during the Gilded Age—and yet, he is unhappy because he must conform to certain social pressures, feeling disempowered in the process.
Another important element of the setting of “The Other Two” is Waythorn and Alice’s home. Wharton makes it clear that Waythorn’s desire is for his home to be a space shared only by himself, his wife Alice, and Alice's daughter Lily. This is where he feels he can appreciate Alice’s composed and easy-going nature, as he alone gets to benefit from it. Once his home becomes permeable to outsiders—specifically Alice’s ex-husbands, Haskett and Varick—Waythorn feels more and more uncomfortable. He starts to notice how Alice is similarly deferential to these two men and feels that their home—and Alice herself—is no longer reserved just for the two of them but is, instead, someone he must share with other men.
