1) Which statement best expresses the theme of this passage? A)
Women are often put into the position of being more
rational than men in certain situations.
B)
Societal expectations can feel constricting to some
people who want to be free and independent.
The economic inequality present in nineteenth-
century American society is surely leading to a
financial meltdown.
Parents of young couples are often frustratingly
D) supportive of young couples trying to make their way
in the world.

B)  Societal expectations can feel constricting to some  people who want to be free and independent.

Explanation:

The given question refers to the novel The Age of Innocence written by Edith Wharton . The excerpt you were given is the following:

It would presently be his task to take the bandage from this young woman's eyes, and bid her look forth on the world. But how many generations of the women who had gone to her making had descended bandaged to the family vault? He shivered a little, remembering some of the new ideas in his scientific books, and the much-cited instance of the Kentucky cave-fish, which had ceased to develop eyes because they had no use for them. What if, when he had bidden May Welland to open hers, they could only look out blankly at blankness?

"We might be much better off. We might be altogether together—we might travel."

Her face lit up. "That would be lovely," she owned: she would love to travel. But her mother would not understand their wanting to do things so differently.

"As if the mere 'differently' didn't account for it!" the wooer insisted.

"Newland! You're so original!" she exulted.

His heart sank, for he saw that he was saying all the things that young men in the same situation were expected to say, and that she was making the answers that instinct and tradition taught her to make—even to the point of calling him original.

"Original! We're all as like each other as those dolls cut out of the same folded paper. We're like patterns stencilled on a wall. Can't you and I strike out for ourselves, May?"

He had stopped and faced her in the excitement of their discussion, and her eyes rested on him with a bright unclouded admiration.

"Mercy—shall we elope?" she laughed.

"If you would—"

"You DO love me, Newland! I'm so happy."

"But then—why not be happier?"

"We can't behave like people in novels, though, can we?"

"Why not—why not—why not?"

She looked a little bored by his insistence. She knew very well that they couldn't, but it was troublesome to have to produce a reason. "I'm not clever enough to argue with you. But that kind of thing is rather—vulgar, isn't it?" she suggested, relieved to have hit on a word that would assuredly extinguish the whole subject.

"Are you so much afraid, then, of being vulgar?"

She was evidently staggered by this. "Of course I should hate it—so would you," she rejoined, a trifle irritably.

He stood silent, beating his stick nervously against his boot-top; and feeling that she had indeed found the right way of closing the discussion, she went on light-heartedly: "Oh, did I tell you that I showed Ellen my ring? She thinks it the most beautiful setting she ever saw. There's nothing like it in the rue de la Paix, she said. I do love you, Newland, for being so artistic!"

The Age of Innocence tells about the early 1870's New York upper-class society and criticizes it for its rigidity. In the given excerpt, we see Newland Archer and May Welland, who are engaged. They want to elope and live freely and independently, but they can't because of societal expectations. They would be judged by both society and their parents. We can see how awkward their conversation is at times because of the fact they want to say something, but feel like they are not allowed to because of the rules determined by society. This is why the correct option is option B.