The Ennui of an Unfulfilled Woman
The protagonist of the story has been barely introduced when the narrator penetrates into her mind and delivers a stream of thoughts that may confuse and bewilder some readers while for others her state of mind will be abundantly clear. She doesn’t even consider the possibility of bringing up the topic with the man in her life, dismissing it as pointless. He would be one of those readers whom the following would baffle:
“She knew what bothered her at the store…the sense that everyone was incommunicado with everyone else and living on an entirely wrong plane, so that the meaning, the message, the love, or whatever it was that each life contained, never could find its expression.”
Hopelessness
A strange and uncomfortable sequence involves Therese—the young woman sensing she is living on the wrong plane—has this metaphorical existence come literally true when she follows accepts the invitation of an older woman working at the same department store invites her to dinner. That lack of communication is portrayed as the hope of something—something not made clear—being dashed to pieces as the older woman transforms into a symbol of her increasing hopelessness:
“Mrs. Robichek was the hunchbacked keeper of the dungeon. And she had been brought here to be tantalized.”
Hope at First Sight
Although she doesn’t know it yet, Therese’s life of quite misery and raging hopelessness is about to change in a single instant. It is a moment that is more than love at first sight; it is a moment of transformative change in everything that can allow love:
“Her eyes were gray, colorless, yet dominant as light or fire, and caught by them, Therese could not look away.”
Finding Yourself
Therese had never known love before meeting Carol. Had never pursued the idea that heterosexuality was the not going to be the key to one day finding love. Like so many others who come to a reality about themselves capable of shocking them, identity issues inevitably arise for her as she draws upon a common metaphorical trope to explain this disconnect:
“at moments she felt like an actor, remembered only now and then her identity with a sense of surprise, as if she had been playing in these last days the part of someone else, someone fabulously and excessively lucky.”
Degeneration Defined
If the novel can be said to be about one thing in particular, it is a clarion call to every reader to drop the pretense that tries to satisfy society and become—and remain—true to yourself. The malaise which characterizes Therese before meeting Carol seems to her too ambiguous to define clearly so as to plan a strategic attack. Ultimately, the cause is revealed to be as simple—and complicated—as coming to terms with self-identity. That to do otherwise is fatal is elegantly put in a quote that sums it all up:
“to live against one's grain, that is degeneration by definition.”
