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Chapter 23
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in My Brilliant Career, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Womanhood
Class and Poverty
Ambition, Respectability, and Pride
Love
Maturity and Suffering
Summary
Analysis
Sybylla sees Harold again two weeks later. He approaches her while she rests on a hammock, and she pretends to be asleep to see if he will kiss her. He instead shakes her awake. The gesture messes up her hair, and she demands Harold fix it––however, he can’t determine what the problem is. Sybylla scoffs, noting the irony that men can excel in academic and political matters, but are at a loss when it comes to personal grooming or domestic arts.
Sybylla notices that men can succeed outside the home but are helpless in the domestic sphere. This speaks to the division of labor that was popularized in the 19th century. The division of labor positioned men as the breadwinners of a family, who should conduct their business outside the home, while women were homemakers and did their work inside their houses. The division between men and women also mirrors the smaller, more immediate division between Harold and Sybylla in this scene. Harold is unable to see a problem that seems obvious to Sybylla, which is representative of their broader relational dynamic.
Themes
Harold surprises Sybylla by telling her about a stroke of misfortune. Sybylla does not understand how business functions, so she only understands the gist: Harold has not been as wealthy as the public imagined, and he has been steadily losing wealth since his bank failed three years ago. Sybylla knows that many more men are suffering much worse, but Harold has been brought up rich and suddenly made equal as the laborers who work on his land. She marvels at his composure and self-containment.
Harold’s condition of sudden poverty echoes the Melvyns’ loss of fortune at Possum Gully. Sybylla described the abrupt arrival of poverty as more difficult to handle than growing up in poverty, since it carries with it the shame of failure. She repeats that sentiment here, emphasizing that Harold is now equal to the men who once worked for him. She understands the emotional toll this situation must take on Harold, which only makes her more impressed at his ability to maintain his composure.
Themes
Harold tells Sybylla that he does not expect her to stay faithful to him now that he is a pauper, and he hopes that she finds a good husband in another man. Sybylla has been poor, and she knows the disillusionment, cynicism, and bitterness in Harold’s future. She chases after him and tells him that she will marry him when she turns 21, regardless of his fortunes. She runs off, and Harold heads home whistling, because “men are very weak and simple in some ways.”
Harold is aware of the social realities that that he and Sybylla operate in. He doesn’t see marriage as a primarily economic arrangement, as Mrs. Bossier does, and he doesn’t see it as an expression of ownership over his life, as Sybylla does, but he still recognizes that his love for Sybylla is not more important than his ability to provide for her. Sybylla has always pushed against the idea of marrying a man for his wealth. Now that Harold has lost his fortune, however, Sybylla feels obligated to help him through his newfound poverty, especially because she has experience dealing with financial hardship. In a sense, then, she is marrying a man because of his lack of wealth.
Themes
Sybylla laughs at her own vanity to think that she is important enough to help Harold through life. He is strong, healthy, level-headed, and well-connected. More than all that, he is a man in a world made for men. She calls herself young, ugly, poor, insignificant, and “only a woman!” Only the most desperate man, Sybylla thinks, would need a woman like her for support.
Sybylla falls back into her insecurities. She compares herself to Harold, finding more and more flaws in herself as she finds more positive qualities in him. Even though Harold shares some of the traits she dislikes in herself––he too is young, and now he is also poor––Sybylla reserves her disdain for herself. Her insecurities are also distinctly gendered, as she chastises herself for thinking she could help Harold when she is “only a woman.” She doesn’t blame herself entirely for the limits of womanhood, however. She implicitly recognizes that womanhood is only a disadvantage because the world is made for men, not because of any inherent weakness in women.
Themes
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