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Flashbacks
Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Doreen:
Doreen, a young woman who, like Esther, won the fashion writing contest at Ladies’ Day magazine, serves as a foil for Esther in the first half of the novel. Esther’s description of Doreen highlights the stark contrasts between the two young women.
I’d never known a girl like Doreen before. Doreen came from a society girls’ college down South and had bright white hair standing out in a cotton candy fluff round her head and blue eyes like transparent agate marbles, hard and polished and just about indestructible, and a mouth set in a sort of perpetual sneer. I don’t mean a nasty sneer, but an amused, mysterious sneer, as if all the people around her were pretty silly and she could tell some good jokes on them if she wanted to. Doreen singled me out right away.
Though Doreen and Esther are both bright young women who specialize in writing, they are very different both in background and temperament. Doreen, Esther notes, is a wealthy young woman from the South who sneers at others as if “she could tell some good jokes on them if she wanted to.” While Esther struggles to socialize and spends much of her time focusing on her work alone, Doreen is socially confident and rebellious, skipping events at the magazine to hang out with young men. Despite their very different personalities, they are drawn to each other due to their mutual intelligence.
Related Themes:
