Ainsley Tewce Character Analysis

The babies had been unplanned: Clara greeted her first pregnancy with astonishment that such a thing could happen to her, and her second with dismay; now, during her third, she had subsided into a grim but inert fatalism. Her metaphors for her children included barnacles encrusting a ship and limpets clinging to a rock.

[…] [Clara’s] own body seemed somehow beyond her, going its own way without reference to any direction of hers. I studied the pattern of bright flowers on the maternity smock she was wearing; the stylized petals and tendrils moved with her breathing, as though they were coming alive.

[Ainsley] gave me a disgusted look. “Every woman should have at least one baby.” She sounded like a voice on the radio saying that every woman should have at least one electric hair dryer. “It's even more important than sex. It fulfills your deepest femininity.” Ainsley is fond of paperback books by anthropologists about primitive cultures: there are several of them bogged down among the clothes on her floor. At her college they make you take courses in it.

“Ainsley behaved herself properly, why couldn't you? The trouble with you is,” he said savagely, “you're just rejecting your femininity.” […]

He glanced quickly over at me, his eyes narrowed as though he was taking aim. Then he gritted his teeth together and stepped murderously hard on the accelerator. […] At the suddenly increased speed the car skidded, turned two-and-a-quarter times round, slithered backward down over someone’s inclined lawn, and came to a bone-jolting stop. I heard something snap.

“You maniac!” I wailed when I had ricocheted off the glove compartment and realized I wasn't dead. “You'll get us all killed!” I must have been thinking of myself as plural.

In his own warped way [Len] was a kind of inverted moralist. He liked to talk as though everyone was out for nothing but sex and money, but when anyone provided a demonstration of his theories in real life, he reacted with scalding critical invective. His blend of cynicism and idealism had a lot to do with his preference for “corrupting,” as he called it, greenish girls, as opposed to the more vine-ripened variety. The supposedly pure, the unobtainable was attractive to the idealist in him; but as soon as it had been obtained, the cynic viewed it as spoiled and threw it away. “She turned out to be just the same as all the rest of them,” he would remark sourly.

“She made me do it,” he muttered. “My own mother. We were having eggs for breakfast and I opened mine and there was, I swear there was a little chicken inside it, it wasn't born yet, I didn't want to touch it but she didn't see, she didn't see what was really there, she said Don't be silly, it looks like an ordinary egg but it wasn't it wasn't and she made me eat it. And I know, I know there was a little beak and little claws and everything…” He shuddered violently. “Horrible. Horrible, I can't stand it.”

[… When Marian] opened her soft-boiled egg and saw the yolk looking up at her with its one significant and accusing yellow eye, she found her mouth closing together like a frightened sea-anemone. It's living; it's alive, the muscles in her throat said, and tightened.

“Marian, what have you got there?” [Ainsley] walked over to see. “It's a woman—a woman made of cake!” She gave Marian a strange look.

Marian chewed and swallowed. “Have some,” she said, “it's really good. I made it this afternoon.”

Ainsley's mouth opened and closed, fishlike, as though she was trying to take down the full implication of what she saw. “Marian!” she exclaimed at last, with horror. “You're rejecting your femininity!”

[…] Marian looked back at her platter. The woman laid there, still smiling glassily, her legs gone. “Nonsense,” she said. “It's only a cake.” She plunged her fork into the carcass, neatly severing the body from the head.

I had just begun on the windows when the phone rang. It was Duncan. I was surprised; I had more or less forgotten about him. […]

I was irritated with him for not wanting to discuss what I was going to do myself. Now that I was thinking of myself in the first-person singular again I found my own situation much more interesting than his.

The babies had been unplanned: Clara greeted her first pregnancy with astonishment that such a thing could happen to her, and her second with dismay; now, during her third, she had subsided into a grim but inert fatalism. Her metaphors for her children included barnacles encrusting a ship and limpets clinging to a rock.

[…] [Clara’s] own body seemed somehow beyond her, going its own way without reference to any direction of hers. I studied the pattern of bright flowers on the maternity smock she was wearing; the stylized petals and tendrils moved with her breathing, as though they were coming alive.

[Ainsley] gave me a disgusted look. “Every woman should have at least one baby.” She sounded like a voice on the radio saying that every woman should have at least one electric hair dryer. “It's even more important than sex. It fulfills your deepest femininity.” Ainsley is fond of paperback books by anthropologists about primitive cultures: there are several of them bogged down among the clothes on her floor. At her college they make you take courses in it.

“Ainsley behaved herself properly, why couldn't you? The trouble with you is,” he said savagely, “you're just rejecting your femininity.” […]

He glanced quickly over at me, his eyes narrowed as though he was taking aim. Then he gritted his teeth together and stepped murderously hard on the accelerator. […] At the suddenly increased speed the car skidded, turned two-and-a-quarter times round, slithered backward down over someone’s inclined lawn, and came to a bone-jolting stop. I heard something snap.

“You maniac!” I wailed when I had ricocheted off the glove compartment and realized I wasn't dead. “You'll get us all killed!” I must have been thinking of myself as plural.

In his own warped way [Len] was a kind of inverted moralist. He liked to talk as though everyone was out for nothing but sex and money, but when anyone provided a demonstration of his theories in real life, he reacted with scalding critical invective. His blend of cynicism and idealism had a lot to do with his preference for “corrupting,” as he called it, greenish girls, as opposed to the more vine-ripened variety. The supposedly pure, the unobtainable was attractive to the idealist in him; but as soon as it had been obtained, the cynic viewed it as spoiled and threw it away. “She turned out to be just the same as all the rest of them,” he would remark sourly.

“She made me do it,” he muttered. “My own mother. We were having eggs for breakfast and I opened mine and there was, I swear there was a little chicken inside it, it wasn't born yet, I didn't want to touch it but she didn't see, she didn't see what was really there, she said Don't be silly, it looks like an ordinary egg but it wasn't it wasn't and she made me eat it. And I know, I know there was a little beak and little claws and everything…” He shuddered violently. “Horrible. Horrible, I can't stand it.”

[… When Marian] opened her soft-boiled egg and saw the yolk looking up at her with its one significant and accusing yellow eye, she found her mouth closing together like a frightened sea-anemone. It's living; it's alive, the muscles in her throat said, and tightened.

“Marian, what have you got there?” [Ainsley] walked over to see. “It's a woman—a woman made of cake!” She gave Marian a strange look.

Marian chewed and swallowed. “Have some,” she said, “it's really good. I made it this afternoon.”

Ainsley's mouth opened and closed, fishlike, as though she was trying to take down the full implication of what she saw. “Marian!” she exclaimed at last, with horror. “You're rejecting your femininity!”

[…] Marian looked back at her platter. The woman laid there, still smiling glassily, her legs gone. “Nonsense,” she said. “It's only a cake.” She plunged her fork into the carcass, neatly severing the body from the head.

I had just begun on the windows when the phone rang. It was Duncan. I was surprised; I had more or less forgotten about him. […]

I was irritated with him for not wanting to discuss what I was going to do myself. Now that I was thinking of myself in the first-person singular again I found my own situation much more interesting than his.