“The Tower” paints a harrowing picture of the difficulties women face asserting their independence in a patriarchal world. Caroline lives under the stifling influence of her husband, Neville, a member of the British Council who constantly pressures her to amass cultural knowledge and experience. Although Caroline desires independence in the context of her marriage, she also wants to impress Neville, and she sets out on a solo trip to visit various cultural sites around Florence. Emboldened by the freedom she feels driving alone, Caroline decides to visit and climb the Tower of Sacrifice. Significantly, even as Caroline asserts her own will by climbing the tower, she is still chasing Neville’s approval and allowing his values to dictate her actions.
The tower’s architect—Niccolo di Ferramano—and his young wife, Giovanna, provide a parallel to Neville and Caroline’s relationship. Giovanna’s early death and Niccolo’s alleged dabbling in “black magic” imply that the young woman was a direct casualty of bad male behavior. Sharpening this point, Caroline’s reaction to Giovanna’s portrait clashes with Neville’s: Caroline is shocked by how young Giovanna was at the time of her death, while her husband says only that the portrait is thought to be “the best thing in the collection.” This careless dismissal, combined with Neville’s later remark that Caroline and Giovanna are quite alike, hints that Neville views his wife as just another fine object in his collection rather than a human being with interests of her own.
Ultimately, Caroline finds the tower—itself a phallic symbol of male dominance—to be inescapable. Having climbed its fearful height of 470 steps, Caroline is met with two options: hurl herself from the top or climb down into darkness. Overriding the sudden impulse to jump, Caroline climbs down the tower only to find that this choice also leads to peril. In the end, Caroline is trapped in the tower in the same way that she is trapped in her marriage and subjected to the limitations of her husband’s patriarchal influence—which, incidentally, caused her to climb the tower in the first place. In this way, the story highlights how impossible it feels for women to transcend male influence in a patriarchal society in which every choice results in oppression.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Patriarchy, Control, and Freedom ThemeTracker
Patriarchy, Control, and Freedom Quotes in The Tower
Triumphantly Caroline lifted her finger from the fine italic type. There was nothing to mar the success of this afternoon. Not only had she taken the car out alone for the first time, driving unerringly on the right-hand side of the road, but what she had achieved was not a simple drive but a cultural excursion. […] how gratifying if she could, at last, have something of her own to contribute to [Neville’s] constantly accumulating hoard of culture.
Though she could not have admitted it even to herself, Caroline had become almost anaesthetized to Italian art. Dutifully she had followed Neville along the gallery, listening politely while in his light well-bred voice he had told her intimate anecdotes of history, and involuntarily she had let her eyes wander around the room, glancing anywhere but at the particular portrait of Neville’s immediate dissertation.
Ah, I’m glad you picked that one out. It’s generally thought to be the best thing in the collection—a Bronzino, of course.
Caroline shivered, ‘I don’t like him,’ she said. ‘Let’s look at Giovanna again,’ and they had moved back to the first portrait, and Neville had said casually, ‘Do you know, she’s rather like you.’
‘It would be so silly to give up,’ she told herself, desperately trying to rationalize what drove her on. ‘Just because one’s afraid—’ and then she had to stifle that thought too, and there was nothing left in her brain but the steadily mounting tally of steps.
‘But how idiotic,’ she said to the air. ‘The whole thing’s absolutely pointless[.]’
All her being was suddenly absorbed in the single impulse to hurl herself from the sloping platform. ‘I cannot go down any other way,’ she said, and then she heard what she said and stepped back, frenziedly clutching the soft rotten wood of the doorway with hands sodden with sweat. There is no other way, said the voice in her brain, there is no other way.
So Caroline came down the dark tower. She could not think. She could know nothing but fear. Only her brain remorselessly recorded the tally. ‘Five hundred and one,’ it counted, ‘five hundred and two—and three and four—'
