Clara Page Character Analysis in This Side of Paradise

Clara Page is an impoverished, widowed cousin of Amory’s whom Monsignor Darcy urges Amory to visit in Philadelphia. Amory eventually falls in love with her. Unlike Amory’s other loves, Clara is virtuous, kind, and grounded. Amory wants to marry Clara, but she refuses him because she wants to devote her time to her two children and vowed never to marry again. Clara also claims that she has never been in love and could not marry a clever man like Amory. Amory, meanwhile, considers Clara to be too good for him. Clara knows Amory well and is an excellent judge of his character, and she sets Amory on a path to becoming a “personage.” Amory’s relationship with Clara is the most distinct and least destructive of all his love affairs.

Clara Page Quotes in This Side of Paradise

The This Side of Paradise quotes below are all either spoken by Clara Page or refer to Clara Page. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:

Youth, Innocence, and Coming of Age Theme Icon

).

She was immemorial…. Amory wasn’t good enough for Clara, Clara of ripply golden hair, but then no man was. Her goodness was above the prosy morals of the husband-seeker, apart from the dull literature of female virtue.

Related Characters: Amory Blaine, Rosalind Connage, Isabelle Borgé, Eleanor Savage, Clara Page

Page Number and Citation: 126

Explanation and Analysis:

Amory had loved Rosalind as he would never love another living person. She had taken the first flush of his youth and brought from his unplumbed depths tenderness that had surprised him, gentleness and unselfishness that he had never given to another creature. He had later love-affairs, but of a different sort: in those he went back to that, perhaps, more typical frame of mind, in which the girl became the mirror of a mood in him.

Related Characters: Amory Blaine, Rosalind Connage, Eleanor Savage, Clara Page

Page Number and Citation: 191-2

Explanation and Analysis:

Eleanor was, say, the last time that evil crept close to Amory under the mask of beauty.

Related Characters: Amory Blaine, Rosalind Connage, Isabelle Borgé, Eleanor Savage, Clara Page

Page Number and Citation: 204

Explanation and Analysis:

Clara Page Character Timeline in This Side of Paradise

The timeline below shows where the character Clara Page appears in This Side of Paradise. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.

...in a letter, asks Amory to visit a poor, widowed cousin of Amory’s in Philadelphia, Clara Page, as a favor. (full context)

When Amory visits Clara, she is not the image of poverty that he expected. Amory is enamored with her... (full context)