Word: heather
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
This is apparent in her association with the Livingstones, Oscar, Dorrie and their 27-year-old daughter Heather. Oscar is an accountant who, as Rachel puts - it, was "inherited" from her father. This air of Oscar as family retainer does not last long. He wins millions in the national football pool, retires and asks Rachel if she would be good enough to guide their placid daughter in the ways of modern womanhood. The shift in social distinction is subtle but apparent: Rachel may be hard-nosed and independent, but whether or not she notices, she has been cast...
...Livingstones slip into affluence gracefully; they are pleasant, generous with their friendship but dull. Rachel is a frequent recipient of their hospitality, even though they represent the bourgeois sentiments she mocks. Bringing up Heather proves to be exasperating: she combines naivete with a calm disposition that approaches smugness. "One thought of her not exactly as a woman," says Rachel, "but as some sort of animal known for its unassuming qualities, a heifer, perhaps." And, she adds, "heifers are also traditionally associated with sacrifice...
...ritual is performed at the wedding altar when Heather marries a man who turns out to be a homosexual. Rachel notices him wearing lipstick and eyeshadow in a local wine bar, and the reader is left to wonder how bovine the bride must be to have been led into this situation. The union lasts longer than one might expect, though once free, Heather heads off to Venice, where she promptly becomes a novelistic cliche: the Englishwoman who falls in love with an Italian...
...Livingstones' request, Rachel nips off to advise her unofficial charge about the probable consequences of her Latin romance. The confrontation has the surprise effect of changing the polarity of Brookner's personality study. In an uncharacteristic show of spirit, Heather basically tells her friend from England to bugger off. Rachel's response is a revealing mixture of feminist hellfire and the ashes of envy. She uses her own disappointments with love and money as valuable object lessons at the same time that she accuses Heather of having it too easy: "Women don't sit at home any more, you know...
...Heather, needless to say, goes off to the arms of her handsome illusion. Rachel retreats to her solitary world, where she will undoubtedly continue to practice self-deception about what is real. And Author Brookner? She can take a small bow for her own skillfully executed illusion...