Word: marianism
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...first chapter, Marian is faced with an exciting prospect—the possibility of friendship with another outcast of the Norton School, Val Boyd. Val’s parents flit about the world while leaving Val with a caretaker in the Village, and so she, like Marian, feels fatherless. Val is also ostracized at Norton, because she leaves school early each day and all the other girls know that she visits a psychoanalyst in the afternoons. To them, she seems neurotic and strange...
...Marian quickly form an intense friendship. At first they simply play games and spend Saturdays with one another. But soon they both become fixated on a single task: the secret worship of a gifted but lazy pianist named Henry Orient...
...first loves Henry because she too wants to be a concert pianist, and she sees some of her own troubles reflected in his wild persona (and according to her shrink, she is also acting out some form of Oedipal complex). Marian follows, and begins to obsess over him too, even though she doesn’t really feel the same attraction. Val and Marian clip articles about him from the society papers and stalk his concerts at Carnegie Hall...
Isabel and Arthur Boyd return to New York to begin to reinitiate Val into their society, pulling her away from the young, pure love of Marian and into their own problems. Marian expects Val to resist them, but she doesn’t, and Marian begins to resent them.Val’s psychiatrist, Dr. Braintree, becomes an even more formidable enemy, telling Val that she must grow out of such stubborn, us-against-the-world friendships with other girls. Marian tries to save the friendship by having Val meet Henry in person, but her plan goes awry, pushing...
...sense, Marian’s first love, or at least the first friend whose love has changed her. Val brings Marian happiness, but that’s matched by fear. The book is not cheerful in the end, as Marian begins to face the many different kinds of lonely that adults know. But it’s perhaps one of the most moving conclusions to a book I have ever read, leaving the reader alone with Marian in an excruciatingly vivid moment of first loss...