Synopsis: A man marries one woman, but he loves another.
Rate: 3 canvas-backs
Recommendations: This is a helpful book if you want to think great thoughts. It's wonderful if you like to feel frustrated and powerless. It's also nice if you're into rules, and even better if you enjoy debates on whether the society is going to pot. It's also really well written.
Questions:
- Before they are married Archer fantasizes about 'awakening' May. During their courtship he is at some pains to educate and inform her tastes, but he abandons the task even before the wedding. How is his behaviour towards May mirror to his unconsumated love for Countess Olenska?
- When I was a child my mother told me that May manipulated Archer to acheive her own ends, she implied that it was a bad thing for May to do. Is May a sneak or a product of her time? Was it wrong of her?
- Somewhere in the novel Archer complains to Countess Olenska "I don't Understand You!", and she growls back, "Yet you understand her!" Do you understand either of them? What ideas do these two women represent? Why does he love one and scorn the other? Why does he stick with one and forsake the other?
- Is society going to pot? Would you like to live in Old New York? Visit?
- Food Food Food! What is canvas-back? How does May's image as Diana the Virgin Godess jive with her food loving tribe?
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