The Chaperone

“Cora had no doubt she was looking at Louise: even crying, the skin around her eyes puffed with rage, she was strikingly beautiful. She was short and small like her mother, with the same pale skin and heart-shaped face, the same dark eyes and dark hair. But her jaw was firmer, and her cheeks were still as cherubic as young June’s. Framing all this was the remarkable black hair, shiny and straight and cropped just below her ears, the ends tapering forward on both sides as if forming arrows to her full lips. A smooth curtain of thick bangs stopped abruptly above her brows. Viola was right. For all her resemblance to her mother, really, this girl looked like no one else.” 

This passage offers a detailed description of Louise. The emphasis is on the uniqueness of her appearance, especially in the early 1920s as the avant-garde “flapper” styles were just beginning to gain popularity. It’s clear that Cora recognizes Louise’s striking beauty in this first meeting. 

“Of course, in just a few years, Cora would better understand Louise’s annoyance with her father’s ignorance: being the best dancer in Wichita was hardly the end of her ambition. In just a few years, they would be reading about her in magazines, about her films, about her wild social life. She would receive over two thousand pieces of fan mail a week, and women all over the country would be trying to copy her hair. Before the decade was out, she would be famous on two continents. By then, if Leonard Brooks wanted to see his eldest daughter dance and dazzle, he would have to pay at a theater like everyone else, and gaze up at a thirty-foot screen.” 

The details of Louise’s later fame reveal that her trip to New York does in fact launch her career, as she hopes it will. The passage also highlights Leonard’s distance from his daughter by suggesting that he thinks she’ll return to Wichita after the summer ends. The fact that he will have to view her films in a theater like a stranger emphasizes the lack of emotional connection between them.

“She had been only a child on her other long trip, traveling with other children but also alone, headed west instead of east. She’d been hungry. Her seat, she remembered, had been hard wood, and the nights absolutely long and dark. But the sounds were the same, the whistles and the gears. So was the rocking feeling, which was what she remembered best. Then, as now, she’d been almost sick with both dread and longing, moving fast toward another world, and all she didn’t yet know.” 

The details of Cora’s train ride to New York contrast with the earlier one she describes in this passage. Then, she did not enjoy any luxuries, such as the sleeping berths she and Louise use, the velvet covers of their seats, and the reading lights in their compartment. The difference makes it clear that Cora is now more secure in her life, able to procure some of the advantages she was denied earlier in life. 

“The agent, still behind Cora, gave her a push forward. ‘Go on now,’ she said, with no question in her voice. ‘And be grateful, why don’t you. It seems to me you’re a lucky little girl.’” 

This passage, which takes place as Cora is leaving the adoption event with the Kaufmanns, is one of several in which Cora is told that she should feel fortunate for the care she has been given. The irony of this statement is that the young Cora is forced into unlucky circumstances because of the adults in her life. The sentiment shows the distance between Cora and her adult caregivers and their inability to see from her perspective. 

“‘I don’t know that I can explain. Coming out here, it was like becoming a new person. I think [all the children] understood that, even though we were young. We knew, or at least I knew, we would have to be good, which meant we would have to become whatever they wanted us to be. In my case, it was their daughter, which was lucky. But even then, I couldn’t hold on to who I was. Or maybe I just started to think that, by and by.’” 

The first time they meet, a teenage Cora is talking to Alan about the upheaval to her sense of self as she left New York and was adopted by the Kaufmanns. Cora acknowledges the powerlessness that the orphan children felt when they went to live with a new family—some parents wanted laborers or sexual partners, not children. She also describes the sense that she lost or became disconnected from the girl she was in New York. These ideas all underscore how turbulent and disorienting her parentless childhood was. 

“Show me a mother with that much thwarted ambition, and I’ll show you a daughter born for success.” 

Ruth St. Denis’s statement connects Louise’s abilities to Myra’s influence. Myra’s unrealized hopes for her own life may drive Louise’s success by pushing her to achieve to her highest potential. However, Myra’s demanding and negative relationship with her daughter also wounds Louise emotionally and distances her from Louise.

“She looked like a child. It was something in her face, an easy, naïve pleasure in her smile, with no sign of the strong will or cynicism that Cora had come to know in her. It was so strange, the way she seemed to be able to change from younger than she was to older than she was, then back again with so much ease. Had the usher, with his small authority, brought the little girl out in her? Or had she brought out the look of a girl like a trusted tool before he even spoke a word?” 

Cora watches Louise charm the usher into giving them box seats and notes that Louise selects techniques and personas in the same way that a master craftsman might select a tool. Cora is in awe of and baffled by Louise’s confidence and ability to project feelings that she may not genuinely feel. Although Louise insists that great actors and actresses don’t pretend to feel—they should genuinely feel what they are pretending to, and then communicate that feeling to the audience—the language here suggests that Louise can be artificial when it’s convenient for her to do so.

“In fact, even though she’d gone into the theater with her own troubles and sadness that night, she’d had a wonderful evening, as she would assure the frightened ladies in her circle, many of whom, in 1958, were far younger than she was. An integrated lunch counter, Cora would tell them, was not the end of civilization, and integrated schools and theaters wouldn’t be the end, either. It would be fine, she assured friends, thinking back to that night in New York. Really. It would be more than fine.

She would owe this understanding to her time in New York, and even more to Louise. That’s what spending time with the young can do—it’s the big payoff for all the pain. The young can exasperate, of course, and frighten, and condescend, and insult, and cut you with their still unrounded edges. But they can also drag you, as you protest and scold and try to pull away, right up to the window of the future, and even push you through.” 

This passage encapsulates much of what characterizes Louise and Cora’s relationship. Louise pulls Cora along and into situations that Cora wouldn’t have agreed to, and in the process, Cora is forced to consider or reconsider her own ideals. Cora has been “pushed through” the window of the future, with profound consequences for herself and other characters in the story.

“[…] Cora could only stare, stunned, at her dinner plate. An orange blossom fell from her hair, landing in her roast beef.” 

Following Raymond’s drunken attempt at a wedding speech, Cora is embarrassed by the spectacle he made. The imagery of the delicate orange blossom falling into her dinner plate—and into the “muddiness” of a roast beef dish—foreshadows her innocence about marriage and Alan being destroyed, just as the flower’s beauty was destroyed by its tumble from her head. The passage hints at conflicts to come for Cora and Alan and signals the beginning of her disillusionment. 

“When Alan took his seat again, reaching for her hand, she was surprised to see he had tears in his eyes. Her humiliation already receding, she was moved to see that his father’s words meant so very much.” 

Directly after the incident in the previous quote, Alan sits back down after embracing his father, who salvages the speeches. Cora assumes he feels emotional about his father’s words, but later events in the novel reveal that he is in love with Raymond and upset that they can’t be together. It’s an example of Alan and Cora’s misinterpretations of each other: Alan believes Cora is a conventional wife and content with their later nonsexual arrangement, and Cora in this scene has no reason to believe that her husband is gay. Their relationship is already based on Cora not understanding Alan fully.

“But she didn’t feel bad about the theft. She doubted the sisters would ever open her file, and what she had taken belonged to her.” 

Cora takes letters from her orphanage file after she sneaks in to look at her records. Her belief that the letters are rightfully hers reflects her growing desire to reclaim and actively shape her life rather than passively react to circumstances. The use of the word “theft” implies that Cora recognizes that she will have to defy some social expectations to realize her desires, a foreshadowing of her later subversive actions.

“It could have been a drugstore in Wichita, except for a sign, hung from the cash register, that read Benvenuti! in bold red letters, which Cora took to be some kind of warning.” 

Cora and Joseph spend time together at the drugstore for the first time, and Cora is clearly uneasy with the idea of being seen alone with a strange man in public. Her anxiety is manifested in her interpretation of the sign as a warning, when in fact it says “Welcome!” in Italian. The deeper meaning of this misinterpretation is that her time with Joseph will lead to positive change in her life (a “welcome”, so to speak), but she can’t yet foresee that fact.

“Alan had once looked at her with so much hope and kindness, but not like this, never like this. Unchecked joy rose up in her, only for an instant, but somehow he saw it, or just knew, for without another word, he reached up under the brim of her hat and pushed a loose curl behind her ear. She didn’t move, not even as his rough fingertips trailed behind her ear along her damp hairline.” 

In her second drugstore date with Joseph, in which she tells him about Alan’s homosexuality, Cora becomes aware of a sexual energy between herself and Joseph. Joseph is here portrayed as having an instinctual, non-spoken understanding of Cora’s emotions, as he “just knew” what she was feeling. This ease and deep understanding that bypasses words is in contrast to Cora’s relationship with Alan, which is marked by misunderstandings. Alan and Cora have to communicate verbally with each other to make sure they understand the other’s desires and feelings, while Joseph does not seem to require that verbal communication to understand Cora. 

“She needed to get away. But she was still flushed and smiling, even as she pulled her hand away. She felt light-headed. To be looked at like that, to be held on to like that, it was intoxicating—she was not herself.” 

In this passage, Cora again misidentifies the true state of things, just as she did in her misinterpretation of the drugstore sign. Rather than not “being herself” in this moment, as she consciously insists to herself, she is in fact becoming herself. She is thrilled and giddy over Joseph’s attraction to her, and their relationship will actually become a form of self-expression and identity for her. 

“And now [Mary] thought Cora wanted to come to Massachusetts and be the ruin of her legitimate family, her marriage, her dignity, everything she’d suffered for and lied for and left her baby for, all those years ago. She didn’t know that such a threatening display was unnecessary, that Cora already understood, all too well, everything she feared.” 

This passage demonstrates that despite their emotional distance, Mary and Cora are similar in some ways. Both have kept secrets that would be devastating to their families—Mary conceals Cora’s existence from her husband and children, and Cora has kept Alan’s homosexuality a secret from her children and community. The emotional irony of this passage is that the two are in similar circumstances, yet one of those circumstances (Mary’s decision to cut Cora out of her life) will prevent them from developing any rapport with each other.

“And she was clearly enjoying herself, playing the liberated little flapper, leaving Cora, and all her generation, dumbstruck and aghast. But when Cora turned back and looked hard into the girl’s face, she didn’t see liberation so much as posturing and bravado, real uncertainty underneath.” 

In this passage, Cora begins to recognize the vulnerability and uncertainty that lie behind Louise’s seemingly bold confidence. It’s also a direct recognition of the effect Louise intends to have on older adults—a recognition of the performative aspect of her demeanor. Rather than being pure, unadulterated self-expression, Louise’s ways of dressing, speaking, and acting may be partly a design to elicit attention from others and to cover up insecurity. Louise’s scarring emotional experiences with other adults (her parents, the men who abused her) may have contributed to this complex mix of motivations. 

“Louise was the real orphan at the table. Cora had had the Kaufmanns.” 

Cora recognizes that the emotional distance between Louise and her parents has effectively made the girl an orphan. Cora acknowledges that the Kaufmanns gave her not only their physical presence but also emotional nurturing, something that Louise’s parents withheld. 

“She knew she was tired of hunger. That was what she knew.”

Here, Cora realizes she is not only physically hungry, hampered from her desire to fully sate her appetite by her restrictive corset, but also emotionally and sexually hungry. Alan cannot satisfy her sexual and romantic desires, and so she suffers from an emptiness in that area of her life. This passage’s placement in the novel, right before Cora goes to Joseph to have sex with him, underscores her need to have that void filled. It makes it clear that her yearning propels her into a sexual relationship with Joseph.  

“This was why Margaret Sanger and her talk of birth control was called obscene. It changed everything, what Cora had just admitted to Joseph as well as herself: she had not come to his bed in a trance. She had not been seduced in a moment of weakness. No. She was lying here with him because she wanted to be, and wide awake enough to stop and think beyond the moment and know what she didn’t want, as well.” 

Cora realizes for the first time that birth control allows women to act on their desires. Asking a sexual partner to use birth control removes the illusion that a woman is “seduced” by a man or that the encounter is “accidental.” Having both the ability to clearly state her desire to not have any more children and a method of preventing pregnancy makes Cora realize her own desires in a clear and powerful way.

“If anything, the dead woman’s youth and beauty seemed a reprimand, not because Cora was here now, the first woman in this little room, but because she’d waited so long to come here at all. She’d lived too much of her life so stupidly, following nonsensical rules, as if she and he, as if anyone, had all the time in the world.” 

As Cora looks at a picture of Joseph’s wife, who died years before the story takes place, she realizes that life is fleeting and uncertain. Several factors play into this feeling: discussing Joseph’s detention—during which time he was separated from his wife and daughter and his wife died of influenza—makes her realize that loved ones can be suddenly taken forever. She also recognizes the impermanent nature of her trip to New York, which is ending, and she reads about a senseless shooting in the newspaper. These factors all contribute to her senses of urgency to be with Joseph and regret for not pursuing a romantic relationship with him sooner. 

“[…] even with all that had happened, she still wanted to go back to Wichita. She already knew that she would think back on these remaining days with Joseph for the rest of her life, with longing, with real grief. But she missed her home. She missed the quiet streets she knew so well, the unobstructed sky. She missed hearing her name called out by friends she’d known for almost twenty years. After the loss of the Kaufmanns, the town had taken her in and made her feel a part of it. She wasn’t an outsider there, and even now, that meant so much.” 

Cora links her sense of belonging and identity to Wichita. The city is where she’s lived for the longest amount of time, the entirety of her married life, and represents a place of stability and familiarity. She transforms her life there by bringing Joseph and Greta back from New York with her, thereby retaining the security she has come to rely on from Wichita while also attaining the positive changes the new members of the household create.

“Was it mad to at least try to live as one wished, or as close to it as possible? This life is mine, she would think sometimes. This life is mine because of good luck. And because I reached out and took it.” 

Cora explicitly connects her new Wichita life to her own decisions in New York. She has shown that she’s willing to “reach out” and “take” to create change in her life, and she recognizes that she is responsible for those changes. Cora’s sense of agency is highly developed at this point in the book. 

“Under her hands, under the layers of Raymond’s fine suit and shirtwaist, were the same freckled shoulders she had seen that awful day she thought her life was over—and when she was sure this decent, beloved man was her enemy.

She was grateful life could be long.” 

One of the main features of Cora’s narration is that she lives a long life and reflects on the events of the story through the lens of her experience. Time in Cora’s story is generally an ally—it lets her reconsider people, such as Raymond, and reflect on events, such as her experience with racial integration in New York. Her long life also allows her to reconnect with Louise again in the 1940s. Moriarty uses Cora’s personal longevity as a way of reflecting on cultural changes over the course of the 20th century.